How to Track Down a Buck Fast

It frustrated me because I thought I was doing everything right. I’d stay on the trail for miles, picking my way along like a ninja as I crept through the woods, trying to move slowly and stay silent so I could sneak up on the buck. But it never worked. Frustrated with my lack of results, I talked to a few more experienced buck trackers about what I was doing wrong, and they all told me the same thing—I wasn’t going fast enough.

The fact is that tracking isn’t still-hunting. Sure, there are times when you may have to sneak up on a buck, but for the most part, tracking is about trying to play catch-up with an animal that has twice number of legs as you do. If you move too slowly or spend too much time trying to work out their trail, you’ll often end up never seeing the deer. So, if you want to be a consistently successful big buck tracker, you have to know how and when to move fast.

Knowing how to age deer tracks is the first step in knowing how fast you have to go to catch up with your buck. Fresher tracks that were made the morning of or even the night before your hunt can be followed at a more leisurely pace, while older tracks often require a practical sprint in order to close the distance. While determining the freshness of buck tracks can be complicated, especially for inexperienced hunters, there are a few simple ways to determine how fresh buck tracks are and how fast you have to move.

The easiest way to establish the freshness of a buck track is to follow the weather. When you know when and how much snow you’ve had in the last few days, you can determine how fresh a buck track is by the amount of snow that’s filled it in. For example, if you’ve had an inch of snow in the past day or two, older deer tracks will be partially filled in, while newer tracks worth following will be snow-free and clearly defined. The same can be done when you’ve had recent warm spells, with older tracks looking melted or at least partially melted around the edges, while newer tracks will still be distinct.

Of course, when you’ve had steady weather patterns, it can be more difficult to determine how old a track is, but it’s still possible with a bit of studying. Just like when you take a brand-new tray of ice cubes out of the freezer versus one that has been in there for a few days, new and old buck tracks will look distinctly different. Newer tracks will seem cleaner, clearer, and more defined, while older tracks will seem cloudier and crumpled around the edges. Of course, just because the tracks you find seem old or snow conditions seem tough, it doesn’t mean you can’t still catch up with your buck. You just have to move faster.

“It’s totally possible to catch up with a buck on a track that’s a couple days old” says avid tracker, registered Maine hunting guide, and Benoit Tracking School instructor Timmy Bolduc. “You just might have to haul ass to do it. The thing is that whitetail bucks tend to have their own home territory where they stay around that usually isn’t more than 10 or 12 square miles around. They’ll hang in this area as long as there’s food and does around, so even if the track is several days old, that buck will often be a lot closer than you think. Sometimes, you can practically jog through the woods on an old buck track and see where he beds down and slows down to feed, and eventually, you’re going to freshen up that trail until you’re suddenly right on top of him.”

One of the biggest mistakes that buck trackers make when trying to quickly track down a buck is keeping their head down. They lock onto the tracks like a beagle on a rabbit and walk through the woods with their eyes on the ground, trying to see where the buck is going instead of looking around the woods as they move to see where the buck is.

“You’ve got to keep your head up,” Bolduc told MeatEater. “It’s the thing that makes all the difference from shooting that big buck and coming home empty-handed handed and not enough hunters know how to do it right. You’ve got to go as fast as you can go, but still see everything around you. There’s an art to it, and it’s what separates the best trackers in the woods, those guys like the Benoits and Hal Blood, from your average Joe.”

Bolduc and many other big buck trackers believe that, like all skills, learning to move quickly through the woods while still seeing everything around you takes practice.

“It’s not something you can pick up on right away,” says Bolduc. “There’s a real skill in swinging your eyes left and right and seeing everything around you, and then glancing down at the tracks real quick to make sure you’re heading in the right direction. You’ve got to spend some time in the woods before the season. Walk around in the woods and swivel your head, try not to break your stride, and just take quick glances at the ground. It takes practice, but you’ll be surprised how quickly you learn to pick out objects like roots, rocks, logs, branches, etc. that are in your path and how you’ll automatically step around them without having to look down or pick your way along.”

In addition to moving quickly while walking silently and safely, practice keeping your head up while walking through the woods, and begin training your eyes for what to look for. Spotting a buck before it spots you in thick timber can be a real challenge, but if you spend a lot of time in the woods looking for deer, you’ll eventually learn to see them more easily.

“Most of the time you’re not going to see that buck standing right in front of you,” Bolduc told MeatEater. “Instead, you’re going to catch a glance of his antlers or his body or the flick of his tail. It can take some time for your eyes to pick up on these things, but it’s a bit like riding a bike. You might need a warm-up every year, and you’ll miss some things, but if you keep your eyes up and keep looking around as you move, after two or three days, you’ll be right in, and it becomes automatic. Every little flicker, every little movement, every little thing that looks out of place, you learn to see it, and that’s how you’ll spot your buck when you’re on the move.”

The biggest fear that deer hunters have when tracking down a buck is that they’ll jump it up. The fact is, though, that when you’re trying to track down a deer quickly, jumping a buck is almost inevitable. Just because you jumped the buck doesn’t mean that your day is over. In fact, it often means that the hunt has only just begun.

“You play the same game whether that track is smoking fresh or three or four days old, and that’s closing the distance,” Bolduc said. “You’ve got to catch up to that buck, and the fact is you’re probably going to jump him, and that’s okay, because when you’re trying to track a buck down fast, you’re trying to get him to make a mistake.”

When a whitetail buck is jumped by a hunter, either out of his bed or from where he is feeding or following a doe through the woods, he very rarely goes very far. Most of the time, he’ll bound a few yards until he feels like he’s out of danger, and then he’ll return to feeding, go back to the doe, or he’ll bed back down. If you give the deer some time—say 30 minutes or so—and then get right back on his trail at the same pace, you’ll very likely catch up with that buck again, again, and again until he gives you a shot.

“Bucks are curious animals just like the rest of us,” Bolduc said. “From that point where you jump him forward, every time you come up behind him again, he’s going to wonder what’s behind him. You might jump him four or five times throughout the day, but one of those times, he’s just going to stand there, wondering what’s behind him for a little too long, and that’s his mistake. It’s part of the game of tracking quickly; you’ve got to keep at it and dog that buck. When he jumps, give him some time and then get back after him. Stay determined and try to get him to stand for one second too long, because that’s where you’re going to get your shot.”

Like every other aspect of the tracking game, getting that shot at a big woods buck can take practice, and it’s a good idea to rehearse by training your freehand shooting before you head into the woods. Set up a target and then walk at it at different angles, practicing how to stop and then quickly raise your rifle and fire accurately until it becomes second nature. This is a great activity to practice during the summer so that you have plenty of time to hone your quick-shooting skills before the tracking snow hits the ground.

I still remember the first time I successfully tracked down a buck. I cut his tracks early in the morning, and recognizing they were a little older, I started practically jogging behind him as I took up the trail. After a couple hours, I noticed that the tracks were getting fresher and fresher, and before I knew it, I looked up on a ridge, and there he was, broadside in the sunlight.

As I walked up to the beautiful big woods 8-pointer, I had a distinct feeling of both accomplishment and surprise. Over the years, I had spent so many hours slowly picking my way along and tracking bucks until dark without ever actually seeing them. Now, after learning how to speed up, not only did I finally have my first tracking buck on the ground in front of me, but as I looked at my watch, I realized I was going to be able to get him home just in time for lunch.