LAST UPDATED: May 8th, 2015
Well it took until the middle of August, but I finally got a MONSTER on one of my trail cameras. It had been a slow summer with only a few shooters and some 2 year old teaser bucks showing up on the trail cameras. That is until “Baker’s Dozen” showed up. He is truly a monster buck by anyone’s standards. He is a beautiful 12 pointer with a small sticker off his left G-2.
My jaw hit the floor when I saw these pictures.
I had put out my trail camera next to a soy bean field on a small farm close to home where I have permission to hunt. I’ve had a camera overlooking this area all summer hoping for a good buck to show up. While I did get a few bucks frequenting the area throughout the summer there wasn’t really a buck I wanted to shoot showing up here with any regularity. So on my way home from work one night I stopped and pulled the camera so I could hang it on a new farm I will be hunting this season. After I downloaded the pictures and found “Baker’s Dozen” on a few of them I wished I had left the camera there to see if he would be a regular visitor or if he was just passing through. But now I’m glad I didn’t leave it there. I plan on staying out of that area until the first time I hunt it, carrying my Lone Wolf climbing stand and setting up an ambush.
Here’s another shot of “Baker’s Dozen”, my #1 target buck for 2011.
His rack actually makes his body look small in this picture.
My question is, where has this deer been all summer and why hasn’t he showed up before now? I could see if it was the rut and he was traveling all over searching for hot does but this is the middle of the summer and I always thought that bucks were pretty much home bodies this time of year. He has everything he needs right in the immediate area. There is a soybean field 10 yards away and a small pond less than 100 yards through the woods, plus there are good bedding areas located nearby too. A storm went through this area and blew down a lot of trees making a jungle out a good chunk of the woods.
I wish he would have posed a little better and stood still.
I’ll admit it I will be spending a good deal of time hunting this buck. Unfortunately this is a small property so I have to be careful not to over hunt it and push him off of it if he is using it at least part of the time. I wish I could go back there and glass the soybean field from a distance, but there is no way to get far enough away to not be at risk of getting detected. So I guess I’ll just plan my hunts like he is hanging out there. I’ll probably hunt it a few times early in the season trying to catch him headed out to the beans. They should be green for a while, they are wheat stubble beans. Then I’ll spend a few all day sits during the rut, when this type of deer is in his most vulnerable state, looking for love.
Wish me luck!
