A lot of clubs claim to hunt for trophy deer, but it takes planning and restraint to really produce monster bucks.
For more than 35 years, Mike Centanni didn’t simply hope to kill deer — he expected to.
“From the time I was 15, I killed at least one deer every year,” the St. Amant hunter said. “Most of the time, I killed more than that.”
And he loved it, but about four years ago, that all changed when Centanni joined a club in Concordia Parish.
Even then, he managed to squeeze the trigger on a buck at least once a year. But two years ago, the streak ended.
“That was the first year I didn’t kill a deer,” Centanni said.
Many hunters would be disgusted, but Centanni had no complaints.
“I saw 40 bucks from this one stand,” he said.
While that might sound like a tall tale — after all, most hunters would have killed something with that much action — Centanni wasn’t stretching the truth.
“We’re very selective,” he explained.
That’s a bit of an understatement.
Centanni and five other members hunt 1,400 acres of woods surrounded by agricultural land.
The property was hunted hard by meat hunters (“I was told that their rule was, ‘If it’s brown, it’s down,’” Centanni said) until about 2000, and that’s when Centanni and his fellow members decided to get serious about growing their bucks.
The goal was simple.
“We’re trying to kill deer that are at least 4 1/2 years old,” he said.
That grand purpose is touted by many clubs, but not many hunters are willing to make sacrifices when it gets down to the killing.
That’s what separates the wanna-be’s from the be’s.
Gotta Have Rules
The rules are quite simple on Centanni’s lease — don’t shoot young bucks. If you do, be ready to fork over $500.
Such fines are important as a means to keep hunters under control, Centanni and West Feliciana Parish property owner Chapman Jordan said.
But Jordan said money isn’t always the answer.
For instance, he is negotiating a lease for his land with a company.
“Money was not going to be an issue,” Jordan said. “If I charged them a couple hundred dollars, they would be, like, ‘So what?’”
So he came up with an incentive system.
“I’m thinking of giving them 10 bucks a year. If they shoot a buck that doesn’t make the standard, they lose a buck,” he said.
Although both clubs set their harvest goals at deer older than 3 1/2 years, Centanni and Chapman said they had to set minimum antler requirements as a way to protect the youngest bucks on the property.
Any buck shot on Centanni’s lease must have a minimum inside spread of 15 inches. No minimum-point regulation is used.
But that doesn’t mean it’s open season on bucks with wide racks.
“I’ve seen a lot of deer out there that meet that (15-inch) requirement —15- 16-, 17-inch bucks — that are young deer,” Centanni said.
A buck killed last year by Centanni’s 8-year-old grandson, Caine Centanni, is a great example of how easily an antsy hunter can get in trouble.
Caine Centanni’s buck was a 10-point that weighed in at 190 pounds and sported a rack that enveloped about 15 inches of air.
It was a beautiful deer, but Centanni said the boy needed “special dispensation” to take it.
“That wasn’t a deer we would kill,” he said.
Anyone without special permission to blast a younger deer (sometimes granted to children) would have been fined because the deer was just too young.
“It was a 2 1/2-year-old deer,” Centanni said.
And it wasn’t even necessary to pull the buck’s jawbone and age the deer to know the buck was a youngster.
“If you kill deer like we want to kill, you’re talking about a buck that would go 230 pounds,” Centanni said.
And that’s the difference between a 2 1/2-year-old buck and a fully grown deer in that rich Mississippi Delta land. The big boys are, well, big.
“You can tell the difference between a 190-pound deer and 230-pound deer,” Centanni said.
Amazingly, it’s not a pipe dream for hunters in Centanni’s club to get a peek at such massive bucks.
“Everybody on that lease will see a 150-class deer every year,” he said. “Now, we don’t kill a lot of them, but we see them.”
Chapman said his land is managed with a minimum requirement of 8 points.
“You’ve got to have a minimum standard so people won’t say, ‘I thought it was older than it was,’” he said.
And that’s really the key to the big-buck success — passing up a lot of bucks.
“You’ve got to keep your finger off the trigger,” Centanni explained. “You have to have the discipline to see what they’ll be like next year.”
Shoot lesser bucks?
It’s a common mistake of so-called trophy clubs to allow inferior bucks to walk because they haven’t met a set of rigid minimum requirements.
Centanni’s club doesn’t intend to let those bucks spread their genes, so members are allowed to kill those undesirable bucks.
“If we see one that’s 3 years old and has spikes that are an inch in diameter, we shoot those,” Centanni said. “But we don’t see that many inferior bucks. I think that’s because the club that leased the land before us shot most of them.”
