AWA Championship: Youth vs. Experience

Youthful enthusiasm and aggressiveness is pitted against, as one pro, Chip Steely, put it, old-school simplicity at the AWA World Championship. Take a look at the qualifiers competing at Giles Island this week and you’ll quickly notice how they breakdown according to age demographics.

The top two spots at the four qualifying events had a young pro take the top place and a “more experienced” pro take the runner-up spot. At Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky, Scott Adams (age: 34) bested Chip Steely (age: 50) by almost 20 points (207.83 to 187.99). At the KiamichiLink Ranch in Oklahoma, Ryan Woollard (age: 35) took first place with 607 points and Garry Adams (age: 53) secured the runner-up spot with 496.66 points. The Georgia Qualifier at Gopher Plantation saw Carson Yates, an accounting major at Auburn University who turned 22 on Oct. 26, tally 400.33 points while Russell Barngrover (age: 46) put together a 320 point total. At The Big Woods on the Trinity in Texas, Brandon Cartwright (age: 29) took top honors, and set an AWA record, with 1405.31 points while Larry Large (age: 64) came in second with 820.67 points.

In three out of four of the above instances, the younger pro employed a more aggressive spot-and-stalk or still hunting approach after minimal time on a stand or in a ground blind during prime deer-moving hours.
In Kentucky, Adams jumped between two green fields and plucked does off as they migrated during morning feeding hours. In Oklahoma, Woollard was constantly on the move and took deer from all sides of the property. Yates might have had a stand set in Georgia, but spent most of his time walking, and even belly crawling, across the Gopher Plantation.

Cartwright was the lone exception to the youthful, aggressive approach. He found one spot and spent more than two days sitting in it. On the evening of the final competition day, he did get out and move to a spot he had been watching and thought that the pressure from other pros might push deer toward. He nailed a big buck in closing moments of competition that capped his record-setting performance.

Likewise, all of the older competitors employed the tried-and-true approach of setting a stand and sitting quietly waiting for the deer to come to them. Each would select a stand site based upon deer sightings or because of its attractiveness according to time of day. In Georgia, Barngrover had one spot he sat in for nearly three days of competition. On the evening of the final day, he did have to get up and move to a new place in order to continue to encounter deer.

While Cartwright might have been an exception to the youthful rule, Oklahoma’s Garry Adams was the exception for the older generation. If not for mental mistakes, forgetting to push the record button multiple times and pulling the trigger on a big mature buck before legal shooting time, Adams would have taken top honors and Woollard second place. Such is the pressure of competition, however, and perhaps youthful familiarity with high-tech gadgets weighs in to the equation of success.

The two Wildcard selections, Doug Williams (age: 48) and Lee Fesmire (age: 46), pretty much split the age and strategy theory. Although both track toward the older side of the age demographic, they had multiple stand sites and weren’t afraid to get up and move. Williams even brought a portable, homemade, tower stand to Oklahoma that he could tow behind his mountain bike.

How age, experience and strategy play out in the pecan-filled river bottoms of Mississippi’s Giles Island is anyone’s guess, but looking at the short history of the AWA Whitetail Pro Series presented by Keystone Sporting Arms you’d have to say the younger more aggressive pros are the ones to beat. Then again, those pros that have seen more history and have more hunting experience might just show the young run-and-gun kids what old-school simplicity and patience can accomplish.