Deer Hunting – Real Tree

After turkey season comes the preparation for deer season, and this part of hunting is usually hard but fun. Real Tree’s Josh Honeycutt talks about pre-season prepping or early season food plot preparation. Josh breaks down the essential things to prepare with the different types of food plots that will ensure to put a deer you can tag. He also talks about some of the best practices to keep your food plots effective such as knowing the best time to go, fertilize, and plant. As Josh recounts a certain hunting experience he had, he brings in some lessons on hunting for a good deer rather than a big deer. Learn all of these and more as Josh shares his valuable insights on hunting and kill plots.

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Deer Hunting – Real Tree – Josh Honeycutt

Josh Honeycutt is the deer hunting manager. What does that mean? He takes care of all the digital. You go to the website and look up deer hunting and there’s Josh. He’s handling all that for Realtree. Josh and I have come together and once a month, we’re going to go over what they put out, what they see on a monthly basis. This session, we’re going to talk about prepping for the season. That’s wide open. That’s a lot of things. The second part, we’re going to talk about land management. Josh, let’s start right off with what you see, what you hear and what you tell people about preseason prepping.

This is a good time of the year. Turkey season is starting to wind down. I’ve got three more episodes of our digital turkey series, The Reason for the Hunt, that we’ve put out. We’ve got three episodes of that to release, then we’ll be full into deer season. It’s the time of year whenever everybody is really starting to transition off of turkey season or starting to think more about land management, starting to think more about getting out there and getting ready for deer season. There are a lot of things that we’re doing right now. We haven’t started putting out mineral yet here, at least not in Kentucky. Some states can, but we can’t put mineral out until May 31st. You can’t feed wildlife from I think March 1st to May 31st.

We haven’t really started putting mineral out for deer yet. We haven’t put any bait out for deer. I have not put my cameras back out yet. Once June 1st hits, usually that first week of June, that’s when I put my mineral out. That’s when I put my cameras back out. Right now, I have been pretty heavy on planting early season food plots for early bow season that we’ll focus on during September and October. Early season food plots is a big topic right now because everybody is planting those. If you want to plant fall food plots, we’re going to wait until August or September to plant those depending on where you’re at in the country. It’s the time of year where it’s not quite full bore in preseason mode for most people, but we’re definitely right on the cusp of that preseason work busting loose.

When you’re saying you put in some summer crops, what are you putting in?

Mostly what we plant for early season, at least here what I prefer, and this is all personal preference, I love for an early-season food plot. I’m in an area where it’s a good mix of timber, a little bit of cow pasture, cattle pasture. There’s a lot of food. We’re lucky where I’m at. There are already quite a bit of food sources available to deer. When it comes to me, I don’t plant big food plots because there are different types of food plots. You’ve got a kill plot and you’ve got a food plot. Kill plots are designed to put that deer in a position where you can fill a tag on that deer. A food plot’s primary purpose is to feed the herd. I don’t plant any big-scale five, ten, fifteen, twenty-acre food plots because I don’t need to. We already have plenty of good early season, mid-season and late-season food sources for the most part.

Most places that I hunt here or in Southeastern Kentucky, we’re blessed that way. If you were going to put in an actual food plot to feed the herd, I would make sure it’s a late-season food plot around here. If you already have good quality food sources during the early parts of the year, you’re going to get more use out of that. From what I’ve done personally, I’ve planted just small half-acre, thee-quarter-acre, quarter-acre kill plots. What I’ve planted, it’s all about giving the deer something different. It’s not as much about what I’m planting, but the location that I’m planting them. I want to make sure that these kill plots are in staging areas, areas that are directly in the line of travel the deer is naturally going to take anyway from their bedding area to their feeding destination. Having to keep in mind what their actual food sources are going to be at the time that I want to hunt over these kill plots.

What I personally planted, my goal in what to plant is to give them something different that they can’t get somewhere else that they don’t already have access to in the general area. For me, those are cowpeas. I like to plant cowpeas. Iron-clay peas, those are good early season food sources and nobody else plants them. It’s pretty nonexistent. Something else I like to plant is sunflowers. It’s a really good early season food plot. There are other options out there, too. You can go the clover route. You can go lots of different directions. I don’t traditionally plant what a lot of people like to plant, soybeans and corn, in their food plots. Depending on your personal situation, that may be perfect. That may be great. For me, that’s not because I’m already surrounded by soybeans and corn crops. I don’t want to give them something they already have access to. I want to give them something different. That’s been my goal so far since I’ve finished up. I finished up planting my summer and early season food plots.

