Discovering Spain – How to localise the best trophy of your hunting area
The season of Roebuck hunting is now open all over Europe. It’s without a doubt one of the most traditional times of hunting throughout the spring and summer. Hundreds of hunters visit the outdoors in search of a harvest of the best trophy.
Good Hunting Gear increase the succes when hunting
In the following article I will try to explain what I usually do to localise the best Buck.
It’s crucial not to reduce the number of breeding age bucks in your territory by shooting smaller younger trophies, especially if you know there is an older ‘Monster’ Buck within the bushes.
Most hunters don’t sleep very well the night before a hunting trip, because most have hundreds of scenarios running through their mind and ultimately dream of shooting an wiley old buck.
The Roebuck is an animal of fixed habitats, but nonetheless the old roebuck that would reign in your area are not easy to locate. Old Roebucks are always looking for small fields with a huge variety of herbage and shrubberies; these small fields are usually surrounded by open areas where there’s likely to be a big population of females.
I would like to describe to you what are the most common signals to locate the best buck:
1. The old bucks usually scrape more trees than the young bucks. If you find small trees and bushes with markings on them, this is a clear indication that you have found the territory of a male.
2. You also have to look for small marks of digging in the dirt. They do it in order to prepare a comfortable bed.
3. Big bucks have a reduced activity during the main hours of the day. They like to go out in the very early hours of the day, mostly when there’s little light in the morning and in the last moments of light in the afternoon.
4. Try to identify where the best plantings are. In Spain, Roe Deer are always looking for wheat plantings in the first months of the season (April / May), changing their behaviours in July to sunflower fields.
Following these small tips will increase your chances of shooting a good trophy Roebuck, but to enhance your chances you also need suitable hunting gear.
You have to carefully consider your binoculars, always take a model with enough luminosity. I recommend looking for the best brand you can afford because it is better to spend some money in a good set just once, and have this gear for many years than changing your binoculars every year.
Once you have indications of their presence, you will need to be patient and observe the herd carefully to locate the best specimens, while always taking into account the wind direction. Look for an elevated site from which you spy the sowings, prairies or edges of the streams.
Access them with the wind to their faces before dawn or during the late afternoon; it is when they are most active and when it will be easier to locate the best males.
My personal recommendation in order to evaluate the trophy is to shoot only the males that have horns 5 fingers above the ears. But you have to know if the trophy is really good, there is no doubt; if you need to take several looks with your binoculars and you start to justify yourself, forget it, the buck is much more smaller than you imagine.
In brief, there are many debatable aspects to consider if you want to understand the distribution of the best bucks in your area, although it is true that the most important are those that have been cited here in Spain.
I hope that this short article has served as help for all those fans interested in hunting and managing the herds of the forest.