Photo by Ron Sinfelt

It's every deer hunter's dream -- to have a big, mature, wide-racked buck all to yourself. Somewhere down deep, most of us secretly yearn to be turned loose on the trail of a once-in-a-lifetime, record-book buck in a remote patch of deer woods where no one else is likely to come along and interfere or snatch your prize.

Well, the remote mountains of South Carolina may be just the place where your dreams can come true. But for those unfamiliar with the rugged terrain, hunting deer in the mountains can be a frustrating experience.

The biggest problem that hunters face when hunting in the mountains is trying to sort out the various features of the terrain. If you were able to fly over the Carolina mountains in a small plane, the first thing you would notice is that they just seem to go on and on, forming a vast wilderness. The northwestern corner of the Palmetto State is a seemingly endless sea of peaks, ridges and hollows running in all directions, steep slopes and little pockets of relatively flat floodplain.

How do you sort it all out? How do you figure out where the deer are? How do you determine what they feed on, where they bed, and most importantly, where the big bucks are likely to be during the daylight hours when you are in the woods?

Well, you could spend a good part of your adult life studying maps and scouting, and scouting some more, sorting it out one mountain at a time. You could spend several years doing some trial-and-error hunting by the seat of your pants.

But you would be well advised to begin by talking to an expert.

Robert Chapman is the man you need to talk to. Chapman is widely regarded as one of the best of the best deer hunters in the South Carolina mountains. It's hard to argue with success, and consistently bringing home big-bodied, heavy-antlered mountain bucks is the hallmark of Robert Chapman's deer-hunting career. But you don't need to track down this veteran Pickens County hunter and pick his brain. He recently sat down on the front porch of his hunt club cabin and spelled out his secrets for success.

"It's all about knowing the terrain and knowing the woods," Chapman said. "For example, I don't like to hunt on top of the ridges, as that's not where the big bucks are likely to be. They're going to be off down the side of the mountain, in the thick stuff, 50 to 75 yards on one side of the ridge or the other."

This would be news to most casual deer hunters. If you turn 100 deer hunters loose in the mountains, 99 of them will eventually pick out a spot to hunt on the top of a nice, flat ridge with big, open hardwoods. It's just in the nature of a deer hunter to want to see as much territory as he or she can. Sprinkle in a few finger-sized rubs, some deer pellets, maybe a scrape or two, and few hunters can resist a nice open patch of big hardwoods on top of the mountain.

But Chapman firmly believes that's not where you need to be.

As much as we want those big-racked bucks to come sauntering through the wide-open woods, turn broadside and stand still, veteran trophy hunters know better.