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Some hunters wanted the full story of my opening day buck so here it is.
In November 2005 Woods & Water printed an article I wrote about the trials and tribulations of hunting in Michigan if you don’t own land.
That year on opening day Don Beaver, who works at Franks Great Outdoors, arrived at his tree on private property well before dawn to find his steps and $200 tree stand had been stolen. He went home and back to bed.
That same morning Jared Socia arrived at his tree on public land well before dawn only to have another hunter a mere 10 yards from his stand, shine his flashlight to let him know this spot had been taken over. He then went to another of his locations and by the time he arrived it was breaking daylight and there were 2 other hunters perched within 100 yards so he went home, got his decoys and went duck hunting.
Ryan Themm and Mike McDonald had permission on a private piece and on that same morning right after dawn, Mike had 3 bucks coming down a fencerow right at him and one was a shooter.
As Mike was getting ready he heard the telltale sound of a quad coming across the weed field in front of him. The bucks spooked of course and later that afternoon when Ryan and Mike went back to hunt the guy in the quad came back and asked them to leave. The property had been recently sold to the guy on the quad and of course they didn’t know it.
On opening morning 2007 I arrived at my tree to find all the steps had been stolen. I hunt from a saddle style system so there was no stand to steal. The next morning at a different location on the same property I arrived to find the same, all the steps were gone.
To state that it’s a struggle in Michigan is to slight how difficult it actually is for hunters that don’t own or lease their own property. The hunting pressure on public lands in the southern portion of Zone 2, all of Zone 3, and in many private areas within those same zones where fragmented small parcels are the norm, is so intense that taking a mature buck is like winning the lottery.
Without question, Michigan lays claim to “the most heavily pressured state” in the country when it comes to bow hunting. Most hunters from Midwestern states have absolutely no concept of what hunting amongst 320,000 other hunters is like. It encompasses the tough task of acquiring permission, keeping it from year to year, hoping your stuff is still in the trees when you arrive, hoping nobody hunted from them when you were gone, hoping the neighbors will allow you to retrieve a deer, and much more.
Personally though, even though I’ve never owned or leased any land, I still love the challenges of bow hunting in Michigan. Sometimes it seems more of a chess match, than mere hunting.
No matter how many years of hunting experience you have, how many deer you’ve taken, how good a property you have access to, or how old you are, opening day is an exciting day. All the scouting, fine tuning of equipment, practicing, and BSing about hunting with all your buddies comes to a head on this day. Ya gotta love-it.
Rarely, but sometimes things go as perfectly as can be expected and opening morning 2014 and the culmination of events that led up to it, pretty much did. In fact in my 51 years of bowhunting in Michigan, I can’t ever remember a hunting scenario that developed and worked out as methodically well.
Typically, my Michigan bucks have been taken at isolated mast and fruit trees, primary scrape areas, pinch points of transition cover, and within bedding areas all of which are destination locations I had scouted and set-up on during post season. This 2014 buck would be taken using a different scouting and hunting procedure.
For anyone that has read any of my books or watched my instructional DVD’s, you know how much of a critic I’ve been of using motion cameras in Michigan.
On my 2012 hunting trip to Kansas during Michigan’s gun season my hunting partner Bryan Schupbach brought 3 Covert cameras and we set each up at active primary scrape areas.
Having hunted in Kansas 6 times prior I knew that mature bucks there are not remotely as leery or react in any way similar to human intrusions as the seemingly PHD educated bucks back home in Michigan. There is a plethora of reasons why mature bucks in Kansas and several other Midwestern states are much more tolerant of human intrusions than even 2 ½ year old bucks in some eastern states, but the main reason is heavy consequential hunting pressure. If you’ve never dealt with it, it can’t be explained.
Kansas for instance has about 25,000 licensed bowhunters whereas Michigan has about 320,000 bowhunters and around 700,000 gun hunters. Due to the lack of hunters in many Midwestern states there are more bucks that survive to maturity and they are simply more tolerant of human presence and far easier to kill.
Mature bucks in some Midwestern states do not react, change to more nocturnal movement habits, or seemingly dissipate into thin air as most Eastern State mature bucks do when there is any influx of human activity or oftentimes any hint of human presence.
The motion cameras in Kansas not only showed us what bucks were using the scrape areas, but also when and how consistently they were doing it. The cameras literally dictated where and when we hunted those locations.
