Mark Kenyon’s Whitetail Field Notes: Target Bucks of 2024

This year, in addition to documenting my whitetail hunts through the Wired to Hunt podcast and films on the MeatEater YouTube channel, I’m planning to take you along for the ride on a week-to-week basis with short journal entries and strategy updates here on the MeatEater website. It seems like the perfect time to kick off a new storytelling project, as my own hunting story is taking a brand new turn this season too.

Last year I wrapped up an epic four-year hunt for a 5.5-year-old buck in Southern Michigan that I came to know as the Wide 9 (stay tuned for that film to drop this Thursday.) It was an up-and-down roller coaster of a ride that stretched all the way back to 2020. And now, with that story complete, I honestly haven’t quite known what to do next. How do you follow up on something so all-consuming? What now?

The answer, of course, is to keep hunting. And while I don’t have another deer with quite as much history as I had with the Wide 9, I do have a couple I’m excited about.

The 2024 Bucks

First is Bulldozer, a buck my oldest son noticed and named back in 2022. He’s a 5.5-year-old this year and a deer. I’ve been watching him for three seasons now. I passed Bulldozer numerous times as a three-year-old, encountered him again with my son Everett last year, and found both of his shed antlers this spring. Unfortunately, after being visible all summer, he dropped off the map on September 2, and I haven’t seen or gotten photos of him since. It’s obviously not unheard of for bucks to disappear in September and then return again at some later date, but given his homebody behavior in previous years, I’m a little worried. Reports of EHD across the Midwest and here in Michigan have been increasingly popping up, and I can’t help but worry that he might have succumbed to the disease.

Fortunately, there’s another deer to hunt in the area, and he’s definitely still around. This deer, creatively named by my youngest son as “Bear Deer,” is a 4.5-year-old and another homebody buck. Bear was all over me in 2023, making appearances on many of my hunts while I pursued the Wide 9, but at 3.5 years old, he got the pass. And I’m sure glad I gave him that extra year because he’s grown into something pretty special this year.

Opening Night Plan

As opposed to Bulldozer’s disappearing act, Bear has stayed local and become increasingly visible in recent weeks. Just in the last week, I’ve been able to glass him moving in daylight on at least three different evenings. Much of his movement this past week has seemed to revolve around a “green to green transition.” What I’m referring to here is the common shift that occurs as green soybean fields start to yellow and defoliate, sending deer to find new green food sources where available. What that means, in my area, is a new focus by the local deer on the green food plots that I’ve planted and an adjacent farmer’s field planted in a cover crop of brassicas and cereal grains.

My plan for now is to focus on Bear and this early-season pattern. Tomorrow and the next few days, I’ll throw some hunts at him in transition areas between the main bedding zone I saw him use last year and the green food sources that he’s seemingly now focused on. These are locations that I can stealthily access and exit for evening hunts, while putting me in shooting range of historical entry routes into these aforementioned food sources. Notably, each of my top two potential ambush locations for tomorrow are also in range of annually used scrapes and isolated white oaks dropping acorns. I love hunting spots like this that have multiple, compounding reasons for a buck to come into range - maybe the scrape will be the ticket, maybe the acorns, maybe the green food. Only time will tell.

And so begins another year and another journey. Stay tuned for more updates soon, and best of luck with your own adventures.