Robert Brewer of Hattiesburg discovered mineral supplements while purchasing seed and fertilizer at a local feed and seed store in Meridian, and he decided to give it a try.
Last summer Brewer and his friend Boyd Carter started a mineral site on the edge of a green field, and it didn’t take long for the deer to find it.
“Once the deer started using it, we put out game cameras to see what we had,” Brewer said. “We’d been using game cameras, but used corn as attractant until I heard about a mineral supplement and tried it instead.”
The camera soon revealed what was using the site.
“We had three nice bucks using the site regularly, and they were better than most of the bucks we’d seen in the area before,” Brewer said. “I kept up with them right on through the fall, and they kept using the mineral lick right up until hunting season.”
Once the cooler weather hit and hunting season began, the bucks kept using the food plot to munch on fresh salad greens, and Brewer and Carter decided to try for one of the bucks.
“The game camera photos showed the bucks feeding in the patch during the daylight hours, and there hadn’t been any pressure put on them so we thought one of us might get a chance at a buck,” said Carter.
He made preparations for the hunt and soon got situated in the elevated stand. Things were slow at first, and Carter decided to try something.
“I figured that if a buck was lying up nearby, or had just moved within hearing distance and was waiting until dark to move in, he might think another buck was already in the plot and move in,” said Carter. “I made two or three grunt calls at 4:30 p.m. At about 4:50, I was looking at the Big Boy as he entered the plot about 140 yards away, looking straight at me. I watched him for a few minutes as he moved toward me.”
Suddenly several does appeared downwind, and Carter was worried about his scent. But he had applied scent killer, and several does came out downwind and never knew he was there.
“Applying scent cover-up was very important in that the deer came out about 30 to 35 yards down wind of me while I was watching the buck, which was still feeding straight toward me at 125 yards or so,” Carter continued. “Church would have let out early if they had winded me.”
Finally, as the four deer moved toward him, the buck quartered away slightly to his left and Carter pulled the trigger on his first buck of the season.
“Taking the 13-point with character (velvet still on his antlers), and double brow tines on this hunt was especially thrilling in that I am an (above-the-knee amputee) and had a broken arm at the time,” he said. “As my mother taught me early on, ‘Where there is a will, there is a way.’
“If we hadn’t started that mineral lick and spotted those bucks, I probably wouldn’t have hunted there, and might have never known he was there.”
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