Wrapped up with a Bow

Prepare for deer-hunting success by following the tips of this successful archer.

Jason Kaufman of Iron Station has been a dedicated bow hunter most of his adult life.He’s had success in recent years — four 8-pointers and a 9-point buck adorn the wall of his house — because he paid attention to several details that might help other archers.

The fourth 8-pointer, a thick-beamed whitetail that is his best buck to date, went up on the wall last November.

Kaufman has a checklist of tasks he completes in order to be prepared as well as he can be:

• Initially, he looks for places that have the potential to grow big bucks.

• He requests permission from landowners to hunt with a bow; it usually isn’t too difficult, given the unobtrusive nature and restricted range of archery equipment.

• After obtaining permission, he scouts the property to find the best places to ambush deer.

• He looks for natural food sources or agricultural crops that may attract deer. Those areas usually contain nearby bedding areas and food sources, and he may have to cut shooting lanes.

• He checks prevailing wind directions at stand sites to help him decide where to place his stands relative to the direction deer usually walk.

• He takes care to eliminate human odors from his hunting clothes and boots.

• During September, he looks for signs of big bucks, including scrapes, antler rubs on trees and trails.

• He takes a range-finding trip to his stands to determine how significant distances (trees, logs, rocks) are from his tree-stand shooting platforms.

• He practices shooting at targets set at different distances, including some shots from different elevations.

Kaufman’s methodical approach was helpful when he guided for two years at Pine Hill Plantation near Estill, S.C. Also, given the quirky nature of bow hunting, eliminating correctable errors should be done before going afield.

So the basic rule of archery hunting remains this: the fewer variables one allows, the more likely the chance to put venison in the freezer.

Oddly enough, most of the keys to successful bow hunting don’t involve equipment, but rather the elementary-but-necessary skills developed by cavemen and American Indians.

“Like bass fishing or any kind of fishing or hunting, first you’ve got to go where decent whitetails live if you hope to see one,” said Kaufman, a 30-year-old former “military brat,” who settled in North Carolina nine years ago after growing up all across the country.

Kaufman said local knowledge also had inflamed his curiosity when the former owner of some Cabarrus County land talked about a deer called “Ol’ Granddad” — a huge buck that had been seen on a farm Kaufman’s father had acquired.

“I grew up in military family, but my dad’s side of the family is from the Charlotte area, and we eventually got back here,” he said.

One factor Kaufman discovered that’s helped him: wary old bucks like to live in semi-suburban settings that are close to food sources and shelter. With no dog hunters and few rifle hunters working such areas, the lone bow hunter vastly increases his chances at downing a wall-hanger.

“I knew there was deer on the property that belonged to the family of my dad’s new wife,” he said. “I actually was after four or five other bucks I’d seen there, not the one I eventually shot. I’d never seen that deer before I shot him.”

Kaufman, a commercial and industrial window tinter, has been bow hunting for 15 years, half his life. He’s built up a file of tips, the most important one being going where the big boys live.

That’s not usually possible on highly-pressured terrain.

“This land hasn’t been hunted the last five years,” he said. “Before that, I think a few people hunted there. Two other deer about the same size were killed there last year by guys using rifles. One was a 127-inch deer, and the other scored 136.”

During hunting trips in October, Kaufman said he noticed “some ungodly rubs. There were rubs on trees bigger around than your legs.”

Kaufman said he saw a big deer during those hunting trips, but it was too dark to determine how big a rack the buck carried because, “he’d always be cutting through the trees, jumping away.”

His uncles, Kaufman said, had killed 5½- and 6-year-old bucks that weighed 240 pounds at this farm. Obviously, for a Tarheel State whitetail to grow to Midwestern dimensions, it must have little hunting pressure and plenty of nutritious plants to eat.

And that’s another key.

“I think the farm is basically a bedding area for deer,” Kaufman said. “The only crop is hay, but all around are farms with soybeans and corn. It’s also got a stream, hardwoods and a 300-acre cutover where I think a lot of deer bed.”

If Joel Chandler Harris could return and rewrite his Uncle Remus tales, he’d probably rename his most famous story “B’rer Deer and the Briarpatch.” These days, if one ventures into a cutover/briar patch, he’s more likely to scatter whitetails than cottontails.