When you open up a new kill plot, like a lot of us, based on what you’ve seen and on what the deer movement is for the winter, you might move your treestand. If you move the treestand, then you’re going to move your food plot. How do you open up new kill plots?

I’ve been blessed because I’ve hunted the same properties for several years now, so I haven’t really had to do much changing the last couple of years. It’s been more fine-tuning than it has been big changes. I’ve been able to hunt these properties that I’ve been hunting here at home for quite some time. I did decide to put in a new one. That was one big change that I made. The main thing is always when you’re putting in a kill plot, remember you’re not trying to feed the deer. You’re just trying to put those deer in position to kill that deer. If you have a particular buck that you’ve been after for the last two or three seasons and you’re like, “How do I kill that deer?” If you know where he’s bedding at and you know where he’s feeding at, try to position that kill plot directly between his bedding area and his feeding destination. That’s going to be a good way to try to kill that deer earlier in the year, all the way up to mid to late October.

Here in Kentucky, we open up the very beginning of September. It changes a little bit, but it’s always the first full weekend in September. We have a good window to use food to our advantage. Food is king year-round, but we’re blessed because we can hunt them early enough in the year. They’re still on those pretty consistent and somewhat daytime-oriented bed-to-feed patterns of an afternoon. It goes back to make sure when you position those kill plots, when you open up a new one or try to find a place to put one, don’t go into it with the mentality of, “I’m going to draw that deer to me.” Go into it with the mentality of, “I’m going to get in that deer’s way.” That’s what you’ve got to keep in mind. Research shows, and personal experience for me shows that if you go into that mentality with, “I’m going to pull that deer over here. I’m going to pull that deer over there,” you might do that and you maybe 100% successful trying that. I’ve had much better luck whenever I’ve went into it with that mentality of, “I’m going to take what I know about where that deer has bedding at. I’m going to take what I know about where he’s feeding at, then I’m going to decide where to put my kill plot based on that.”

I’ve had much more luck with daylight activity because of that. In fact, the last few years here in Kentucky, I’ve killed my buck out of the exact same treestand out of the exact same kill plot on the exact same farm. I hunt four different farms here at home and one of those kill plots that I’ve been planting for the last years now has become so effective at what I’ve designed it to do. The deer just funnel through there like crazy. I gave up hunting some bigger deer that I know about on other places or on another part of that particular farm. It’s not a big farm, it’s only probably 30, 40, 50 acres. I don’t know the exact acreage. It’s a small property, in relative terms of private land. I gave up hunting some bigger deer that were less huntable because of good deer that I was after on that particular property that had become so huntable. It’s because I had positioned that kill plot in that spot. Until I put that kill plot in that spot, I had never killed a deer on that part of that farm.

May to June, you put the kill plot in. May to June, you go in there with some herbicide, knock it down, rake it up, maybe burn it, you put fertilizer, lime and seed down and is that it? How does that all work?

I don’t get too scientific with it. You can get as scientific as you want, but the primary things to remember is go in there, make sure you kill all the foliage that’s existing before you go in and plant and take a soil test. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t take a soil test every single time I do a food plot or a kill plot. I’d be lying if I said I did, but it is good to do that. Take a soil test. That way you know how much fertilizer or lime you need to apply. Generally speaking the best way to go about it is better do a soil test. If you don’t, just get fertilizer. Put fertilizer down in the right amount that calls for per acreage. If you think it needs it, maybe apply a little lime. That’s the base minimum if you don’t go the soil test route. The order of events that I prefer to do it, I like to go in there about a week, week and a half, maybe two weeks beforehand. Probably closer to two weeks beforehand. It depends on my schedule and weather, as well. About two weeks is usually pretty good.

Before the general time frame that you want to plant, go in there and spray and kill it. After that, come in, I like to fertilize and then disk, and I disk that fertilizer into the soil and into the ground. I come back in there and plant. Depending on what our plant, I will either fold it, pack it, if I have access to that or not. I always have access. I put in kill plots a rototiller or just garden tillers. I don’t always have access. Some spots I’m able to borrow. I don’t personally own it. I’m either able to rent the equipment or borrow the equipment, someone to put those plots in. It really depends on what you’re planting. Sometimes you might want to put that seed a quarter-inch deep. Sometimes you want to put it in an inch deep. It varies depending on what you’re planting. Whether you hope to pack that seed or disk that seed in or you simply run over with a four-wheeler to make sure it has good seed to soil contact, it will depend based on what you’re going to be planting.

That’s the hardest thing that I’ve seen in the places that we’re doing it. We’ve got a little garden rototiller because you really can’t get gear in there. It’s just not going to get any in there.

