Mud puddles and river rises hold the key to locating trophy deer on Red River WMA, one of the most popular public lands in the state.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This is the final installment of a series detailing four Louisiana public areas with historically high odds of deer hunting success.
It was a rainy, sloppy day to be in the woods, but Vidalia’s Billy Fitt had found a feed tree in Red River Wildlife Management Area that was being torn up by deer.
So he trudged through the rain, eased into the thicket that afternoon and set up within 25 yards of the honey locust.
If he was only hunting for meat, Fitt might have skipped such a nasty day. But it was the heart of the rut, and he was hoping to catch a buck passing the tree in search of a doe.
He had been hunting the area for three days without luck, but he wasn’t about to let the rut slip away.
So Fitt hunkered down, water pouring off of him and dampening all sound.
About 4:20 p.m., movement in the thicket caught his eye.
A doe picked its way through the tangle, walking directly underneath Fitt’s tree stand.
But Fitt wasn’t even watching that deer — it was the buck snaking along behind the doe that had his full attention.
“He was chasing that doe,” he explained. “He came right up under the grating of my stand.”
The hunter had his bow in hand, but couldn’t get a clear shot.
“I had to let him come up under me and get away from me a little bit before I shot him,” Fitt said.
If it was a spike, that might have been a simple thing. This buck, however, was a 10-pointer whose rack encompassed about 17 inches of air.
As the buck passed, Fitt drew his bow. The pin settled as the animal stepped into an opening, and Fitt let the arrow fly.
The buck streaked away.
“It ran about 40 yards,” Fitt said. “I watched him lay down.”
The buck’s antlers scored 140 Boone & Crockett points.
That was about four years ago, and it marked the largest buck the hunter had taken from the public area.
But he followed it up the following year with an 8-point that nearly scored as high.
“I was walking in when I saw him,” Fitt said.
The hunter was on the edge of a little road, and the buck was just standing there in the open.
“He turned and walked away from me,” he said.
Sure that the deer hadn’t seen him, Fitt kneeled behind a tree and put his grunt to his lips.
“I grunted at him a couple of times, and he turned and walked right back to me,” he said.
Fitt put an arrow in the deer as soon as it stepped into range.
It’s that kind of hunting that continues to draw Fitt to Red River WMA.
Hunting on the area is very good.
Last year, for instance, 3,444 hunters killed 458 deer during the either-sex managed hunts. That translates to 7 1/2 efforts for every deer killed.
The bucks-only hunt in January was off, with only 75 deer killed by 2,190 hunters (29.2 efforts per kill).
But Department of Wildlife & Fisheries biologist Lowery Moak blamed the weather.
“It was warm, dry and the mosquitoes were terrible,” Moak said.
Success generally runs about one buck for every 15 to 20 efforts, he said.
But it’s not an easy area to hunt, since it’s typified by swampy terrain.
Until the weather turns cold, Fitt uses a simple yet unique tactic to kill deer.
“I find water,” the 28-year-old Red River WMA veteran said.
But he’s not looking for the large water bodies such as the many sloughs, bayous and lakes on Red River.
“There’s plenty of water, but if you can find one water source that’s away from all of the sloughs and bayous and stuff, you have a good chance of seeing deer,” Fitt explained.
However, he’s not even looking for water that funnels deer through certain areas: What he wants to hunt are the areas deer find water to remain hydrated.
“It’s so hot right now that they have to have that water,” Fitt said. “The problem with all those big water sources is that you’ve got so much easy access for hunters.”
And that’s the same reason he doesn’t worry much about food sources for most of the season.
“It’s hard to hunt the food sources on Red River because there’s so much activity on it,” Fitt said.
Therefore, while the bulk of hunters find mast trees to hunt, this 28-year-old bowhunter is slipping away from the crowds to catch deer drinking.
“I want to get away from everybody,” Fitt said.
What he’s looking for are really no more than water-filled potholes.
“There’s lot of old well locations,” he said. “You don’t want the ones that are in use, but find the old ones, or any kind of crevice in the ground that’s holding water.”
His favorite water holes measure only a few feet in diameter.
“They might be the size of a truck,” Fitt said.
Once one is found, he examines the water’s edge, looking for deer tracks that indicate activity.
Ideally, he prefers a watering hole that’s in or near a thicket, so deer can move about without feeling exposed.
The exact setup is dictated by the wind.
“If I can get back away from the area a little bit, where I can see the thicket and the water source, that’s what I’ll do,” Fitt said. “I try to be in between the bedding area and the water.”
Sometimes, however, he has to put his stand tight to a particular watering hole because the wind won’t allow his preferred setup.
Once the rut kicks in, the first peak of which he said falls between mid and late December, he’s forced to leave the water areas because the weather has generally cooled down enough that deer don’t visit the water holes as frequently.
This is when he finally moves to food sources, but he doesn’t join the crowds around the ample oak flats.
“I look for isolated food sources, especially honey locust,” Fitt said.
Most of these trees have long since dropped their beans, but Fitt said finding one that’s holding on to some mast is like an alcoholic finding the key to Uncle Benny’s liquor cabinet — something is bound to happen.
