Tactics for Heavily Pressured Bucks

[NM_Muley_Hunter]

I hunt unit 34 in southern New Mexico, along with thousands of others. Hunters are everywhere (especially along the roads), and there's not many places you can get more than a mile from any road. So basically, hunters are everywhere, and the deer are highly pressured.

I've developed a few strategies that seem to work at helping locate bucks (like trying to find areas that the masses don't hunt and sitting and glassing while everyone else walks and drives around).

Watching the hunting videos, it amazes me to see bucks acting unpressured, that are not on "high alert". One of these days, I'll put in for a unit where I can hike in 5 or 10 or 15 miles, get away from most of the crowds, and see bucks acting like that. But I feel some stuborn determination to master hunting in the jungle of orange first.

So, I thought I'd ask here...what are your tactics for heavily pressured bucks?

 

[Tuffbucker]

I usually find a place where I can sit and glass. I try to figure out what would be some possible escape routes for the deer, and try to set up and just wait. I let everyone push the deer to where I am at.

TUFF

 

[Gator]

Same as Tuff I hunt the saddles and wait for the hunters to push the deer from one valley to the next, it even better it the saddle is up high and the hunters have to hunt uphill just get in place before daylight and wait..

 

[Blueoak]

After these bucks have been jumped a few times they will hold tighter than many people could ever believe. I would look to small pieces of cover in the isolated areas of sage brush. With the help of a few people make some noise and run them out! Explosives work best but shooting a gun will work too. These bucks are not simply going to get up and go out into the open so you can glass them. Everyone one wants the classic stalk an shoot, but it won't work everywhere. Remember, they will lay insight of of a road, so be a contrarian and hunt the stuff nobody else will hunt. It works