Evaluate Your Hunting with FLAP

by Ryan Stack - AC Pro Staff

In my early and naïve years as a bow hunter, I literally spent every spare hour of the day out in the woods just because I enjoyed being out there. I certainly saw a lot of deer throughout the season and did harvest a few nice bucks over those earlier years. However, I started to notice as it became later in the season, the deer were figuring me out and it became impossible to kill a good buck if I hadn't already tagged out. Sure I will be the first to admit I overhunted stands, perhaps even ignored the wind a time or two, but I was very careful with scent control and I thought I was hunting smart.

As I became a better hunter through trial and error and started to target mature whitetails, I knew I had to change my strategy. I started to evaluate the properties I hunted and took into consideration a few key issues and called it FLAP: Frequency, Location, Aggressiveness, and Property.

Frequency - has to do with how often I will hunt a certain stand. Less is better; sometimes only hunting a stand once or twice a year is key to keeping wary bucks unaware of your presence.

Location - depending on the time of year, and what the wind is doing will affect where I choose to hunt on the property.

Aggressiveness - has to do more with where on the property I will try to ambush a big buck, and I decided to categorize my stand locations and future stand locations into three categories:

Early Season Observation Stands – These are stands that I can access very easy with no disturbance to nearby whitetails. These locations usually have long distance viewing where I can observe what the deer are doing and where they are traveling.

Travel Routes – These locations are very accessible with the right wind but a little more aggressive than observation stands. These travel routes almost always lead to and from bedding and feeding areas and can be hunted anytime of the season as long as you don’t overhunt them.

Rut Locations – These are the spots I save and will not hunt until the rut is on and the mature bucks are on their feet. I often get aggressive, setting up in their bedding areas or along funnels that they use to cruise looking for does. Some seasons I might only hunt a stand once or twice in these areas, and find myself tagging a nice buck before I know it.

Property - because I have a couple properties to hunt, I started to evaluate which properties had certain features or topography that might make them better or worse at different times of the season. This became an extremely important part of my hunting strategy and has proven to be very effective. One of the properties I only hunt during the cruising phase of the rut because of the topography on this piece of land.

I have found this simple process to be a very effective system for consistently shooting mature whitetails, and although it may not work for everyone, I encourage you to evaluate how you hunt your properties.