DEALING WITH SCENTS
Chapman said that the most important scent in deer hunting is human scent. You've got to get control of that before you can take advantage of the commercially available deer scents. He is meticulous about keeping his hunting clothes clean and not leaving human scent around the area where he is planning to hunt.

"Sometimes I'll take a hemlock branch and rub it all over my shoes as a cover scent. I try not to walk through brushy areas if I can avoid it, because human scent can cling to the bushes. Sometimes I'll circle way around the place I've decided to hunt and come in the back door, so to speak. The most convenient way to get to your stand is not always the best way to get to your stand."

He said he also tries to avoid going into restaurants and cafés on the way to a morning of deer hunting. "You wouldn't believe it," Chapman said, "but sometimes I run up on deer hunters that have just come from having breakfast in a café and I can smell the grease and the coffee and the cigarette smoke on them. If I can smell it, the deer can smell it.

"Also, I try not to hunt the same place two days in a row, especially if I'm going to be hunting from the ground. I figure that if I don't see him that day, he's going to come through there some time during the night, and if he smells my scent all over the place, he's not likely to be back the next day. They don't get big by being dumb," Chapman said.

The only deer scent that Chapman uses is the tarsal gland of a buck that he has recently killed. An incident that happened several years ago convinced him that tarsal gland scent can draw in big bucks.

"I had just killed a pretty nice buck," Chapman said. "I had dragged him out to a place near the road and left him lying there to go out to get the truck. When I came back, another big buck, a nice 7-pointer, was coming down the trail with his nose to the ground. He was following the trail like a bird dog where I had dragged the other buck. Now I had two big bucks to haul out of the woods, and I became a believer in tarsal gland scent."

HUNTING THE RUT
Since he is also a bear hunter and bear season is the last week in October, Chapman uses the early deer season, the first weeks of October to scout for bears.

"I usually don't even get started deer hunting till after bear season," he said.

Like most hunters, Chapman believes that the best time to kill a big, mature buck is during the rut.

"The rut is the one time of the year that an old mature buck might make that one mistake and step out in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said.

However, determining when the rut takes place in the mountains is a problem. Very little research has been done on the timing of the rut in the South Carolina mountains. The one study that was done several years ago indicated that most of the breeding in the population sampled in Oconee County took place the second week in December, much later than most hunters would think.

"It seems to be changing," Chapman said. "Back when I was young, it seemed like the peak of the rut was toward the last of October. Then in the 1980s, it seemed like it shifted to the middle of November. I used to consider the week around Nov. 18 or 19 the peak of the rut. Now, it seems like it's around the second week of December and on into Christmas."