Part II: AWA Championship Strategies

A look at more of the approaches American Whitetail Authority pros plan on taking going into the first day of competition.

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.