Most of the time in most cases, whenever you found a good spot for kill plot and the goal of that is put that deer in that plot, I will say yes. Whenever I have a good solid kill plot in place, that kill plot is going to be inside of 100 yards from where that deer is bedding at. Especially if you’re dealing with a deer that is somewhat not terminal or it’s not moving very far in daylight. That kill plot, that open area that you’re trying to kill that deer, get him there so you can get an arrow or a bullet in. If I know where the deer is bedding and I’m nowhere that bedding area is, there’s a high likelihood or high probability of a deer using it. I usually do place those within 100 yards. I definitely don’t want to go over 150. That’s really too far in most cases, in my opinion. Now I might not be too far for someone else. If they know their property and they know how much daylight usage on someone else’s property, maybe it will be much better, but I’m in the barely pressured area. Luckily, there’s no early season, bowhunters that get out there, but there are a lot of gun hunters out there. Most gun season comes in pressured. It is pressure during post-season too. I generally put my kill plots within 100 yards, sometimes 80, 75 yards of those bedding areas.

Give the deer something different in your food plot that they can't get somewhere else. Share on X

You’re going to be back in an area where it’s hard to get a tractor or even tractor implements for that matter. A lot of the times when we put one of these plots in, we’re going in there with a garden tiller and tilling it up by hand, so to speak and not using big implements like that. Luckily now, and I don’t have one, I’m still using those tight spots. Some of my kill plots, I have roadbeds cut to them. I’m able to get tractors back in there and I’m able to borrow a tractor from the landowner or neighbor or rent it from someone nearby. I’m still able to apply some of mine with tractor and tractor implements. Some people have ATVs. They have some decent implements that can be hauled and towed behind an ATV to do that. Personally, I still use the garden tiller to get tight spots. It’s tough to till up a quarter acre, half-acre doing that.

Whenever it comes to that, I’m usually doing an eighth-acre plot or a quarter-acre plot, not that big. Usually closer to an eight, sometimes even a sixteenth, if I think that it won’t get overgrazed by deer. It can be tough. When it comes to it, killing big deer and killing deer in general and it doesn’t have to be big deer. Killing that doe can be as hard, especially if it’s an old doe. Killing a doe with your bow can be almost as hard, especially if she’s six, seven, eight, nine, ten years old. They do get that old and much older. Killing a really old doe can be as hard killing a two or three-year-old buck sometimes. It doesn’t have to be just big deer, but deer in general. You only get out of it what you put into it. If you’re willing to go that extra mile and put in that hard work, even if it takes you a whole weekend or a whole Saturday to put it in that kill plot, you’re going to be glad you did come October, November when it’s over a big deer.

The thing that I found my experience, you don’t want to set the kill plot in view of the food source because that to me is more of a staging area that the buck’s coming in. He’s checking the field. He’s doing all those things. He’s alert. If you get it backward where Josh was talking about, you might be 100, 200 yards in the distance, could be closer to that because of some heavy bedding. They don’t have to walk 200 yards in their feed on beans or corn or whatever. You’ve got to play your land. That’s the biggest thing that I try to tell people. They say, “How do I do this? Where do I do this on my land?” You’ve got to look at your land. You’ve got to know where the deer are bedded habitually. You know where the does are. The bucks typically aren’t in the same place. You’ve got to figure all that out. That’s the thing that hunting is intriguing because you figure it out. You’ve got a hotspot now that you created. They’re used to the place to take a bite. They pause and that’s all you need.

Once you get it figured out you’ll know it. I’ve been very fortunate, I’m very blessed. For the last few years, my Kentucky buck has come. I’m not often at the same treestand because I do have two different treestands on this one little small kill plot for two different wind directions. Two of those bucks have been killed out of the same stand. One of them I killed was out of another stand, but they’re only twenty yards apart. I’ve been fortunate. Once you figure out the land, once you figure out how the deer use the land, once you get that figured out, it just clicks. I may hamstring myself and jinx myself and not a deer walks through that kill plot. Once you do get that figured out and once things start clicking, you really can have some good opportunities, good shot opportunities to get some deer.

I was going into it with hoping that I was going to be hunting a big, wide eight pointer. He’s probably 150 and only has one orange basis, so he’s a big framed deer, wide, tall, doesn’t have a lot of mass. He’s just big frame. I was going into the season last fall in hopes of targeting that deer and he didn’t show up during the preseason like I thought he would or even the first couple of days in season. Instead of him being in there, there was a big mainframe nine pointer. His main beam turned and went down about five, six, seven inches there at the end of the beam. I call it a drop tom. I ended up on that deer instead. Right after I killed my deer within less than a week, the big mainframe showed. I wouldn’t change anything about it. In fact, that character, that main beam I was probably happier with that than I would have been with the big mainframe eight.