“This farm is basically a bunch of hayfields that have hardwood fingers extending out into it with a creekbottom at the back of the property,” Kaufman said.

“It’s also got a couple of pine thickets where deer bed, but the hayfields are grown up, and deer bed down out there too,” he said. “In fact, the buck I killed was coming from one of those fields where he’d been bedded down for the day. Since nothing bothers them, they seem to bed wherever they end up.”

The day, Nov. 12, 2008, began with air temperatures just above freezing that reached 63 degrees by 3 p.m, but they began dropping as evening approached — a perfect day for deer hunting.

“It was the last day I could hunt (with a bow) before muzzleloader season started,” Kaufman said.

The deer rut was in full swing, as well.

Kaufman and a friend, taxidermist Brian Stillwell, arrived at the farm at 2 p.m.

“We parked the truck, unloaded a 4-wheeler, rode five minutes, parked, then had to walk another half mile,” Kaufman said. “I don’t believe in driving vehicles close to where you hunt because deer associate vehicles with hunters, I think.”

Wearing full camouflage that had been washed in Scent Shield, and knee-length rubber boots to prevent leaving human odors on the ground or high grass, they walked to their stands.

“I don’t use deer (lure) scent, either,” he said. “I just try to be scentless and pretend I’m not there — just a hole in the sky.”

One scent-free tip Kaufman uses is half filling a pillowcase with cedar needles and small cedar limbs, washing his clothes in scent-free detergent, then wetting the pillowcase slightly before tossing it in the clothes drier with his hunting garb.

“Not only will your hunting clothes smell like cedar, but your house will, too,” he said.

Kaufman had a Loc-On stand up in a copse of big white oak trees “near where there was the most activity; where (deer) had tore up the ground to get acorns.”

Stillwell was in a stand about 300 yards from Kaufman, who didn’t find his spot — 20 to 22 feet up in a white oak — until mid-October.

“I’d hunted this spot maybe eight or 10 times before but hadn’t shot anything,” Kaufman said. “Each time I’d go, I’d see 20 to 24 deer, but we don’t shoot small bucks, so I passed up a lot of shots.”

“It was one of those straight-up, limbless white oaks,” he said. “I had to cut some limbs to brush up the stand because it was too open, even that high. The ground was just tore up all around.”

One reason Kaufman hadn’t shot a deer was the wind. The breezes swirl at the ridge top, and prevailing westerlies often switch and can waft the scent of the cleanest hunter over the hilltop. Bucks might detect that human odor and never appear, Kaufman theorized.

However, the big buck came ambling up, straight from the bottom of the hill in front of him toward his stand.

“Every other deer had come from a different direction than this deer,” Kaufman said. “It was about 4:45 p.m. He was standing 17 yards away when I shot.”

Kaufman doesn’t have a 17-yard sight pin on his bow, a Mathews Switchback set at 70-pounds draw weight. He uses Easton ACC graphite arrows and 2-blade Rage mechanical broadheads.

“My first sight pin is good out to 20 yards,” he said, “and I’d already ranged some fallen trees and other trees before I hunted there, so I knew the distance.”

The buck had walked up the hill and put his head down to eat acorns when Kaufman pulled back the bowstring and aimed.

“I had to wait for a clean shot because he was facing me,” he said. “Then he turned, quartering toward me. I hit behind his left side rib cage and the arrow came out at his right shoulder.”

The big, wide-racked 8-pointer bolted and disappeared over the hilltop.

“Me and my buddy text (message) each other when we’re hunting, but I called him straight out and told him I’d shot the biggest deer of my life,” Kaufman said with a laugh. “He got to me in 15 minutes.”

They waited another 40 minutes before beginning to trail the buck, then found him piled up 50 to 60 yards on the other side of the ridge.

With a heavy frame, Kaufman’s buck had eight scoreable tines.

“We green-scored (the rack) at around 136 inches,” said Kaufman, who practices shooting each day during deer season.

That’s an above-average archery buck and outstanding for an 8-pointer. The good news is the best is yet to come.

“I don’t think it was ‘Ol Granddad’ ” Kaufman said. “I’ll be going back this year to try for him. We saw a deer last year we think may go 170 (inches).”

With everything prepared ahead of time, it’s probably not wise to bet against this careful and dedicated archery hunter.