On our Kansas trip in 2013 we set up 7 motion cameras on either scrape areas or scrape lined runways through pinch points in travel corridors and again they took the guesswork out of what location and when we would hunt.
I knew from past experience that using cameras in heavily pressured areas in Michigan would require far different set-up and checking requirements. There is no way I would set-up cameras at my destination hunting locations such as at isolated white oaks, apple trees or at primary scrape areas and check them daily as we did in Kansas.
After an initial set-up and a visit or two to check the camera, any mature buck that I may be interested in taking would likely have had a bad past history of visiting locations where there had been human intrusions.
Bucks fortunate enough to survive to maturity in heavily pressured areas typically have had consequences in the form of getting shot at or wounded and alter their habits to avoid human traffic locations during vulnerable daylight hours.
I had never taken a 3 ½ year old buck in Michigan that didn’t have at least one arrow or bullet wound, and many 2 ½’s and some 1 ½ year olds from the distant past did as well whereas of the 17 mature bucks I’ve taken out-of-state, none had ever been scratched from a hunters projectile.
In the summer of 2014 a friend I trust told me about a big buck that just happened to reside in an area within 30 minutes of home that I had quit hunting several years prior. I gave up on the property because I never saw a buck over 2 ½ years old, but evidently this one survived beyond that age and had phenomenal genetics.
Having kept up my relations with the property owner, I acquired permission again. Being familiar with the area I knew of a cattail marsh that was the densest security cover in the vicinity and I couldn’t imagine a buck surviving that long in that area if he wasn’t bedding in it.
In mid-August, while totally clad in Scent Lok so as not to leave any human odor, I set up a motion camera next to an acorn laden white oak located in a wooded area about 200 yards from the marsh. The majority of other trees were red oaks, poplar, beech, and maple, so I knew the white oak acorns would garner attention.
On August 28th, again totally clad in Scent Lok, I pulled and replaced the SD card and was quite shocked when I looked at the pictures. There were several does and fawns feeding there every morning and evening.
There was also a 4, 5, two 8 points and a whopping 10 point. The two 8 points were 2 ½ year olds with the biggest maybe scoring 80 inches. You could have set your watch to the consistency of the does and fawns, and the 2 year-and-a-half old bucks, but as normal in Michigan, the patterns of the 3 older bucks were quite sporadic.
The 8 points hung together and visited the white oak a few times but I only had the 10 point on camera one night just after midnight.
On September 8th, again in Scent Lok, I went in and swapped SD cards for the second time and went home to check them out. The pictures definitely aided in me closing in on and taking the 10 point. He came in at 1:27am and again at 3:46am and the key factor was that his antlers were polished clean, meaning he had been out of velvet at least a couple days.
Around 5:10am the same night the two 8 points had been there and a couple times earlier so had the 4 and 5 point and all 4 of them were still in velvet. Ha ha! If I could find any fresh rubs it would verify his pattern since all the other bucks were still in velvet.
It was still early so I went back, put on my Scent Lok suit and headed out to scour the area for fresh rubs.
The area between camera and cattail marsh was a mature hardwoods flat with some understudy that could possibly act as a bedding area, but the first place I looked was around the perimeter of the marsh.
Man, this was developing so easily that for a minute I felt like I was out of state. At one end of the marsh is a narrow buffer of tall marsh grass with some red brush bushes mixed in. From the timber’s edge of the marsh I could see 3 shredded bushes and there was no doubt in my mind that those rubs confirmed the 10 point was either entering or exiting the cattail marsh from this point.
Having no clue how far into the marsh he or any other deer may be bedded I immediately left the scene and waited for a rainy day to go in and set up a location.
There was no way of properly preparing a location and clearing shooting lanes that close to the bedding area in calm dry conditions without making noise and leaving residual human odor, either of which could alert and or spook deer bedded nearby. Spooking any deer in the cattails could cause a domino effect that could possibly spook the buck as well and there was no doubt he had played the avoiding hunters game before and knew what to do.
Within a week we had a several day forecast of hard rain and on the first day of it I loaded my tree preparation gear and went in to find and prepare a hunting location. I wanted to be as close to the cattail marsh as possible because once the closely clustered runways exited the marsh, they immediately spread out into multiple directions.
After nearly 25 minutes of closely scrutinizing the area outside the marsh, I chose a tree that would allow me close shots to all the runways except one. This tree was also chosen because while walking each runway and checking the trees while doing so, this tree required the least amount of clearing for shooting lanes to each runway.
