By Tim Lesmeister

There are two patterns that emerge when you are talking to hunters who have killed a trophy buck. There's the hunter who has the good fortune of a flexible schedule who can monitor the land they hunt, and there are those who are simply lucky.

"You have to be patient to be lucky." This comment was from a fishing buddy of mine, Kolt Ringer, who hunts on his family's property near Park Rapids. Ringer shot a big 10-point buck last season because he chose to let a few smaller bucks pass. It paid off.

"We see a lot of big bucks all summer long when we're up at the cabin," said Ringer, "but who knows where they are come opener. If I were there all the time I'd have names for all of them. I don't have that luxury where I hunt."

Ringer's story about tagging his 10-pointer is a good one.

"I was in my stand before sunup, and by midmorning I had spotted plenty of does and a few smaller bucks," he said. "As I was watching this doe in the clearing, some movement caught my eye, and it was the big buck sneaking up on the doe."

Rather than make a marginal shot on the buck, Ringer waited.

"I had the crosshairs on him as he moved up to the doe and I was about to pull the trigger right when he got to her, but then she turned and he climbed right up on her back," said Ringer.

The two deer were right in the middle of the mating ritual and Ringer was the unexpected spectator.

"I had a clean shot but I couldn't bring myself to take it," he said, "So I just waited and hoped I'd have the opportunity when they finished."

Photo by BillKinney.com

When the deer concluded the breeding process, Ringer was fortunate that the big buck provided him with a nice broadside shot, and he dropped him. Even though he could have shot the doe as well to fill one of his bonus permits, he chose to let her go.

"If she didn't get shot by someone else," he joked, "I might get to put a set of this buck's son's antlers on the wall right next to his."

Ringer admits that his trophy was luck of the draw. He doesn't get to spend much time scouting, but he knows that there is very high potential for big-antlered bucks where he hunts, so he chooses to wait for the opportunity to kill one instead of taking the first animal that walks by.

My son Brent, on the other hand, has a different approach. He hunts near Ringer on land that his father-in-law owns that has no shortage of big deer. His game plan consists of filling that antlerless tag first and then if a big buck should wander by later, then he'll take it.

From many of the other hunters I've talked to, this scenario is getting much more prevalent now that there is a wealth of antlerless permits issued. In the past, hunters would buy their license, and if they were lucky enough to get drawn for an antlerless permit, they still were limited to one deer. In that case they waited for the big buck and shot a doe if the opportunity presented itself later within the hunter's time frame. Now that hunters can get additional antlerless tags, they don't mind filling one right off the bat and then waiting for that big buck to appear like magic before their eyes.

With the record 2003 deer harvest behind us, there have been grumblings from some of the deer hunters I know that it will be hard to duplicate this success story in 2004. There were almost 300,000 animals killed last season, which must have knocked the population down to levels that would ensure fewer success stories in 2004.

"Certainly the record harvest was encouraging," said the Department of Natural Resources big-game specialist Lou Cornicelli. "We liberalized all these permits with the expectations that people would use them and we would have this kind of harvest, and we did. Given the fact that we had a relatively light winter, I would suspect you wouldn't see many changes in 2004."

So maybe we do have a chance at achieving high numbers of deer in 2004.

"It's going to be another great season," said Cornicelli. "It's hard to say if we'll see the numbers we did in 2003. I thought we might kill 250,000 deer last year and we killed 290,000. I don't think our ration will change that much, though. We might kill a higher percentage of females by making these permits easier to get, but I don't know if we'll kill more or not. The permit availability is not changing that much, so maybe we'll come close. Will the harvest go up another 15,000? Probably not."

Anyone who purchased a deer license last season knows that there were a lot of changes that liberalized the amount of potential harvest. Things aren't going to change much for 2004, so there will be less of a learning curve for hunters who found last year's changes a bit tough to understand.

"Certainly people were confused last year with the new regulations," said Cornicelli, "but it would appear most people got it, considering that we harvested so many deer. If we back up and look at last year, when you went in and declared your permit area you could buy a management permit and take a second deer in that permit area, and you were limited to that permit area. We had two types of antlerless permits, the Managed Deer Permit, which is firearm, and the Intensive Harvest Permit. In 2004 we're consolidating that into one permit called a Bonus Permit."

Cornicelli gave an example of how this new Bonus Permit will work.

