Buck Hunting

Welcome to Big Buck Adventures! If you're here, then you're looking for the secret to a successful buck hunt. Do we have the secret? You bet we do. You see, we understand deer behavior and how to craft scents that are customized to target bucks in particular. This means that we can provide you with the tools you need to communicate with the deer. No one else is even claiming they can do this, much less getting the results we offer.

Buck Hunting Essentials
Once you're able to take advantage of how deer use scents, you'll enjoy more successful hunts than you thought possible. Let's go over what you need to know.

Mock Scrapes
A scrape is a location where deer leave gland secretions for communication. It's where bucks look for mates. If you've heard the term "deer rub," it's fundamentally the same thing, except that scrapes are on the ground, and rubs are in trees.
So what's a "mock scrape?" That's where you use deer scents to fool the bucks into thinking they've found a natural scrape. Here are some guidelines to help you create a successful mock scrape:

●Pick a good spot, such as the transition area between woods and a field
●You can also set up at a staging area, which is near where deer feed or sleep
●Cover a large footprint with the deer scent, at least 10'x10'
●Place a quality licking branch under nearby tree branches

Whatever location you pick, make sure you get the ground down to bare earth. You'll have to use up to eight gallons of water to wash away your scent. Then, it's time to disperse the deer scents. After this, make your mock scrape look natural by putting down three more gallons of water, then spreading grass and leaves around.
You can usually expect to see deer at your mock scrape between 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., the busiest times. The best part is that the deer will actually help you attract more bucks because they tend to urinate in the area.

Deer Zones
The deer zone is an area where you set up your deer stands while the deer travel through corridors to get to feeding areas. These corridors need to be narrowed down to create "kill zones" where there's little to no chance of missing the buck with your first shot.

Some handy guidelines for your deer zones:
●Put one stand near your mock scrape
●Use deer minerals during the summer months
●Use trail cameras to keep tabs on bucks (Put some next to deer minerals, too!)

Following these guidelines will dramatically increase your chances of success, but they can also expose the weakness of your deer zone. Let's say your deer minerals don't attract any bucks, and you never spot any on your cameras. That's a good sign that it's time to move to a different zone.

Avoid heavy woods. Focus on the edges between open fields and the tree line, as well as clearings. Your goal is to increase your visibility, and when you set up in thick woods, the deer have more places to hide. Also, you'll have more obstacles when trying to get off a shot (i.e., the trees!).

Food Plots
While you can still be successful without food plots, they increase your chances of success. The point of a food plot is to provide a natural-looking feeding area. For example, using Big Buck Adventures' proprietary seed/fertilizer blend helps grow the kind of food that deer are hungry for. Four times per year, you'll need to spend some time maintaining the seeds to make sure they can sustain growth.
Once your food plot is up and running, you can expect does to come and take advantage of the plentiful food. These does are bait for bucks - even more so during the rut, the deer mating season. You can also add deer urine and scents for more assurance.

Deer Gland Scents
Among our staff are animal biologists and veterinarians who use their knowledge to help us get inside the minds of bucks. Remember, deer primarily communicate through the scents their glands produce. So by using these scents, we're speaking the deer's language. What do the scents say? Essentially, "Hey! Over here!"
Now, we can't share with you the exact formulation of our deer gland scent. Just know that it's far more effective than urine alone. There's nothing wrong with using urine; it's just that gland scents last up to eight days, while urine will need to be reapplied after a day and a half. Additionally, the gland scents are far more potent.

What are the various kinds of glands in deer?
●Forehead Gland: Used by bucks to put their scent on branches in rubs
●Salivary and Nasal Glands: Secretes scents on licking branches to announce their presence to potential mates
●Preorbital Gland: Near the tear ducts - for bucks, the secretions are a sign of aggression to other bucks during a rut, while does also emit secretions when caring for fawns
●Interdigital Gland: Between the hooves on each foot - this is an essential gland for communication because the scent it creates is how deer recognize each other in their family groups
●Tarsal Gland: Located behind the legs, this gland's secretions mix with urine to let a doe know that a buck is ready to mate - other bucks also pick up on this scent, which means they know when there's competition nearby
●Metatarsal Gland: On the outside portion of a deer's hind legs, these glands aid in signaling alarm when deer stamp their feet
●Preputial Gland: Exclusive to bucks - when they use this gland on its own, it's for pre-rut communication; when mixed with tarsal gland secretions, it's an effective rutting scent
●Anal Gland: Only does have anal glands, which are attached to the doe's urinary tract and are used to tell bucks they're in heat.

We use these glands as foundations for our Big Buck Adventures signature Doe Passion and Doe In Heat scents.

Remember that gland scents aren't magic, and there will be deer that prefer urine. You'll just have to monitor the behavior of the deer in your zone to get a read on what they respond to best.

Deer Feed Attractant
This one's all about the long game. Do you want the finest buck you can hang on the wall? Then you want to cultivate big, strong, healthy bucks! Our deer feed attractant is designed to not only lure bucks out during your hunts but also make them worth hunting!

To place your deer feed attractant, look for those same transitions from woods to fields. You want to bring the deer out into the open to get a clean shot. If the area's already heavily hunted, you'll need to find a different spot because the other hunters' scents will be all over the place, and the deer are smart enough to know not to frequent a place where they keep getting shot.

Deer Minerals
You may be familiar with "salt licks," but the term is slightly misleading. Yes, there is salt in deer minerals, but there's so much more to them than that. Big Buck Adventures' deer minerals have the proper ratios and amounts of calcium, copper, sulfur, phosphorus, zinc - and yes, salt - to be appealing to deer and good for them too!

Our blend of minerals is tailor-made for a deer's metabolic needs. Our friends at Heim Milling in Minnesota craft this mix a ton at a time so we can keep the costs reasonable for you by making it in bulk!

The Guarantee
You will see trophy bucks. It's that simple. We can even come out and set up your zone if you'd like. No one else has the expertise or products that we do. These deer hunting essentials were born from a lifetime of testing, and you are the benefactor of that research and development. Yes, this is a bold claim, but we stand by it. Test it. You won't be disappointed.