It only took about an hour and a half to set-up the tree, cut some shooting lanes, and another 45 minutes to mark my entry and exit routes with reflective tacks. My tree set-up would be about 24 feet up a red oak with 2 runways to my right and one to my left.
It was a warm rainy day and I wore a light Rivers West weather-beater rain suit with a light Scent Lok Savanna suit over top. My light rain suit worked perfectly, but the inner liner was pretty well soaked from my perspiration.
It rained hard enough to mask my set-up noise and rained the remainder of the day and on and off for the next two days so I was pretty comfortable knowing any residual odor would have been diluted by the rain.
I don’t know why I did it but for some strange reason the day before season I went to scope out the area. Actually I do know why and it’s something I had never done before. Not wanting deer to bed in the timber, I walked through it to spook any deer that might have been bedded in it down into the marsh.
In the timber I came across a ladder stand that had been baited for a while as the ground was bare dirt. All the bucks were out of velvet by now and there were a few fresh rubs around the bait and one of them was on a big tree and was quite high up the tree confirming it was made by a taller buck, likely the 10 point. There was also a fresh scrape within shooting distance of the stand.
I had no idea whose stand this was but was quite sure, but not positive, they didn’t have permission. The property owner was out of town and at this late date there really was nothing I could do but leave and hope for the best in the morning.
If the big guy hadn’t turned nocturnal from the other hunters baiting regiment, my hope was that he would take a different route to the marsh bedding area than through the timber and past the other hunters baited stand.
Typically, mature bucks in Michigan are hip to baiting being associated with humans since most bait hunters leave odor and generally whatever they bait with is not common to the immediate area. Being a scorer I know mature bucks fall prey at bait piles during the rut phases when they think with other body parts than their brains and come in with or come in search of hot does, but generally during the early season they avoid daytime visits to bait piles.
Time would tell and I was still nervous because in deer hunting, nothing concerning movements is carved into stone.
The next morning I entered from the backside of the cattail marsh so as not to spook deer feeding in the oaks and was settled in by 5am. Opening mornings are always interesting as the get ready process isn’t fresh in my mind as it is during season when getting ready is on auto pilot.
At 6:15am I heard the telltale sound of a crossbow being discharged and it came from the direction of the ladder stand.
It was 45 minutes before dawn and someone had just shot a deer and of course my first thought was they poached the big guy. What now? I weighed my options. Do I get down, go over and check what happened or sit and wait it out.
If he took the 10 point it was over and if I got down and checked, my hunt would definitely be over. He might have shot something else so I stayed put.
It cracked daybreak at around 7am and by 8 I had yet to see a deer. At 8:14 the 5 point meandered in and passed by into the marsh.
A few minutes later the bigger of the two 8 points passed by down the same runway. While watching as he entered the tall weedy buffer of the marsh I heard the sound of crunching dry leaves. I turned to see the 10 point coming towards me from the direction of the ladder stand.
Either the big guy went around the bait hunter, or the hunter had poached a deer and left his stand. I don’t know. The runway he was on came directly towards my tree before turning at a distance of 14 yards and heading into the marsh.
He casually came in and turned at 14 yards as if there were guard rails along the runway. Already at full draw, once he turned, he stopped for a moment to browse on a few leaves.
I carefully picked my spot on his side and opened my fingers to release the Carbon Express/Rocket Sidewinder tipped arrow from my Mathew’s Conquest 58 pound bow (there’s my ad for this article). The shot was true and he wheeled and ran about 100 yards in the direction he had come from before expiring.
He was a perfect 10 point and grossed just over 152 inches. I had taken 6 larger bucks in Southern Michigan, but this was the largest buck I had ever laid my eyes on while hunting in Northern Michigan’s Zone 2.
It just goes to prove that even in Michigan, an out of the norm textbook pre-season scout, location preparation, and opening morning kill can occur.
Editors note: John Eberhart is an accomplished big-buck bow-hunter that specializes in hunting heavy consequential hunting pressure areas. John has 27 bucks listed in Commemorative Bucks of Michigan's record book (one a previous public land state record) from 10 different counties as well as 17 P&Y bucks from his 18 out-of-state hunts. John produced a 3 volume instructional DVD series titled “Bowhunting Pressured Whitetails” and co-authored the books, “Bowhunting Pressured Whitetails”, “Precision Bowhunting”, and “Bowhunting Whitetails The Eberhart Way”. They are available at: www.deer-john.net
In November 2005 Woods & Water printed an article I wrote about the trials and tribulations of hunting in Michigan if you don’t own land.