The point I’m trying to make with that is as the season progresses and as the year progresses, when deer find those areas and they find those spots, if they like it, they might move their mate. They may relocate their home range or not necessarily their home range because their home range is a big encompassing area, generally 600 to 700 acres. They may relocate their court area to that spot because they like that bedding area and they like how they have that food sources close to that bedding area and they like how they can move on out into the bigger food source that’s nearby. I think that’s what happened with this particular deer because I had been hunting that big eight on a different part of the farm. I haven’t even seen him on that part before. I’m sure he knew about that kill plot in that area.

I’m sure he knew about it already, but whenever I killed that deer, he moved in almost immediately afterward and he’s stayed there all season long. There are lots of date life pictures. I’m hoping that year does the same thing again. You’re not probably going to draw a ton of deer into those plots because the deer are not territorial in the traditional sense. They don’t defend an area. A lot of people think that in whitetails, and the reason I say this isn’t my personal opinion, my personal experience, they confirm what I already thought based on the research that I’ve looked from other biologists and other studies. Deer are not necessarily territorial in the traditional sense. They don’t defend an area. They defend breeding rights, but it makes it seem like they defend an area even though they aren’t.

Whenever two bucks get to fight in September or October in their establishment dominance, not that they’re technically defending an area, they’re defending their status in the herd. It appears that way that they’re defending an area because a lot of the times what you’ll see is the vanquished buck, the less dominant buck will end up relocating and trying to find or establish an area somewhere where he is the boss. Just because you put in a kill plot doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily have a ton of deer pour into that area. You may only have one mature buck, one dominant buck that uses that area and another subdominant buck, really young, a year-and-a-half, two-and-a-half-year-old deer that come in there.

I’m talking once the deer start moving, they disperse to their fall ranges. Once they start breaking up in October, late September, don’t necessarily think that you’ll have a ton of mature deer. Years ago, I killed my buck in that same spot time and there was only one mature buck in there. That’s the deer that I ended up killing. That’s something to think about. It’s also why you might want to establish multiple bedding areas on the properties that you hunt. If you’re trying to increase the deer, just the deer population numbers, and you’re trying to increase the number of mature bucks you have on a given property, the best way to do that I’ve found, and this is again my opinion, no science behind this, has been to establish multiple bedding areas. You can do that very easily by going in and hinge cutting. You can go in and drag a whole bunch of downed trees. They’re already down, treetops from where it’s been logged.

There are a lot of different ways you can do this. That’s the easiest way without making big changes. Go ahead and plant a bunch of native grasses. The deer love to bed there. There are many ways to get great bedding covers. Without getting into all that, the best way out bound to increase the number of mature bucks on a given property is to go in there and increase the number of bedding areas that are available, that are not together, but separate. In the end, go in and establish a kill plot for each one of those bedding areas. If you can do that, you have a much higher odds of increasing the number of mature bucks there on that given property, even if it’s a small property. I’m not saying that you have to do this on 200,000, 300,000, 500,000 acres. You can do this on 50 acres. You can do it on 75 or 100 acres. Whenever you increase the number of bedding areas that are maybe even just a few hundred yards apart, more big deer are going to be more apt to use your property and establish their core area on it.

How do you get into these kill plots? That’s one thing we establish. Sometimes they’re really in thick stuff. You mentioned you’ve got some roads or trails built into them. The thing that I’ve always looked at, the places that I have like kill plot set up, it’s gnarly stuff. I can’t just go sit in there. I can’t ninja in there. I wish I could, but I’m going to make noise.

There are a lot of things I’m thinking about planting a kill plot. I’m coming right back to what you asked, but primarily is where do I have to be to get in that deer’s way? Would that mentality get in his way? Primary it’s knowing where he’s been, then how do I get in his way. I’m also thinking about when, I’m thinking about entering exit routes. I think about a lot of different things. Enter and exit is huge. I would even argue in many instances, if not every instance, it’s definitely in the top two, maybe even the most important think when it comes to kill plots. If you can’t get your treestand without spooking that deer, it doesn’t matter how good a spot it is. If you can’t get to your stand without bumping him or her, doe or buck, it doesn’t matter. If you cannot get into that treestand without bumping deer, it doesn’t matter how good a spot, how pretty a spot it is. You’re not going to kill them if you bump them before you get there in a sustained way. Whenever you’re leaving, you’re staying. A lot of times people don’t think about it doesn’t matter if I bump on that deer whenever I leave my stand, whether it’s in the morning or night, after the hunt.

