Last December 14 in central Indiana, I climbed into a box blind on a two-acre turnip plot, ready to smoke a buck with my muzzleloader. I was in the midst of a brutal 17-Day, three-state stretch during which time I had not seen a mature shooter buck, much less shoot one. I was ready to change my luck.

At 4 p.m. does started filtering into the turnips, followed by several small bucks. For an hour I watched deer pull up and eat the brassicas, gnawing the roots as the wilted green leaf tops dangled comically from their mouths. A little after 5 p.m., two more does entered the plot from the west, followed by a 7-point, and then a stout 8-point. A shooter! I raised my muzzleloader, clicked off the safety… And then clicked it back on again. Rarely do I ever pass a pretty four-year-old buck, but this time I did. It was the first afternoon of a five-day hunt, and I had camera images of three older bucks working the area. I was seeing good deer movement in the turnips, and surely one of those big deer would show up eventually.

I hunted the same stand for all five days, and saw 45 deer. I watched two three-year-old 9-points posture, push and spar over a late-rut doe. An 8-point worked a scrape and lip-curled for an hour as he tested the wind and watched 10 does and fawns flitting about the plot. As the sun set on my last day in the box, none of the older target bucks had shown. More tag soup.

Do I regret not shooting the pretty 8-point that first evening? A little. But then over the next four days I watched and enjoyed some of the best deer behavior and movement I’d seen in years. I was reminded that success is not always about killing an animal. When the deer action is good, and you see 10 to 20 animals a day, and watch their behavior and smile as they interact and comingle is a joy. The more you observe and study deer, the better hunter you become.

BTW, this was my best hunt ever in a turnip food plot, and it proved to me how effective it can be to plant this variety of brassica for whitetails. My friends at the National Deer Association offer these great tips for planting turnips for deer.