How to Hunt Mature Buck Bedding Areas: Lessons from Travis Murray

This post is based on our podcast episode with traditional bowhunter Travis Murray, recorded at his home in Crosby, Mississippi. Watch the full conversation below, or read on for the key takeaways.

Walk into Travis Murray's place in Southwest Mississippi and you'll trip over antlers — including a 190-inch rack that was literally sitting on the floor waiting to be mounted when we set up the cameras. By his own count, he's killed more than 50 bucks in the five-to-six-year-old age range, most of them the hard way: on the ground, in a ghillie suit, with a recurve or longbow slinging heavy arrows at 150 to 160 feet per second.

This was Travis's fifth time on the podcast, and the theme that kept surfacing was woodsmanship — a trait he learned watching his Uncle Red, a dog-driving deer hunter who "drifted through that bottom like a puff of smoke." Travis grew up in the 70s and early 80s when bowhunting wasn't cool, took his ribbing at the family hunting club, and even got an informal shooting lesson from Fred Bear himself at an outdoor show in Alabama.

But the thing Travis credits most for his success isn't a tactic. It's what he's learned from blowing it.

"Failure is a seasoning that makes success taste so sweet. Failure is the master teacher. I have learned more from failure than anything else."

Take the First Reasonably Good Shot

Early in his career, Travis had a stand overlooking a deep drainage — about 8 feet down — where deer would cross and pop up at 15 yards. One morning the biggest buck he'd ever had an opportunity at, a 150-class deer, stood on the far side at 25 yards. He could have taken multiple shots with his compound. Instead he waited for the "sure thing" chip shot. The buck dropped into the drainage, walked it, and he never saw him again.

The lesson still stings decades later: when you're hunting mature deer, take the very first reasonably good shot you get. Travis even builds his equipment around it — heavy arrows with two-blade, cut-on-contact broadheads that give him forgiveness on imperfect angles, because a mature buck may only give you one or two opportunities all season. As he put it, if you have to wait on every perfect shot, you're going to miss a lot of opportunities.

Hunt the Edge of the Bedding Area — Never the Middle

Travis doesn't know a better way to consistently kill five- and six-year-old bucks in his part of the world than hunting bedding areas — but he's clear that a true bedding area is small. An acre is big. Some are an eighth of an acre on the side of a ridge. His favorite setup is switch cane on a slope where the thermals carry scent over the top: the buck can watch the bottom in front of him while the wind covers his back.

The mistake that cost him more big deer than anything else? Being too aggressive. Push into the middle of a bed even once and you may get away with it — bump him repeatedly with scent and he'll change his pattern entirely. Determine the bedding area, figure out your entry and exit, and watch the edge. Back when he ran trail cameras, daytime pictures of a buck at 10, 11, 12 o'clock told him he was right on top of the bed — nighttime pictures meant he was guessing wrong.

Make Noise Like an Animal, Not a Human

Travis is blunt: in Southwest Mississippi woods, you're going to make noise no matter who you are — barefoot or in moccasins. The secret is not sounding like a human. When you break a stick, stop. Wait a minute, two minutes, five minutes, glass, then move again. A deer breaks a twig, then nothing, then another twig five minutes later. Humans break sticks in a cadence, and that cadence is what busts you.

Worst of all is metal. Travis has had deer at 30 yards while wearing a ghillie suit — able to "get away with murder" — until a small metallic tink from a fire-starter on his quiver snapped every head his way. His measuring stick for moving right is what he calls staying at peace with the wrens: if songbirds are scolding and squirrels are barking at you, you're moving too fast.

Get Fanatical About Wind, Scent, Entry and Exit

Asked what the truly consistent big-buck killers he knows have in common, Travis named three things: they're fanatical about wind, fanatical about scent, and fanatical about entry and exit. One friend literally takes a rake and clears the path to his stand. Travis himself would never move a tree stand during daylight in his compound days — he'd go out at 8, 9, 10 o'clock at night with a light, so the woods never connected the racket to a hunter waiting on a deer.

Hunt the Weather Everybody Else Stays Home In

Give Travis spitting rain, snow, and 40-50 mph winds and he's out there. The deer doesn't vaporize in bad weather — but he can't hear you as well, can't smell you as well, and can't see you as well. Those blustery days are when Travis pushes into the thickets and goes into the bedding areas after them. You'll never out-woodsman a whitetail, but foul weather is the one condition that gives the hunter a genuine leg up.

Time It Around the Rut, Not During It

Here's the surprise: Travis has killed most of his better bucks before the rut kicks in and in the late season — not during the chase. Once bucks break up their bachelor groups, everything he's patterned goes out the window, so during the rut he switches to hunting does, because that's where the bucks want to be. In his corner of Mississippi the rut peaks from Christmas through the first couple weeks of January, and as it winds down, run-down old bucks start falling back into a pattern you can actually hunt. And if you've only got two or three days to hunt? Skip the bedding game entirely and sit food sources — it's the most forgiving way to hunt.

Go Deeper

This is only a slice of a nearly two-hour conversation. In the full episode, Travis tells the story of the 190-inch buck he killed at 50 yards as floodwater funneled roughly 175 rack bucks past him in three days, explains why he quit running trail cameras after years of "trolling for bucks," and shares why squirrel hunting with a .22 might be the best woodsmanship school there is — plus a ghillie suit encounter with an angry Jersey cow you have to hear to believe. Watch the full episode on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

What's the failure that taught you the most in the deer woods? Swap stories and tactics with hundreds of other die-hard public land hunters in our community. Join the community here.

And if you want to look the part while you're staying at peace with the wrens, grab some Southern Outdoorsmen gear before your next sit. Y'all Stay Southern.