On them, it doesn’t matter if it’s in mid-morning or lunchtime and you’re coming out for the day or if it’s after dark, sunset, and you’re leaving for the day. If you’re bumping a deer on the way out, it’s just as bad. Bumping them in daylight, I think is worse than bumping them at night under the cover of darkness. That would mean after the morning hunt, after the afternoon hunt. That’s something to think about for me. If I don’t think I can get into a particular stand without spooking the deer, I won’t put my kill plots there if I don’t think I have a good entry and exit route. Something that we’ve done and try to do, we don’t always do it because it’s a lot of hard work to plant quite numerous kill plots. We don’t always have time because we’ve got a lot of stuff going on. We’re regular Joe’s too. I don’t hunt for a living. I work on digital media and digital content for living, so I don’t get to be in the woods as much as some people might think that I am based on my job. It’s one of those things we like to cut trails into our stands. It’s two trails, an entry and exit.

My entry route to my treestands and my exit routes away from my stands, not always, but most of the time are different. How I’ll walk into a stand and how I’ll walk out away from that stand are generally two different routes. Unless I have a good entry and exit where it’s like I’m walking in a drainage to this stand where I’m walking down this creek bank was really steep sides on both sides where I can get in and out without the deer seeing me. If that’s the case, then I like to use that in and out. If I don’t have that, if I don’t have a good visual barrier that conceals me, then a lot of times my way in and my way out is different. The deer in different locations, whenever you say you’re going in of a morning before morning hunt, the deer are more than likely going to be back on the food still. You don’t want to walk through the middle of the food early in the morning and as you were walking to that treestand location or into that kill plot, you’re going to want to come in the back door. I wouldn’t necessarily come in the bedding area either. I wouldn’t walk in that bedding area by any means.

You’ve got to think about that too. Let’s say you’ve got a bean field here that you’re hunting, that the deer you’re targeting and your kill plot’s here and the bedding area’s here. You don’t want to walk through the bean field to get to your kill plot early in the morning. You’re going to put them off their normal patterns and they may not follow their normal routine back into their bedding area. The same way when you leave on a morning hunt. The deer will more than likely go back in the bedding area. The way I like to go is to back out towards the food because it’s 10:00 in the morning, 11:00 in the morning, 12:00, whatever time you come out around mid-morning or lunch. Most of the time there’s not going to be any deer out. I like to hit back and I won’t necessarily walk through the middle of the food, but I like to hit back before the food, away from the bedding area. That might mean that I have to do a long walk in or out, but it’s definitely worth it when you don’t spook the deer. When you spook the deer, you can mess up your spot for the next week or the next month, for the rest of the season. It’s important knowing how to get in and out of that stand without being detected by deer.

That’s a mistake that we all make. I’m raising my hand because you get so used to hitting the stand. The stand has been good to you. A couple of things change and all of a sudden, you’re busting the deer. The farm that I hunt, I’ve had the park at the barn and not walk in. We used to be able to walk in or drive the truck or the ATV halfway. I can’t do that anymore because just the way the farmers get field set up. Now we have the park at the barn. It’s a quarter-mile walk to our stands. When we do that, then I see more deer.

Don’t draw the deer in to you. Rather, get in that deer’s way. Share on X

It’s interesting you say that because I’ve always went like that. That’s been my personal opinion. I like to walk in. I don’t like to drive four-wheelers anywhere near where I hunt. I don’t like to drive trucks anywhere near where I’m hunting. Not that the deer necessarily pay attention to it, but I do think they do. I think they catch on quick. They’re smarter than people give them credit for. I’m not a big outfitter hunter. I’ve been fortunately blessed to hunt with two or three outfitters for whitetails. 99.99% of my hunting is done DIY and that’s the way I like it. Nothing against outfitters, but I just prefer to do all the work myself. I get more out of it because it’s not about the kill for me. It’s about that process. It’s interesting you mentioned that because every outfitter I’ve been to, they like to drive up a four-wheeler all the way up to a treestand and drop the hunter off right there. It’s pretty standard. Part of that’s due to time because they’re trying to drop numerous hunters off before daylight. My conversations with them have also been about why they do that. They think that it’s better to do it that way. I’m not sold on that. I don’t know.

