A couple of years ago, my wife and I moved to northern Idaho, which is a real sleeper region for trophy whitetails. That first summer, between unpacking and making our new home, I would sneak away to explore my new back yard. My heart soared from experiences as simple as approaching a doe, discovering fresh sign or finding the rodent-gnawed shed of a 100-inch buck. After all, these were “my” deer.
I immediately earmarked various stand sites, including the intersection of defunct logging roads, a saddle dip in a ridge point and a conspicuously deep trail skirting the hard corner of two fence lines. I met more neighbors as summer progressed and gained access to an ever-widening circle of property. I was sure I had everything covered before the September archery opener.
But after countless hours of hunting those seemingly deerless sites, I quickly became disillusioned. I could have stayed home and seen more deer from my kitchen window.
Perhaps most maddening is that I had invested a lot of sweat before the season developing what I believed were ideal whitetail traps. One — the crest of an overgrown finger ridge that was obvious escape cover — was cut by an ancient logging road that was intersected at odd intervals