"Finding the Neddle in the Haystack"
By: Braden Arp

Youth Article (Young Bucks Outdoors)
Pictured is Brock Arp (12 years old) with a nice shed.


“Sit right here until I come back for you. Whatever you do, don’t get up. I will be on down in the woods a bit. If you need anything, key me up on the radio. It will be daylight soon. Make a good shot. Good luck.”
I can still remember those words ringing in my ears some twenty two years later after being wedged in a deer stand with a 16 gauge shotgun held firmly in the clutches of my white knuckled hands. I added the part about the radio. We used the scream and yell method. To this day, I can remember not knowing which way to expect the game, not knowing which way my father would be arriving to pick me up from, or heck, I didn’t even know the general direction of the truck. I was lost before I even had the chance to get lost.
A couple of years later I realized what lost really meant when we stumbled up on a house after a seven hour walk through the woods while coon hunting. The ol’ man walked out on the porch after hearing the frantic knock on the door. He sat down in his rocker, offered us all a glass of sweet tea, and began to tell us where we were, and we were still lost! I learned a valuable lesson that night that has stuck with me ever since and that is to, if nothing else, pay attention. I guess sometimes learning the hard way has a way of making lessons learned “stick” in your head a little better, and boy did we learn one!
People say to learn from your mistakes, which is just what I did. We had the yearly scouting trip coming up, as I’m sure many of you have been on as well, to the big timbered hardwood track that has been the host to several “wall hanger” class bucks. This particular year I decided to take a different approach than the two seasons before. Rather than be just the wood carrier, tool belt holder, and all around “go for”, I decided that this year I was going to try and figure this thing out. Granted you’re not going to figure it all out in one scouting trip, I would try and figure out a few of the basics.
The very first and foremost thing on my mind was where I was. I paid close attention to where the truck was and which way we walked in and out. I noticed my father didn’t just wonder around through the woods. He had a specific trail he walked and that’s the way he did it. Before you blunder out in to the great unknown, know where the truck is. Set some landmarks to go by, such as old blown down trees or a fire break, and don’t forget the “old faithful” orange ribbon.
After getting my bearings, I would venture out a little and maybe cross over a hill or two exploring new terrain and try to figure out why my stand was in the location that it was in. The South Georgia hardwoods were loaded with deer sign which made it fairly easy to find rubs and scrapes and all indications that deer was in the area. I began to pay attention to trails and where they would lead to and where they would come from. I found that allot of them led back in to something thick and nasty, which was always close by one of our stands, which got me thinking to the previous season and where the deer usually came from. Two and two started to come together. They still added up to ten, but I was getting closer to this riddle of “deer hunting”.
Later in the afternoon of our scouting trip, I found a shed just inside the thicket to one of the ladder stands that dad had hung for me to hunt. Now don’t get me wrong. To this day, I like finding rubbed trees shredded from top to bottom, but I really get excited to find a shed antler from a nice eight point buck that lives in the area I hunt. Still I find sheds in areas like this one on the edges of the thickets. When the buck’s antlers get ready to drop, a lot of times they will get caught on the scrubby undergrowth of the thickets and go ahead and fall just waiting for you or me to come by and find it. Another trick I learned was for those of you who use “trough” feeders, run a small rope about six inches above the top of the trough all the way around. This will sometimes be just enough resistance to cause a buck’s antlers to shed and fall.
There are endless videos and articles on how to harvest that buck of a lifetime. They are informative for sure, but don’t forget about the “jump in and get your feet wet method”. This is where the rubber is going to meet the road in learning to find and pattern deer. This is how the guys in the videos learned. I had a friend of mine tell me about an area up north that has thousands of square miles of big dense timber that no one has ever hunted.
“That will be like trying to find a needle in a haystack”, I told him.
“Well, it’s in there. We just have to find it!”