Photo by Ron Sinfelt.

If I live to be 100, I don't suppose that I will ever forget that November morning back in 1991. The leaves had finally fallen off the trees, the sun was just peeking up over the top of the ridge, and I was nestled in at the base of a big white oak in a remote corner of the Jocassee Gorges property in northern Pickens County.

At precisely 7:20 a.m., the buck of my dreams approached the little hollow in front of me at a fast walk. He had his nose to the ground and looked as if he was late for a very important date. When he encountered one of the film canisters dosed with doe-in-estrus scent that I had placed near his primary scrape a few minutes earlier, he stopped for a few precious seconds and gave me a chance for a well-placed shot. I tried not to look at the deer's awe-inspiring antlers as I raised the gun and steadied the scope right behind his shoulder. I fired and the buck wheeled around, and to my utter surprise, came blasting straight toward me in a full run.

In about two seconds flat, the situation turned from a hunter's dream into a very real nightmare. I could imagine the headlines in the local newspaper, "Local Hunter Attacked By Massive 200-Pound Deer." I shucked the spent shell, steadied the gun as best I could under the circumstances and fired a straight-on second shot at the base of big buck's neck. That shot dropped him about 50 feet in front of me.

For the record, the 6 1/2-year-old buck weighed an estimated 238 pounds (based on a field-dressed to live-weight conversion table) and sported a beautifully symmetrical rack that scored 159 4/8 Boone and Crocket points. At the time, it was the 12th largest deer ever taken in South Carolina. It was a magnificent deer.

When it was all over, I sat there at the base of that big white oak for a few minutes and took in the scene. It was the kind of morning that makes you want to remember every detail. I finally got up and walked down to examine the deer that I had pursued for three years. I ran my fingers up each of the 10 long, straight tines and thought of the hours, days, weeks and months that had passed while I scouted the deer's home range. I thought of all the "wasted" mornings I had spent just trying to find an easier way to approach that side of the mountain. I recalled the fruitless days I had spent sitting and watching areas that I thought were important, but he obviously thought otherwise.

However, more than anything else, I realized how fundamentally important scouting, and I mean serious, thoughtful scouting, is to hunting older age-class deer in the mountains. In other areas of the state, a hunter has a reasonable chance of taking a trophy buck just about anywhere deer roam, especially during the rut. In the mountains, on the other hand, big, old bucks don't come easy. Sure, maybe once in a blue moon a lucky hunter will wander into the woods, plop down at the first likely looking spot and tag a trophy buck that just happens to come strolling by, but the chances are against it -- about the same as winning the lottery.

In the mountains of South Carolina, deer density is the lowest of any region in the state, so there are fewer bucks to begin with. Those few bucks that do survive four or five hunting seasons have done so because they have learned a set of survival skills that other deer have not figured out. The secret to putting yourself in front of one of those old mountain bucks is figuring out his secret strategy for dealing with hunters. There is one way, and one way only, to figure out the pattern that will give you the upper hand: Scout and then scout some more.

FINDING BIG BUCKS
At some point during nearly 20 years of focusing almost exclusively on mature mountain bucks, it finally dawned on me that deer are not randomly distributed in the mountains and that big, mature bucks are especially rare. Few things in the human experience are more frustrating than looking for something that is not there. So, step one in your quest for a trophy mountain buck is to study maps and locate areas that might provide those things necessary for a buck to survive a few hunting seasons.

The number one criterion to look for in searching for big-buck hangouts is accessibility. If it is easy to get there, or more precisely, if it is easy to hunt, there is little chance that you will find what you are looking for.

So, you might assume that the first thing you need to do is look for areas miles and miles away from driveable roads. Well, that can be a good bet, but the truth is some bucks can live to a ripe old age even in and among housing developments. The thing that allows old bucks to survive is that they have a refuge, a place where they can retreat to during daylight hours, a place where hunters don't or won't go. Finding that refuge is the key to getting a good look at him. Depending on the situation, you may not end up hunting him in the refuge, but it is absolutely vital that you know where it is. Sometimes the best strategy is to cut him off as he retreats to the refuge in the first hours of light in the morning or as he slips out in the evening.

SCOUTING WITH A PURPOSE
Scouting for "deer" is not the same as scouting for big bucks. As a matter of fact, they are pretty much mutually exclusive. What that means is that the place where you find the most generic deer sign is the one place where you are least likely to find a mature buck. It is almost as if older bucks know that does and young bucks will get them into trouble. They seem to know that these areas attract deer hunters, and thus they are places to avoid. There is one exception to that rule and that is during the rut. More about that later.

The place to begin your search for big bucks is not in the woods at all. I have told many people that I found my big deer in my den. I was scanning topo maps looking for terrain features that would funnel deer. What I found got me so excited that I lit out that very day to verify on foot what I thought I saw on the map. It was the backside (the side away from a paved road) of a mountain that was extremely steep. But about halfway down the mountain there appeared to be a little pocket that was relatively flat, a little swale of sorts that seemed to connect three major ridges. I reasoned that if a big, ol' buck lived back in there, he would inevitably come through that little hollow. I was right.