Kansan and Knight & Hale Pro Staffer Mick Bowman was frustrated with the deer he had been seeing while hunting the alfalfa and bean fields in his Sunflower State hunting areas, so on Nov. 22nd, 2006, he decided to make a change and hunt closer to some known buck bedding areas.
“A bulldozer had come through this area and cut a 40-yard-wide path,” he said. “I attached my Summit climber to a tree just off the path in the morning and laid my Carry-Lite Deer Decoy at the base of the tree. My plan was to be back out there at 1:30.”
Bowman decided to give deer decoying a try this year and had plenty of bucks come in to investigate, but the agriculture fields he’d been hunting had not produced the quality buck he was looking for.
“I had 25 different bucks come in during 10 days of hunting, almost all of them giving me shot opportunities,” he said. “Everything comes in to investigate – bucks, does – everything.”
The key to deer decoying success is placing the decoy where bucks can see it from a long distance, which is one reason he’d been hunting the big, open agricultural fields. The bulldozer had done him a great favor by cutting its wide swath through the tall grass and brush near the bedding areas he had his eye on.
He arrived late that afternoon, about 3:30, and quickly set the decoy, sprayed it down with Code Blue EliminX Odor Neutralizer to get rid of any human odor, and then applied some Code Blue Buck Urine to the back legs of the decoy.
“I set the decoy looking kindof back over my left shoulder so that any buck that comes in will present me with that quartering away shot,” Bowman said. “I got in the stand and rattled ones and grunted on a Knight & Hale grunt call a couple of times.”
It didn’t take long before a big buck was sneaking through the tall grass and brush. When it walked into the bulldozed path 60 yards down the hill, Bowman grunted at it.
“He came straight in. His legs were stiff and the hair on his back was standing up, his neck cocked to the side. He was looking for a fight.”
The buck circled between Bowman and the decoy just as planned, and the arrow found its mark. The fantastic 140-class whitetail is a mainframe 8 with a 2 1/2-inch kicker off the back, and weighed a little more than 250 pounds. “I’ve killed deer with bigger antlers, but this was about the biggest body I’ve ever shot,” Bowman said.
“This was the most perfect hunt I’ve been on in my life. It’s unbelievable what they do.”
Bowman is now a Carry-Lite Deer Decoy believer.