I'd been on my stand less than 10 minutes when I heard the sounds of several deer walking in my direction. I barely had time to grab my bow from its hanger when the first of those deer, a mature doe, walked into view. Several seconds later a fawn appeared, tagging along on the doe's trail. I detected movement behind the fawn and soon made out the form of another doe.

It was immediately apparent that the doe was paying a lot of attention to her backtrail. And I soon found out why. From a thicket just beyond the doe came a loud, guttural grunt.

I didn't have to wait long to get a look at the buck responsible for the grunt. There was a bit of brush busting, and then a long-tined 9-pointer suddenly strolled out of the thicket. I could plainly see that the buck was somewhat interested in one of the antlerless deer. And as luck would have it, all three of those deer were walking straight toward my stand site!

One of the does and the fawn ended up walking right under my stand. But the other doe split off and passed by at a range of about five yards. I could see that the buck was going to follow the lone doe. I waited until the buck's head went behind a large oak before coming to full draw. The sight pin was already locked onto his vitals when he stepped out from behind the oak. The hit was darn near perfect. I recovered the 140-class whitetail after a short 50-yard trailing job.

PRE-BREEDING TACTICS
I arrowed the above-mentioned buck during the final stages of the pre-breeding period. Personally, I consider this to be one of the best times of all to ambush mature whitetails. There are several reasons for why I feel this way.

First of all, big bucks are still residing within their core areas during the pre-breeding period. Second, bucks relate very strongly to rub lines and scrapes at this time of year. And last, bucks become much more daylight active in the days leading up to the rut.

The benefits that hunters can realize from the aforementioned buck behavior traits should be obvious. To begin with, you can rest assured that a big buck you've targeted hasn't yet wandered away from his home turf in search of receptive does. What's more, the presence of rubs and scrapes can help you pinpoint exactly where big bucks prefer to walk when they travel about their home ranges. Most important, however, is the fact that a lot of this activity is going to occur during legal shooting hours.

But these aren't the only reasons why I so love to hunt for big bucks during the pre-breeding phase. In truth, a big reason why I prefer to hunt at this time is that one of my favorite strategies becomes quite effective. That strategy is calling. At no other time during the season are mature bucks so likely to respond positively to calling. In my book, there's nothing that quite compares to the thrill of using rattling antlers and/or grunt calls to successfully dupe a big buck.