I’m not saying I don’t know any more about them or I’m an expert or not, but I’ve not had much luck. If I’m driving past, I’ve not had much luck whenever I’ve driven very close to my stand. Maybe if you have a quiet electric vehicle that’s really quiet and it doesn’t work. Maybe if you have something but if it’s motorized at all or runs off gasoline, I’m not sold on that. It is interesting because some people, and I even have brands here at home, if you do the DIY thing like me and they like to drive four-wheelers close to their stand and hide it and then get out and walk. I don’t like that. I like to have a silent approach, but it has to be a good entry and exit. If you don’t have good entry and exit routes where you can get in and out of a spot without spooking the deer, without the deer crossing. It’s not just about spooking the deer either with your wind direction and walking through deer, it’s also about your foot trail. You need to be able to get in and out of that stand and use routes and you’re never going to be 100%.

At least try to find those spots were the deer are less likely to cross your footpath. That ground stamp that you leave behind when you walk in and out is as almost important as your wind stand whenever you’re walking in and out. It’s tough, it’s hard, but whenever you can find that spot, that perfect spot that has a good bedding area, has a good transition area with good trails and identified trails leading to food sources. You have found a spot that has good entry and exit access, you better hold onto that and to be able to identify that when you see it. That’s rare to find a good spot that has all the pieces to the puzzle like that.

I hunted with a Judd Cooney and Sherri Yarborough in Iowa and they drop off everybody at the base of the stand. You climb the ladder out of the bed of the truck. Everything down to the nth degree. They say a couple of things. One, we do scent. Two, to render all the time, just like farmers and everybody knows the deer stand, look at the farmer’s tractor go by. Three, it makes people aware here’s how we’re doing. We’re getting you here the quickest, the easiest. You get all your gear. It makes it really easy. That’s what they use. They don’t use ATVs. They use trucks and they take it literally to the base of the treestand. You step out of the back of the truck with your gear. They help you up with your gear and all that. Typically they’re all-day sits. At night, they come back and you stay in your stand until they’re underneath your stand, then you start unloading.

It works really well for them because they have a lot of people in there. You can’t have people walking in. I’ve been to places and I can walk to my stand without a flashlight. I’m not a ninja, but the trail is just like walking down a path. Once you know where it is, you walk down the path and there’s enough light, you don’t trip on the roots. When I get to a place like that, I realize I’m screwed because they’ve been using the same path, same entrance and exit. Every single deer in the area knows what you’re doing. There’s absolutely no question. If you get in a situation like that, ask beforehand, “How many stands do you have? How do you rotate them? Do you have the same stands three days in a row, five days in a row, every day?” You’ve got to ask those questions because when you hit a situation like that, it gets scary that you can walk into a stand without the light. Unless it’s your own land, then that’s a completely different thing.

For me, that’s really situational as far as the hunter’s stand. I try not to ever think of anything as black and white when it comes to tactical approach. Legal things, black and white, but when it comes to how to kill a deer and you’re talking tactics, I try not to ever get black and whites, especially on stuff like that. It’s my personal preference. Not that it’s right, wrong or different. It all depends on the deer. If I think it’s a good spot, a good stand site that I can get in and out to without being detected, if it’s got good entrance and exit. If I have a good trail that is not likely to have a lot of deer crossing and catching my scent trail, my scent from my walk in and out. If I check all the boxes, I’m much more likely to stay in more often. Maybe even every day for a week straight if I’m getting away with not spooking the deer in any way while I’m on that stand. Even after I leave again that same trail from the walk in and out is just as important.

Maybe not necessarily to while you’re there, but a lot of people don’t realize is you’re spooking the deer even after you leave sometimes because your scent is still there both on the ground and in the area. If I think I can get away with all that and I’m not really spooking any deer, then I’m on that stand every single day for a week or week and a half straight. I’ll never have the time to do that. In a perfect world where all you do is hunt, I’m going to hunt for a week or a week and a half straight in the same spot if I think I can get away with it. If I have the right wind directions and I’m not spooking the deer in any way, form or fashion. It also depends on the deer. I never hunt on one of my best just to hunt. My kill plots, I don’t have a mature buck that’s used to that spot. This goes back to scouting and intel. I run a water trail camera and I do a lot of blasting from afar.

If I don’t have any kind of proof that deer is not only in that area, but using that area in daylight, I won’t even hunt it. I don’t want to cover up my really good kill spot. It’s not just the kill plots, but good stand size in general. I’ve got some stand size there. They have no kill plot all around them. There are some of my best stands. It doesn’t have to be with kill plots, but good stands in general. I don’t hunt those spots unless I have some evidence that a deer is coming through there in daylight, a deer that I want to target. In those times where I don’t necessarily know did I have a good opportunity to killing a big buck, I’ll hunt one of my lesser stands, one of my stands that aren’t as good that maybe it’s a little further from the bedding areas. Maybe it’s a little closer to the food sources, whatever. I never go into those good stands until I know that I have found a deer. I’m pretty sure I killed the buck when I moved in because I knew he was there in daylight. I had pre-season data intel, trail cam pictures scattered from afar.