That year on opening day Don Beaver, who works at Franks Great Outdoors, arrived at his tree on private property well before dawn to find his steps and $200 tree stand had been stolen. He went home and back to bed.
That same morning Jared Socia arrived at his tree on public land well before dawn only to have another hunter a mere 10 yards from his stand, shine his flashlight to let him know this spot had been taken over. He then went to another of his locations and by the time he arrived it was breaking daylight and there were 2 other hunters perched within 100 yards so he went home, got his decoys and went duck hunting.
Ryan Themm and Mike McDonald had permission on a private piece and on that same morning right after dawn, Mike had 3 bucks coming down a fencerow right at him and one was a shooter.
As Mike was getting ready he heard the telltale sound of a quad coming across the weed field in front of him. The bucks spooked of course and later that afternoon when Ryan and Mike went back to hunt the guy in the quad came back and asked them to leave. The property had been recently sold to the guy on the quad and of course they didn’t know it.
On opening morning 2007 I arrived at my tree to find all the steps had been stolen. I hunt from a saddle style system so there was no stand to steal. The next morning at a different location on the same property I arrived to find the same, all the steps were gone.
To state that it’s a struggle in Michigan is to slight how difficult it actually is for hunters that don’t own or lease their own property. The hunting pressure on public lands in the southern portion of Zone 2, all of Zone 3, and in many private areas within those same zones where fragmented small parcels are the norm, is so intense that taking a mature buck is like winning the lottery.
Without question, Michigan lays claim to “the most heavily pressured state” in the country when it comes to bow hunting. Most hunters from Midwestern states have absolutely no concept of what hunting amongst 320,000 other hunters is like. It encompasses the tough task of acquiring permission, keeping it from year to year, hoping your stuff is still in the trees when you arrive, hoping nobody hunted from them when you were gone, hoping the neighbors will allow you to retrieve a deer, and much more.
Personally though, even though I’ve never owned or leased any land, I still love the challenges of bow hunting in Michigan. Sometimes it seems more of a chess match, than mere hunting.
No matter how many years of hunting experience you have, how many deer you’ve taken, how good a property you have access to, or how old you are, opening day is an exciting day. All the scouting, fine tuning of equipment, practicing, and BSing about hunting with all your buddies comes to a head on this day. Ya gotta love-it.
Rarely, but sometimes things go as perfectly as can be expected and opening morning 2014 and the culmination of events that led up to it, pretty much did. In fact in my 51 years of bowhunting in Michigan, I can’t ever remember a hunting scenario that developed and worked out as methodically well.
Typically, my Michigan bucks have been taken at isolated mast and fruit trees, primary scrape areas, pinch points of transition cover, and within bedding areas all of which are destination locations I had scouted and set-up on during post season. This 2014 buck would be taken using a different scouting and hunting procedure.
For anyone that has read any of my books or watched my instructional DVD’s, you know how much of a critic I’ve been of using motion cameras in Michigan.
On my 2012 hunting trip to Kansas during Michigan’s gun season my hunting partner Bryan Schupbach brought 3 Covert cameras and we set each up at active primary scrape areas.
Having hunted in Kansas 6 times prior I knew that mature bucks there are not remotely as leery or react in any way similar to human intrusions as the seemingly PHD educated bucks back home in Michigan. There is a plethora of reasons why mature bucks in Kansas and several other Midwestern states are much more tolerant of human intrusions than even 2 ½ year old bucks in some eastern states, but the main reason is heavy consequential hunting pressure. If you’ve never dealt with it, it can’t be explained.
Kansas for instance has about 25,000 licensed bowhunters whereas Michigan has about 320,000 bowhunters and around 700,000 gun hunters. Due to the lack of hunters in many Midwestern states there are more bucks that survive to maturity and they are simply more tolerant of human presence and far easier to kill.
Mature bucks in some Midwestern states do not react, change to more nocturnal movement habits, or seemingly dissipate into thin air as most Eastern State mature bucks do when there is any influx of human activity or oftentimes any hint of human presence.
The motion cameras in Kansas not only showed us what bucks were using the scrape areas, but also when and how consistently they were doing it. The cameras literally dictated where and when we hunted those locations.
