Instead of plowing head-first into the woods and creating lots of racket, he and his friends prefer to still-hunt as they try to jump deer. Mattly says the walkers have a good chance at a deer if they go about it right. Large groups can surround a block of woods, but if a deer sees a hunter move into position, it’s either going to get up and go before the drive starts, or it will go around that stander,” Mattly said.Īn organized drive with just a couple of hunters should be more like a group still-hunt than a raucous attempt to run deer out of the county. “You want to get set up without being seen. If the land is hilly, that’s even better because it allows both drivers and blockers the freedom to get into position without walking in view of the cover. Everything from wooded creek or river bottoms, blocks of hardwoods, brushy fence lines and other clumps of good cover allow hunters to target specific bedding areas and keep an eye on known escape routes. That’s not to say it can’t be done, but the best country for pushing deer has small, broken tracts of cover surrounded by agriculture fields and other open areas. Even large groups have a hard time surrounding bedded deer in the big woods. The big woods of the North, the huge pine plantations of the South and rolling, wooded mountains of the mid-Atlantic and New England are simply too vast for a few guys to effectively drive. Some regions of whitetail country don’t lend themselves to small-group drives. And because those patches of timber are relatively small, it can be downright easy to surround them with just three or four hunters. Although bucks can hide in some pretty unusual places, they tend to favor the thicker cover of those woods and creek bottoms. Five- and 10-acre woodlots and brushy creek bottoms and draws are scattered among vast crop fields and gently rolling pastures. The terrain and habitat of southern Iowa farm country is perfect for small-group drives. “Believe it or not, we actually kill more big bucks by making drives than by stand-hunting.” “We see so many deer, and every year we take some pretty good bucks,” he said. It doesn’t always work, but it often does. When other hunters are sitting in a diner waiting for the evening hunt, Mattly and his friends are kicking the brush and slipping through woodlots as they attempt to drive deer to each other. Not only are drives a great way to see deer, they are also just plain fun. Once they’ve been hunted for a few days, whitetails turn into ghosts, vanishing until the cover of darkness. Why drive? It goes against conventional wisdom to roust deer from their bedding areas and chase them out of the area, but in many places, that’s the only way to see deer during legal shooting hours. With two or three other hunters, we can get in position, make a drive and then move on to the next one.” “I like to make a drive and then move to another spot without having to get everyone together and trying to figure out who’s going to stand where. A big group also makes a lot more noise, and sometimes it’s tough to find a place to put everyone. Not only can organizing a dozen or more hunters turn into a logistical nightmare, it can take a whole lot more time. “Large groups present a bunch of considerations. Sometimes, he’ll make small drives with just one other hunter. For him, two or three other hunters are just right. Instead of rounding up a dozen guns, Mattly, a lifelong Iowa resident, instead prefers to make drives with just a couple of friends. He credits that buck to his experience with small-group drives, one of his favorite ways to hunt deer. The 150-class whitetail trotted past Mattly, who dropped it with a single shot from his muzzleloader. After slipping into position, the walker quietly approached the small block of woods and moved the buck out of its bed. I got on one end of the patch of cover, and another guy got on the other while the third agreed to push the buck out of its bedding area,” he recalls.Įverything went as planned. “It was the perfect situation for a drive. The three Iowa hunters were driving back to town when they spotted the buck on property they had permission to hunt, so after a few minutes of deliberation, they knew exactly what to do. The morning hunt was uneventful, but as Mike Mattly and two friends watched a dandy buck slip into a small patch of cover, he knew things were about to get interesting. Less can be more when it comes to pushing deer.
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