I’m pretty sure I killed him the second time I was in there. Might’ve been the third, but I’m sure it was the second time I set that spot. The year before that, I killed the buck in that same kill plot. It was probably in my second or third sit. The last years, I killed my buck in the same location. I killed him on the third day. Those might not have been continuous sit. I’m not saying that I’m necessarily on those spots two or three days in a row to kill that deer because I don’t necessarily do that either. I want to make sure that I think I have all the pieces of the puzzle for that deer to not only be there in daylight but want to move in daylight before I move in. As far as how often I hunt on a stand, your best odds for killing that deer is the first time you’re in there. That has been the case for me just not in the last few years, but in general and throughout my entire hunting career, so to speak. Since I started hunting when I was a little kid. There have been many occasions where I killed the buck that I was after whether I knew about him or not beforehand.

There have been many occasions where I killed that deer the first time I was in there. That’s your best odds. That’s your best chance to kill that deer because based on what research I’ve looked at, every time you go in thereafter, that depends on the situation. In general, a lot of the research shows your chances of killing that deer every time you go in there after that keep dropping about 50%. Your chances of killing him now, it’s 100% chance. Tomorrow, if you go on there, it’s going to be 50% chance. The next day, that is going to be 25%. The next day it’s going to be 12.5%. That may not be the case in every single situation, especially if you have a really good spot where you have checked all the boxes and you have good entry and exit routes where you don’t spook the deer. If you’re walking in and out of there, no deer is catching your ground stand, you make sure you have good wind directions and no deer smells you while you’re there. If you checked all those boxes, your chances aren’t dropping 50% every time you go in there. I’m guilty of this. I’m not as disciplined as I always need to be.

Sometimes I might an unwisely hunt in a spot that I shouldn’t because I’m trying to get in there and hunt that deer and I want to hunt that deer and that’s a good enough spot. I find nothing wrong with that. If you want to target the big mature deer, that’s a big mistake. I’m just as guilty as the next guy. Research shows that if you’re not mindful of that, if you’re not mindful of not spooking the deer, you hurt your chances each time you go in there. If you’re in a spot that’s not very good, it doesn’t check all the boxes, day after day you’re hunting numerous days throughout the week, that’s going to hurt your chances and do badly for you. It’s still situational, in my opinion. It’s still fluid. No two situations are the same. No two situations are alike. I know you get it and most or all our readers out there, I’m sure they get it too. You’ve got to be able to see a situation and analyze it and react accordingly. Some stands, you might only want to hunt that once a week, once every two weeks. Some stands, you probably get away to hunt seven days a week. It’s so situational.

That’s a good point because I know people that literally had three days a year. One is a guy, Helmers from a West Salem, Wisconsin. He’s got 40 acres. He’s been working that land a really long time. He’s got two or three stands set up. He knows where everybody is. He hunts it at max three days, that’s all he hunts. All the work he does on the food plots and everything, but in three days, he’s going to kill the buck he’s after or he doesn’t. Every day after those three days have gone, it diminishes. Typically, he doesn’t see that buck again. That’s the way it is. When you start focusing on one buck, the first time is the best time. There is no question about it. That’s why everything has to be right. Sometimes you go hunting just to go hunting.

If you’re going to do that, go on big food plot or corn, beans or something where you know you’re going to see twenty deer, ten deer, five, whatever’s in your herd. They’re going to come out and you’re going to have a nice evening or a nice morning and you’re going to see a lot of deer. Maybe Mr. Wonderful is going to show up, but you’re there not really focusing on killing a deer on your hit list. He may show up, but you’re still hunting and you’re still out there, as opposed to zeroing in on a buck and say, “How’s the best way to get this buck down on the ground?” There’s a huge difference to that. There’s nothing wrong with taking a kid and putting them on a double set stand over the field, watching the does pour out, having fun and the fawn’s playing and all that. That’s a beautiful thing.

Hunting is different. It’s many different things to many different people. Not everybody likes to go after big deer and that’s okay. For me personally, the primary reason for hunting is not the big deer. The primary reason I’m hunting is that I love to eat wild game. I love to eat deer meat, I love to eat turkey meat. I love the small game. I love to eat fish. That’s the primary reason for me, the primary trigger for doing what I do. I do like hunting big deer. I love that challenge. I love the chess match. As the common cliché goes, and it is a chess match. You make a move, he makes a move. Whoever makes the wrong move first loses. When it comes to that, I like to save my buck tax for a big deer like that. If I don’t cross paths with a deer that I want to shoot, I don’t shoot a buck. I was fortunate to kill a good buck in Kentucky, but I ate up the buck tag up in Ohio because I did not see the what the deer out is after. It’s funny.