But allowing cull bucks to be shot can be an open door for hunters to make mistakes, Jordan said.
“I want to shoot bucks that have messed-up racks or the old, declining deer. I’m all for that,” he said. “It’s really tough, though, when you’re trying to get a club together.
“You can’t leave it up to other people.”
So he said he plans to be conservative until he gets familiar with the hunters using his land.
“When I can get six guys that I know really well, and who can make that judgement call, then I want to cull bucks,” Jordan said.
Under Pressure
All the harvest rules in the world won’t help if a piece of property is overrun with hunters.
“Pressure is a big part of holding deer on your property,” Jordan said.
Last season, there were only four bucks killed on his land. All were at least 3 1/2 years old.
Centanni said the number of members in his club is intentionally low, and Jordan said his land will continue to be restricted to relatively small numbers of hunters.
“I have a 12-gun limit on my land,” he said. “There can’t be more than 12 hunters in stands on any one day.”
And even those hunters will be closely monitored to make sure they aren’t training the property’s deer herd.
“If you’re in a stand smoking a cigarette or moving around a bunch, deer will know you’re there,” Jordan said. “If they see you in a stand, they’re going to go somewhere else.”
That’s been proven to him over the past several seasons.
“We always write down the number of deer seen from each stand on our sign-out sheet, and the amount of deer seen on a stand that is hunted a lot will decline throughout the year,” Jordan said.
He, therefore, tries to rotate hunters from one stand to another.
Centanni’s club handles pressure in an innovative way.
First of all, hunting is prohibited on half of the 1,400-acre tract of land.
“We only hunt 700 acres of the property,” he said. “The other 700 acres is our refuge.
“We don’t fire a gun on that 700 acres.”
The prohibition of hunting even extends to a pipeline that bisects the property. The entire 2 1/2-mile length of the pipeline is planted.
“We can’t hunt within 200 yards of the pipeline,” Centanni said. “We just feel like if we hunt on that pipeline, deer will quit crossing it.”
Members can ease into the restricted property, but they have to leave their guns behind.
“We can go in there, climb in a stand and watch deer,” he said. “We just can’t hunt.”
That’s something, however, that Centanni refuses to do.
“I don’t really want to know what I’m missing,” he chuckled. “I just don’t want to sit on my stand and agonize.”
The refuge in which deer are left unmolested is enlarged by several hundred adjacent acres of Conservation Reserve Program cutover that is unhunted.
“We figure we’ve got 1,200 acres over there that is a safe harbor for our deer,” Centanni explained.
Further protecting the deer is a large lake on the boundary of the wooded reserve, which ensures no one can sneak onto the property to hunt.
Pressure on the hunted portion is reduced by assigning sections of the 700 acres to each of the six members.
“No one can go into someone else’s section,” Centanni said. “I never, ever worry that somebody has hunted in my stand or even been in my 50-square-acre area — and I don’t go into other people’s areas.”
Both Chapman and Centanni said there’s more to pressure than just the number of hunters in the woods, however.
Therefore, travel on the two tracts of land is regulated.
“We have one road we can use, but most people walk anywhere from half a mile to a mile to their stands,” Centanni said. “We use ATVs to pick up deer, and that’s about it.”
Chapman said he takes similar measures, designating parking areas, and restricts the use of ATVs on his property.
That makes a big difference in terms of the number of mature bucks that will venture out during daylight hours.
“It might not make a difference with those younger deer, but for those deer that you’re really trying to shoot, it makes a big difference,” Centanni said.
Easy-Going Bucks
Centanni said the club goes to great pains to make deer feel at ease.
“We’re trying to train our deer,” he said. “We’re trying to put them in situations like they are used to in the woods.”
That means food plots aren’t laid out in big, open blocks.
“Most food plots are two acres or smaller,” Centanni said. “We kind of carve them out in long, narrow strips, instead of big, open fields.
“They’re really just wider areas on the trails.”
Now even the property’s monster bucks will ease out to the edges of the green patches.
“They seem more confident,” Centanni said.
Stands are set up overlooking these plots, but they don’t stick out into the openings.
“We hide them,” Centanni said. “We put the front of the stands even with the edges of the food plots.”
There are only about 12 plots on the entire 700 acres, so stand sites also are very limited.
That further reduces pressure, making the deer at ease.
Centanni said hunting inside the woods is allowed, but the conditions are pretty brutal.
“The palmettoes are tall and thick,” he said. “Your shots are usually 30 yards or less.”
