Understanding the Whitetail Pre-Rut Improves Hunting Success Odds
Adapting and customizing your hunting strategies and tactics to match the current transitional phase of the whitetail pre-rut will lead to more buck encounters and shot opportunities
Hunting the whitetail pre-rut and understanding how to hunt the different phases are two different things. Learning to identify the phase transitions and applying the appropriate hunting strategy will lead to more taxidermy bills. (Travis Faulkner photo)
November 07, 2016
By Travis Faulkner, OutdoorChannel.com
rong>Strategically adjusting your setups to target doe high-traffic areas, such as staging points with good cover on the edges of a primary food sources, are excellent places to intercept lovesick bucks. (Travis Faulkner video)
After locating these prime ambush points, locate and monitor well established rub and scrape lines with game-cameras. Don’t forget that dominant bucks are extremely territorial and defensive during this stage of the game, which makes them more vulnerable. A lethal hunting strategy is to attack all three of a mature buck’s primary senses with decoying, calling, and scent applications tactics. Constructing mock scrapes, utilizing aggressive calling sequences, and placing an intruder buck decoy within bow range can lead to the ultimate demise of a swelled-up brawler who’s looking for love in all the wrong places.