My father and I share a lease up in Ohio. It’s 40 acres. It’s a very inexpensive lease. We got it for a very good price on that lease. I’m not big on leasing, but it’s tough to find a good spot these days without leasing the ground. I still give permission. Door knocking still works and we still have public ground. We came across this small 40 acres and it was just too good to pass it up because it was such a good area. It was set up not perfect but really well for hunting. My dad killed a good hunt for 40-inch, 11-pointer. It had a small G5 on one side. I did not kill one then. I ate my Ohio tag that season. I’ve got a nice eight the year before, but that season I ate the tag because I did not see the deer I was wanting to see. There was a big 175-inch deer and a big 195-inch deer that were in the area. I narrowly missed one of them, the 175 inches. I hunted that deer for three days in a row because I had good entry and exit. He’d come in on the fourth day. I didn’t hunt that day.

The day after I hunted him, he showed up. Maybe he knew I wasn’t there. I passed up on some good bucks. Some 120, 130 deer because I was waiting on Mr. Big and that’s part of the fun. It’s one of those things where going out and sitting over a big area of big ag field, the big food plot. Just seeing the deer or shooting a doe or shooting a young buck, if you like shooting young bucks or going out there and hunting with somebody in a double stand. That’s as much hunting as going after a big deer. It’s fun in a lot of ways. Hunting is hunting. I love to hunt. If I don’t necessarily have a deer that I have good chances of killing in one of my highlights, good stand sites, I still go if I’m not working and I’m able to. I make sure I don’t use those highlight stands until I think I have a good shot of killing one of those big deer that I’m after.

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How do people get ahold of you if they want to touch base with you, if they want to get ahold of Realtree? Tell us the social media and all that good stuff.

You can go check out everything. The team that I worked with on Realtree.com, there’s a team of six of us. We all have different jobs on there, but we all share the load. If you want to see any deer hunting content or bow hunting, I take care of the deer hunting, the bow hunting, the big game hunting and the food plot and lane management nests. You can click on those nests or you can go to Brow Tines and Backstrap deer blog. I write that blog. You can check out all the content that we’re doing. We have everything from short blogs, micro-features that are only a couple hundred, 300 words all the way up to full-fledged. Mega features that are tens of thousands of words. You can go out and check all the content. We’ve got a lot of good video content on Realtree.com as well if you’d like checking out the video content. You can also go to the Realtree Outdoors YouTube page. Check out all our videos there. You can go to Realtree Outdoors Facebook page. If you want to follow that page, everything that we put out on Realtree.com goes to our Realtree Facebook page on a schedule.

Once it hits Realtree.com, it gets scheduled for Realtree Facebook. If you just want to get regular notifications, you can do it that way. The best way to get regular notifications is to subscribe to the nest. If you are a die-hard bow hunter, if you’re a die-hard deer hunter, if you’re a die-hard land management person, you can go to those specific nests on Realtree.com. Scroll to the bottom of that nest and you can put in your email address and it will send you regular updates on the content that hits those nests. There are a lot of different ways to get in touch with this stuff. If you want to reach out to me personally, if you have any questions or want to talk deer hunting, you can check me out at [email protected]. That’s my email address. Feel free to reach out there. There are lots of ways to get in touch with us and feel free to do so because we enjoy the interaction.

Josh, thank you so much for spending some time and you always have good conversations. I love talking with you because you’ve been there. You can share it well and it’s just a joy to have you.

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About Josh Honeycutt

Josh Honeycutt is a back-country deer hunter from Kentucky who grew up slinging arrows and bullets at pressured river bottom whitetails. If it’s deer or turkey season, you’ll find him high in an oak tree or sitting up against one. And he enjoys spending that time in the outdoors with his wife, Kathryn, as well as the rest of his family and friends.

Josh has hunted the prairie whitetails of Kansas to the river bottom bucks of Kentucky to the pine-dwelling deer of South Carolina. Simply put, he loves to hunt deer. And it doesn’t matter where, either.

His passion for the outdoors led to a career as an outdoor writer, photographer and videographer. Josh has been a regular contributor to Realtree.com since 2012 and came on board as the associate editor and deer hunting editor in July of 2015. He writes the Brow Tines and Backstrap blog. His work has been published in nearly 50 publications and websites including Field & Stream, Outdoor Life, North American Whitetail, Whitetail Journal, Game & Fish, Fur-Fish-Game, and more.