AWA World Championship Strategies

We take a look at the approaches American Whitetail Authority pros plan on taking going into the first day of competition.

Brandon Cartwright: The Texas Qualifier champion who set an AWA record with more than 1,400 points is concentrating on two locations. In the evenings he’ll work from ground blinds at a place known as the Sand Field and in the mornings he plans on concentrating on hunting the timber from treestands.

From the ground blinds Cartwright has wide-open views in a transition area between multiple food sources. Because the deer will be en route when crossing paths with him, Cartwright believes that it will offer multiple opportunities to pull the trigger on several different groups of deer. And if Cartwright pulls the trigger, you can bet he’ll put points on the board—the Oklahoma native doesn’t miss.

“On Wednesday I set up one of the ground blinds and saw four 8-point bucks. One of them would have gone 140 and the other three were 125 to 132 inches,” said Cartwright, a biologist and wildlife manager at KiamichiLink Ranch in Oklahoma. “But I’ve also seen several guys walking through that area since then, so I’m pretty nervous about whether or not they’ll be back.”

Lee Fesmire: Entering the AWA World Championship, the Marion, Ark., native was a favorite among many competitors and AWA staff, but living in close proximity, about four hours away, might be more of a hindrance for Fesmire.

“I hunt an area that looks just like this place. Everybody has been telling me that I might have an advantage because of that, but I’ve said from the get-go that I wouldn’t,” said Fesmire, a Wild Card selection from the Oklahoma Qualifier. “I did everything I could: I called a buddy that manages a place just like that and all he told me was to find water and acorns. There’s quite a bit of water here but no acorns per se.”

To compound his frustration at finding a buck-rich area, all of Fesmire’s pre-scouting locations have been impacted by construction. “I had seven or eight spots marked on my map and everyone of them was right by the river,” he said. “I got here and learned that the Corps of Engineers was dredging and planting trees down there.”

Despite the difficulties, Fesmire has found a couple of spots to hunt. He’s concentrating on hunting the timber in the morning and fields in the evening. One spot he’s picked for an evening hunt is near a good bedding area and has offered glimpses of several does and a spike.

Doug Williams: For Williams, the other Wild Card selection, who is also out of the Oklahoma Qualifier, the evenings pose the biggest question. “I’ve got an area with some bucks in it. It’s right on an edge of a swampy-type slough and I’m going to hit it first. I figure, start with the best that I’ve got and work my way down,” he said. “In fact my evening set will be my big decision. In the evening I have two spots that other competitors are in, so I’ll have to play the game as to where they’re hunting.”

With six sets, including three ground blinds, two treestands and a homemade portable tower blind that stands 10-feet tall, Williams is focusing on thick bedding areas in the timber. “I’m on a one food source, winter wheat, that’s really close to a bedding area. I’m also in between a food source and a bedding area in another spot. In fact, it’s one of the spots I have the most sign in but I’m not sure they’ll make it to me before it gets dark,” he said. “I don’t think they’re on the winter wheat yet. There are a few on it, I had six or seven does in there, but a buck came to the edge and then went back in the woods and fed on browse.”

With that glimpse into deer behavior, Williams feels confident of his approach and believes that the big bucks won’t be taken in the fields. “I’ve got a feeling if anyone gets a big buck, it’s going to be back in the thick stuff by the bedding areas.”

Ryan Woollard: The Tulsa, Okla., architectural intern and designer found what he believes is a title-winning area and placed a climbing treestand there during the second day of scouting. “I’ve seen a lot of sign all over this place, but I kept asking myself: ‘Is this a championship spot?’” and the answer was always ‘No’,” said Woollard, who set the stand in a timbered bottom that acts as a pinch point between two lakes and offers a traveling lane to elevated fields to his south.

Using the hotspot as an evening location, Woollard has a couple of other sets placed in bottoms that he can access during both morning and afternoon hunts.

Carson Yates: The winner of the Georgia Qualifier, and youngest competitor in the AWA Championship, Yates is focusing his attentions on a winter wheat field surrounded by thick bottoms. On Giles Island, the spot he’s sitting in is on the far end of the Stagecoach stand and his ground blind is pushed back into a stand of mature willows.

“When I set this stand, I wasn’t paying attention to weather forecast and set it up for a south wind. The next two or three days we’re supposed to get the wind from the north,” he said. “I think I’ll be okay because I can see for quite a ways in three directions and they won’t be able to wind me until they’re directly below me.”

Yates’s blind offers 180-degree visibility, with shots down travel corridors to his left and right, and a wide-open food plot for several hundred yards directly in front of him.

Russell Barngrover: A Charlotte, N.C., native, Barngrover found a spot in the deep woods that sits just off the tip of a Giles Island lake. He’s betting on the natural terrain and available food sources to funnel deer past his stand location. “With the lake right there, the deer will work along the edge and should pass right by me,” he said. “This morning I had a flock of blackbirds land in a pecan tree and they started knocking nuts off the tree; it sounded like it was raining. About five minutes later three bucks came walking through, one of which would have gone 130, and they stopped right there and started eating those nuts.”

Despite being in the bottoms, Barngrover’s spot is in a high-canopied area with open shooting lanes in virtually all directions.
Garry Adams: By the end of the first day of scouting, Adams, a businessman from Oklahoma City, had found had two locations nailed down but was wearing out the boot leather looking for something more. “I have two spots that are okay,” he said. “But I want to find that go-to spot that I can count on to get a doe or something else when I need it.”

While Adams was focusing on timber areas, he was having difficulty putting all the pieces together to pinpoint a pattern he could count on. “This is a different place. I’ve never been in a place with this much bottomland—it’s unbelievable,” he said. “Some of these fields dump off into the bottoms and the bucks are cruising through there, but I don’t know how much they get up into the fields this time of year. I’m going to try and get back in there and find a place.”

Larry Large: The eldest competitor at the AWA Championship, Large brings nearly 50 years of hunting experience into the Giles Island woods. Large has both a ground blind and a treestand set on a the same small food plot in order to play the wind.

“If the wind is right, then I’ll hunt from my Ghost Blind,” said Large, of the mirrored ground blind placed at the base of a tree and lacking any sort of natural cover around it—yet it remains virtually invisible. “If the wind is less than favorable, then I’ll get up in the treestand and get off the ground so I’m not blowing directly down on them.”

Large is keying on small, isolated pockets of food plots. “You can see guys going to the big fields and food plots,” he said. “But what I looked for on Google Earth and when I got here, were small food plots tucked back off the main road and surrounded by thick heavy bottoms.”

Scott Adams: The first qualifier for the AWA Championship, Scott Adams, from Dexter, Ky., hasn’t set a single stand or blind. “I might get my butt whooped, but I’ve probably spent a total of five hours scouting and I don’t have a single blind or stand set up,” he said. “I do have some areas that I like but I’ve just got a stool and will set it where I think they’ll be.”

Likewise, his traveling partner and fellow Kentucky Qualifier competitor, Chip Steely, is taking the same old-school, simplistic approach and is sitting at the base of a tree and using natural vegetation as cover.