On our Kansas trip in 2013 we set up 7 motion cameras on either scrape areas or scrape lined runways through pinch points in travel corridors and again they took the guesswork out of what location and when we would hunt.
I knew from past experience that using cameras in heavily pressured areas in Michigan would require far different set-up and checking requirements. There is no way I would set-up cameras at my destination hunting locations such as at isolated white oaks, apple trees or at primary scrape areas and check them daily as we did in Kansas.
After an initial set-up and a visit or two to check the camera, any mature buck that I may be interested in taking would likely have had a bad past history of visiting locations where there had been human intrusions.
Bucks fortunate enough to survive to maturity in heavily pressured areas typically have had consequences in the form of getting shot at or wounded and alter their habits to avoid human traffic locations during vulnerable daylight hours.
I had never taken a 3 ½ year old buck in Michigan that didn’t have at least one arrow or bullet wound, and many 2 ½’s and some 1 ½ year olds from the distant past did as well whereas of the 17 mature bucks I’ve taken out-of-state, none had ever been scratched from a hunters projectile.
In the summer of 2014 a friend I trust told me about a big buck that just happened to reside in an area within 30 minutes of home that I had quit hunting several years prior. I gave up on the property because I never saw a buck over 2 ½ years old, but evidently this one survived beyond that age and had phenomenal genetics.
Having kept up my relations with the property owner, I acquired permission again. Being familiar with the area I knew of a cattail marsh that was the densest security cover in the vicinity and I couldn’t imagine a buck surviving that long in that area if he wasn’t bedding in it.
In mid-August, while totally clad in Scent Lok so as not to leave any human odor, I set up a motion camera next to an acorn laden white oak located in a wooded area about 200 yards from the marsh. The majority of other trees were red oaks, poplar, beech, and maple, so I knew the white oak acorns would garner attention.
On August 28th, again totally clad in Scent Lok, I pulled and replaced the SD card and was quite shocked when I looked at the pictures. There were several does and fawns feeding there every morning and evening.
There was also a 4, 5, two 8 points and a whopping 10 point. The two 8 points were 2 ½ year olds with the biggest maybe scoring 80 inches. You could have set your watch to the consistency of the does and fawns, and the 2 year-and-a-half old bucks, but as normal in Michigan, the patterns of the 3 older bucks were quite sporadic.
The 8 points hung together and visited the white oak a few times but I only had the 10 point on camera one night just after midnight.
On September 8th, again in Scent Lok, I went in and swapped SD cards for the second time and went home to check them out. The pictures definitely aided in me closing in on and taking the 10 point. He came in at 1:27am and again at 3:46am and the key factor was that his antlers were polished clean, meaning he had been out of velvet at least a couple days.
Around 5:10am the same night the two 8 points had been there and a couple times earlier so had the 4 and 5 point and all 4 of them were still in velvet. Ha ha! If I could find any fresh rubs it would verify his pattern since all the other bucks were still in velvet.
It was still early so I went back, put on my Scent Lok suit and headed out to scour the area for fresh rubs.
The area between camera and cattail marsh was a mature hardwoods flat with some understudy that could possibly act as a bedding area, but the first place I looked was around the perimeter of the marsh.
Man, this was developing so easily that for a minute I felt like I was out of state. At one end of the marsh is a narrow buffer of tall marsh grass with some red brush bushes mixed in. From the timber’s edge of the marsh I could see 3 shredded bushes and there was no doubt in my mind that those rubs confirmed the 10 point was either entering or exiting the cattail marsh from this point.
Having no clue how far into the marsh he or any other deer may be bedded I immediately left the scene and waited for a rainy day to go in and set up a location.
There was no way of properly preparing a location and clearing shooting lanes that close to the bedding area in calm dry conditions without making noise and leaving residual human odor, either of which could alert and or spook deer bedded nearby. Spooking any deer in the cattails could cause a domino effect that could possibly spook the buck as well and there was no doubt he had played the avoiding hunters game before and knew what to do.
Within a week we had a several day forecast of hard rain and on the first day of it I loaded my tree preparation gear and went in to find and prepare a hunting location. I wanted to be as close to the cattail marsh as possible because once the closely clustered runways exited the marsh, they immediately spread out into multiple directions.
After nearly 25 minutes of closely scrutinizing the area outside the marsh, I chose a tree that would allow me close shots to all the runways except one. This tree was also chosen because while walking each runway and checking the trees while doing so, this tree required the least amount of clearing for shooting lanes to each runway.