That can be frustrating, but Centanni said he wouldn’t want to go blazing trails and cutting shooting lanes through the understory.
“It’s thick and difficult to hunt, but it gives the deer a confidence level,” he explained.
In fact, Centanni said he doesn’t even cut out shooting lanes or holes in the palmettoes.
“I’ve thought about it because I’ve caught glimpses of some really nice bucks from my box stands, but I just haven’t needed to,” he said. “The bucks come to the food plots because they are so comfortable.”
Centanni said he bow hunts early in the season, and then won’t venture away from his food plots until the season is winding down.
“When it gets toward the end of the season, and you don’t have anything else to lose, we’ll take a climber and hunt back off the food plots,” he said.
Habitat Management
Jordan said he’s recently come to truly appreciate the importance of the condition of his property’s habitat.
“I really had known that I needed to open my woods up and encourage more browse and cover,” he said.
That was confirmed in June, when Department of Wildlife & Fisheries biologists conducted a browse survey on Jordan’s land (see the August 2005 issue of Louisiana Sportsman).
He was told that the population was healthy, but much of his woods could use some thinning.
That’s exactly what Jordan is planning, with 250 acres being timbered in the coming months.
Of that, about 40 will be clearcut.
“I’ll have it replanted in pines, probably in January or February,” Jordan said.
But even the woods that are thinned will sprout new browse and lots of cover, and will set the stage for even more timber management down the road.
“In eight to 10 years we’ll be able to go back and clearcut all of that, and start the cycle again,” he explained.
The results of proper timber management will be more deer and more cash in his pocket.
“I’m doing it for money reasons, too,” Jordan said.
Thinning Does
Any hunter recognizes that a certain number of does should be whacked to maintain a proper balance.
Jordan said he’s planning to increase the doe harvest from the 16 killed last season.
“We’re going to be issued 30 doe tags, so I’m going to try and step it up to between 25 and 30 does,” he said.
That’s going to be necessary, particularly when the effects of timbering take hold.
“There’s going to be more browse, and wherever the deer are healthy, they start dropping twins,” Jordan said. “So you can kill more deer without hurting your herd.”
But Jordan also wants to take as many does as possible during the early season.
To make sure that happens, he’s planning on setting up an incentive program similar to that used to punish hunters who shoot young bucks.
“If they shoot a certain percentage of does by a certain date, they might get another buck,” Jordan said.
Oddly, Centanni’s club places the killing of does as a minor part of the club’s success.
The property receives about 35 tags annually, but a number of those tags go unfilled.
“We don’t kill that many does,” Centanni said. “We usually save them for kids or women.
“We’re not shooting near what we’re supposed to.”
And he really doesn’t think the deer herd is hurt by not filling their tags.
“I see more bucks than does, and everybody’s like that,” Centanni said. “I don’t think we’re over-populated with does.”
Worth the Effort
The buck population on Jordan’s property is still developing, but Centanni’s club clearly shows the staggering results that are possible through proper management.
In only four years, the place has changed from an open firing range to a deer mecca.
“The deer just feel comfortable walking around,” Centanni said.
And the lack of pressure on the younger bucks has resulted in numbers of Boone & Crockett wall-hangers.
But the current deer population isn’t an accident.
“Every member has to buy into the philosophy,” Centanni said.
The unity of purpose among the six club members has been key, but creating that agreement also didn’t just happen.
“Our club is run as a dictatorship,” he said.
That’s because one person holds the power, and if a member refuses to live by the rules, he is invited to head down the road.
Centanni said that’s how it should be.
“If you ask me, all good clubs are not democracies — they’re dictatorships,” he said. “One person has to have the vision.”
And that can lead to many frustrating hunts, when big-racked bucks that are too young to shoot stand broadside 50 yards from a stand.
But Centanni said it’s a matter of discipline.
“You’ve got to train yourself,” he said. “The thing that makes it exciting is every year, I’ve seen lots better deer.”
His best buck to date is an 8-point taken a couple of seasons ago that tallied a net Boone & Crockett score of 147 3/8.
But he’s looking for bigger deer, such as the one killed by 14-year-old Bryan Shavers (son of the property owner).
That 11-point, killed Dec. 27, scored 173 1/8 B&C gross.
And although a lot of different management techniques play into producing big bucks like Shavers’, Centanni said one practice over-rules them all.
“The biggest control you have is over your control finger,” Centanni said. “You’ve got to be able to picture what that thing will look like next year, and you’ve got to let them walk.
“You can do all of those other things, but if you see a deer and shoot it, it’ll never grow to be that big.”