"If I hunt Zone 3, and I primarily hunt the Whitewater, which is Permit Area 344," he said, "I'll go in and buy my license and they're going to ask me where I primarily hunt. We need this information because we want to collect it for deer modeling. But you won't be bound to take that antlerless deer in 344, you'll be able to take an either-sex deer anywhere in Zone 3 that has that availability. You can use one Bonus Permit per year in any of those areas. The only functional difference is you won't be bound to take that deer in 344. You can take it in 345 or wherever it's open.

"We were hesitant to do that last year," continued Cornicelli, "because we really changed the system a lot, and didn't want to make it so liberal that the floodgates were open. We realize now we can do this in 2004.

"We went from a point where everyone got their antlerless permits from a lottery to where they now get them over the counter. We did shift some of our harvest rates. We went from 58 percent bucks to 51 or 52 percent bucks. We killed a few more bucks, but we killed a lot more antlerless deer, so we went a long way in reducing the population and taking some females out of the population. It's not a universal statement that it worked everywhere, but if you look at the big picture, hunters did a great job last year."

Minnesota doesn't currently manage the deer population for big bucks, which falls under the term Quality Deer Management (QDM), but Cornicelli did say that he's studying the variables that go into a program.

"Quality is a relative term," he said, "and we all measure it differently. I think there are a lot of things that go into growing big bucks. It could be everything from high hunter densities to party hunting. There are just a lot of factors that go into it, so we need to study it and realize it's a hard one to answer."

Cornicelli said it will be up to what the hunters want.

"We're going to start looking at it with respect to what the hunters want," continued Cornicelli. "Do they want a more mature buck? Well, here are the factors and the sacrifices you need to make. There is a segment of the population that wants a big buck, so we'll be talking about it at some time. Not every yearling buck that survives lives to be a 160-class whitetail. There are a lot of things that can be attributed to the size of a deer. It's not a big-buck perspective, but a herd-management perspective. I'll continue to promote that to lower deer densities. Ultimately it's the hunter's choice. If you want to hold off, fine, but we don't require you to do that. We'll see over time what happens."

So where are the big bucks coming from? Pretty much the same spots they get killed every year, but last year there were a few more of them making their way to the taxidermists.

Loads of hunters traipse through the state and national forests where big bucks maneuver the wooded lanes between lakes and saunter around the edges of the big swamps. Permit Area 170 is not only a hotspot for numbers of bucks, but there are going to be plenty of trophy bucks there for hunters in 2004.

With all the hunting pressure in Permit Area 157 you wonder how those big bucks make it from one year to the next, but they do. I hunted south of Mille Lacs last season and couldn't believe all the huge bucks that I saw when I made the rounds of the Mille Lacs Wildlife Management Area on Sunday afternoon to talk to hunters. I also heard some stories from hunters that saw huge deer but never had an opportunity to pull the trigger. Those deer will be there waiting for those hunters in 2004.

"We're lucky here in Minnesota that we get to hunt the deer during the rut or it would be a lot tougher," said Kolt Ringer. "There's so much cover in Zone 2 you might never see those big bucks if they didn't have breeding on their mind. My situation is proof that those big bucks will show up if you wait them out."

It doesn't hurt that there are miles of timber plots that intertwine and wind between the crop fields and grazing lands. Deer have every aspect of what they need to produce trophy status, and it shows each season with some huge bucks killed.

One of the areas I used to frequent in Zone 4 was in Permit Area 410, and it had a big plot of trees just to the east of a winding band of timber which led to a huge grassy swamp with a substantial pond. On the south and east sides were plowed cornfields and to the north was pasture. Does would stream in all day to that heavy cover around the swamp, and if you waited them out, there was always a chance of a big buck or two following at some point. It was this location where my oldest son shot a huge 9-pointer that is on the wall. The deer dressed out at over 225 pounds, and the main beams of the rack are 2 inches in diameter. It was a big buck.

Real draws to the central section of Zone 4 are all those small wildlife management areas that dot the landscape. Hunters can set up shop on this public hunting ground, and if they chase out all the deer that are there when they set up in the morning, they can just sit back and wait for more to migrate to them as the deer get pushed from one small WMA to another. There are always a lot of deer moving from one piece of cover to another, and you can count on at least a trophy or two heading your way after the shooting starts.

Did I forget to mention those hunters who spend all their extra time setting up mock scrapes and trail cameras, and strategically placing their stands in the perfect ambush point? No need to. They already know where they'll be sitting when first light signals that the deer season is open!