Chapman said that he does not put a lot of stock in scrapes. "Most scrapes are made at night," he said. "Yeah, I guess I've killed a few bucks over scrapes, but I mostly look for big rubs. And I mean big rubs. I like to find rubs on trees 6 inches or more. That really changes your attitude about hunting there. Any fresh deer sign that you find is encouraging, rubs or scrapes. But I guess the difference between me and most people is that when I find a big scrape, I go the next step and try to find out where he's coming from to get to that scrape, and then cut him off before he gets there."

TIME OF DAY
There is an old saying that the best time of day to go hunting is when you get the chance. True enough, but Robert Chapman feels strongly that mornings are better than evenings. His thinking is that the deer are primarily moving at night during deer season and the best chance you have to meet up with a big, ol' mature buck is to cut him off on his way "home" to his bedding area.

"I can look at any given mountain and tell you where the deer are going to bed. They're going to bed in those little saddles between ridges and low places at the end of steep ridges. The trick is to set up in between where he's feeding and where he's bedding.

"I think that deer don't see real well in bright sunlight. It really bothers them. It has been my experience that if a deer has a choice, he will walk from east to west in the morning with the sun over his back. That means that I need to set up on the west and look back toward where he's going to be coming from, that is from the east.

"In terms of the best time of the day to hunt, I would say that the absolute best time is between 8 and 10 in the morning, with the prime time being around 9 o'clock. Every day is different. There are some days when it seems like the squirrels, the birds, everything in the woods, is moving. Then there are days when it seems like nothing is moving. In my experience, if you're sitting there at 8 in the morning and the squirrels are not moving, you're probably not going to kill a deer that day. The most movement seems to be right after a front passes through, say after a three-day rain and then it clears up all of a sudden, that's the time to be in the woods."

SCOUTING
Chapman said that when you start deer scouting in the mountains, you will need to be prepared to wear out some shoe leather. You will likely have to cover a good bit of up-and-down territory before you find the core area of a big, mature buck. But he said you should keep one rule in mind: "The bigger the track, the bigger the scrape; the bigger the rub, the bigger the buck."

To hunt successfully in the mountains, where the deer population is pretty thin, you've got to be scouting all the time.

"I'm a bear hunter, a coon hunter and a turkey hunter, too," Chapman said. "And whenever I'm bear hunting or coon hunting or turkey hunting, I'm paying attention to the deer sign I run up on. I'm storing it all away in my memory bank for next season."

The real key to deer hunting, Chapman said, is to keep up your enthusiasm.

"To be successful at deer hunting, you've got to enjoy it. If you're not enjoying it, you're not going to go that extra mile or sit perfectly still in the tree stand," he said. "I'm 54 years old and I still get as excited when I see a deer as I did when I was 15."