It only took about an hour and a half to set-up the tree, cut some shooting lanes, and another 45 minutes to mark my entry and exit routes with reflective tacks. My tree set-up would be about 24 feet up a red oak with 2 runways to my right and one to my left.
It was a warm rainy day and I wore a light Rivers West weather-beater rain suit with a light Scent Lok Savanna suit over top. My light rain suit worked perfectly, but the inner liner was pretty well soaked from my perspiration.
It rained hard enough to mask my set-up noise and rained the remainder of the day and on and off for the next two days so I was pretty comfortable knowing any residual odor would have been diluted by the rain.
I don’t know why I did it but for some strange reason the day before season I went to scope out the area. Actually I do know why and it’s something I had never done before. Not wanting deer to bed in the timber, I walked through it to spook any deer that might have been bedded in it down into the marsh.
In the timber I came across a ladder stand that had been baited for a while as the ground was bare dirt. All the bucks were out of velvet by now and there were a few fresh rubs around the bait and one of them was on a big tree and was quite high up the tree confirming it was made by a taller buck, likely the 10 point. There was also a fresh scrape within shooting distance of the stand.
I had no idea whose stand this was but was quite sure, but not positive, they didn’t have permission. The property owner was out of town and at this late date there really was nothing I could do but leave and hope for the best in the morning.
If the big guy hadn’t turned nocturnal from the other hunters baiting regiment, my hope was that he would take a different route to the marsh bedding area than through the timber and past the other hunters baited stand.
Typically, mature bucks in Michigan are hip to baiting being associated with humans since most bait hunters leave odor and generally whatever they bait with is not common to the immediate area. Being a scorer I know mature bucks fall prey at bait piles during the rut phases when they think with other body parts than their brains and come in with or come in search of hot does, but generally during the early season they avoid daytime visits to bait piles.
Time would tell and I was still nervous because in deer hunting, nothing concerning movements is carved into stone.
The next morning I entered from the backside of the cattail marsh so as not to spook deer feeding in the oaks and was settled in by 5am. Opening mornings are always interesting as the get ready process isn’t fresh in my mind as it is during season when getting ready is on auto pilot.
At 6:15am I heard the telltale sound of a crossbow being discharged and it came from the direction of the ladder stand.
It was 45 minutes before dawn and someone had just shot a deer and of course my first thought was they poached the big guy. What now? I weighed my options. Do I get down, go over and check what happened or sit and wait it out.
If he took the 10 point it was over and if I got down and checked, my hunt would definitely be over. He might have shot something else so I stayed put.
It cracked daybreak at around 7am and by 8 I had yet to see a deer. At 8:14 the 5 point meandered in and passed by into the marsh.
A few minutes later the bigger of the two 8 points passed by down the same runway. While watching as he entered the tall weedy buffer of the marsh I heard the sound of crunching dry leaves. I turned to see the 10 point coming towards me from the direction of the ladder stand.
Either the big guy went around the bait hunter, or the hunter had poached a deer and left his stand. I don’t know. The runway he was on came directly towards my tree before turning at a distance of 14 yards and heading into the marsh.
He casually came in and turned at 14 yards as if there were guard rails along the runway. Already at full draw, once he turned, he stopped for a moment to browse on a few leaves.
I carefully picked my spot on his side and opened my fingers to release the Carbon Express/Rocket Sidewinder tipped arrow from my Mathew’s Conquest 58 pound bow (there’s my ad for this article). The shot was true and he wheeled and ran about 100 yards in the direction he had come from before expiring.
He was a perfect 10 point and grossed just over 152 inches. I had taken 6 larger bucks in Southern Michigan, but this was the largest buck I had ever laid my eyes on while hunting in Northern Michigan’s Zone 2.
It just goes to prove that even in Michigan, an out of the norm textbook pre-season scout, location preparation, and opening morning kill can occur.
Editors note: John Eberhart is an accomplished big-buck bow-hunter that specializes in hunting heavy consequential hunting pressure areas. John has 27 bucks listed in Commemorative Bucks of Michigan's record book (one a previous public land state record) from 10 different counties as well as 17 P&Y bucks from his 18 out-of-state hunts. John produced a 3 volume instructional DVD series titled “Bowhunting Pressured Whitetails” and co-authored the books, “Bowhunting Pressured Whitetails”, “Precision Bowhunting”, and “Bowhunting Whitetails The Eberhart Way”. They are available at: www.deer-john.net