“If you can find one that hasn’t dropped yet, you’ll see deer,” Fitt said.
Positioning of his stand depends upon how much attention the beans are garnering.
“If there’s a lot of (deer) activity around it, I hunt right on top of the tree,” Fitt said. “If not, I move back and hunt the trails leading to the tree.”
As the season progresses and the mast disappears, Fitt moves his focus to the agricultural fields bordering the WMA.
“You just have to find the travel routes to the fields,” he explained.
But he doesn’t set up right on the edges of the fields.
“In that last 40 to 50 yards going to the field, they are skittish,” he said. “They’re looking for anything that’s out of place.”
Although this would indicate to many hunters that they should stay clear of this zone, Fitt said that’s exactly where he wants to be.
“That’s when they’re going to stop and look around, and that’s going to give you your best opportunity to get a shot with a bow,” he said.
However, conditions have to be just right.
“The deer are so skittish from so many hunters that they will shy away from anything that’s not right,” Fitt said. “You have to have the wind right.”
And he also hunts from stands that are at least 20 feet off the ground.
Rifle hunters have a few more options, since they are capable of reaching out farther than 30 yards.
Of course, that’s balanced by the limited number of days they can hunt the WMA.
There is a two-day either-sex hunt Nov. 26-27, immediately followed by a bucks-only hunt on Nov. 28.
Rifles are not allowed on the property again until the Jan. 1-9 bucks-only season, which is followed by a one-week either-sex season Jan. 10-16.
It’s that two-week period that St. Landry hunter John Joubert anxiously awaits.
“We get to hunt the rut this year,” said Joubert. who has hunted the property for more than 15 years.
But this hard-core public lands hunter has a most distinctive technique to put trophy deer down for the count.
“I go to the water,” Joubert said.
But, contrary to the type of water Fitt wants during the early season, Joubert is looking for the areas flooded by the rivers.
“The higher the water is, it takes them out of the bottoms and swamps, and they tend to want to pile up,” he said.
That makes more deer along the southern portions of the WMA available to the masses of hunters, but Joubert said he doesn’t just join the crowds.
He heads into the water.
“I always want to hunt the water that’s about belly deep on the deer,” Joubert said. “Because of the pressure, the deer hit those swamps to get away from the people.”
That’s a lot of area to cover, since a lot of the property floods, but Joubert has ways of reducing the amount of area he has to cover.
First, he’s paid his dues.
“Over a period of years, I’ve learned how the deer move, where they will be,” Joubert said.
But he’s the first to admit that simply going off of last year’s experiences isn’t good enough.
“The deer will change. They might be in one place one year, and the next year be nowhere around there,” he said.
So he spends countless hours in the woods throughout the year keeping up with the travel routes.
“It’s an all-year scouting thing to keep up with these spots,” Joubert said. “I’ll walk the area; I find the trails and mark them with a GPS.”
So by the time the water rises, he has a pretty good idea where he can place a stand and catch deer moving.
At that point, he simply has to get to the area and set up.
“I use my four-wheeler, and then I walk,” he said. “I might walk an hour to hunt.”
That’s because he wants to get as far back as possible, set up and wait for the crowds of hunters to spook deer into his lap.
“I use the pressure of the people,” Joubert said.
He also will pay attention to where bucks are scraping, although he rarely stops and hunts a scrape line.
“I’ll pay attention to the rutting areas, but the deer tend to (scrape) strictly at night, and during the day, they tend to move to those swampy, flooded areas,” he said.
Once he’s near a travel corridor or an area in which deer are actively rutting, Joubert wants to be set up near a flooded thicket or buttonwoods.
He doesn’t, however, climb a tree right on the edge of the water.
“I’m out in the water,” Joubert said. “I use waders, and I just wade out and find a tree to put the stand in.”
So while other hunters are moving into an area where it’s relatively dry, Joubert is situated right where the deer are hiding.
“The deer want to get away from the people, so I try to find the areas where they can live in that water,” he explained. “I want to find the little knolls and shallow thickets out in the water.”
The amazing thing is that the deer act exactly the same in the water as they do on dry ground.
“The bucks chase does all through that water,” Joubert said. “They smell them like a dog, right on top of that water.”
And about half of the 25 to 30 bucks he’s killed on the management area have been taken in waist-deep water.
But there are times that he will abandon his favored technique for more-traditional hunting methods.
For instance, about eight years ago, Joubert was walking in to hunt a flooded area and happened upon an incredible scrape line.
“He was digging scrapes down about a foot and tearing up the woods, breaking limbs around them,” he said. “I expected that to be a good buck.”
Joubert simply turned around and walked out.
He returned the next day with a buddy, set up on the scrape line and shot the deer as it cruised the little ridge looking for does.
The deer weighed in at 200 pounds, and sported a crown with 12 points and an inside spread of 17 inches.
“I just knew that was going to be a big buck,” Joubert said.
Other times, he will opt to sneak through the woods.
“I’ll stalk deer,” he said.
But although he’s killed deer that way, most of the season he’ll be perched over water, listening for the sounds of a buck splashing past his stand.