For Dale Bordelon, deer hunting stopped being about box stands, food plots, and waiting over open ground. The Louisiana hunter told The Southern Outdoorsmen that his best bucks came only after he started hunting where mature deer actually lived.
In a clip from The Southern Outdoorsmen, hosted by Andrew Maxwell and Jacob Myers, Bordelon explained why he moved away from the more comfortable side of deer hunting and began targeting thick bedding cover, swamp ridges, water, and hard-to-reach timber. Maxwell opened the discussion by asking about Bordelon’s introduction to deer hunting in Louisiana, and the answer was not what many hunters might expect.
Bordelon said he did not grow up as a deer hunter. His father was not one either. He came into it almost by accident through a hunting area that had “real big deer” and through the downtime that came after duck limits were filled.
If the ducks were done for the morning and he could not go again for a couple of days, Bordelon said he would go deer hunting.
A Deer Hunter By Accident
Bordelon told Maxwell and Myers that his first deer came on opening day in 1988. It was a doe.
On the last day of that same season, he killed a three-point buck, and even those small antlers changed something for him.
“I took them little horns and I put them on the floor of my truck,” Bordelon said. “I rode them around a week.”
He said other deer hunters would understand what that feeling meant. The horns did something to him, and from there, he got hooked.
Like many hunters, Bordelon started with a food plot and a box stand. He built both, hunted them, and even killed deer that way. He said he once killed a 272-pound 10-point buck from a box stand over a food plot.
But over time, that style stopped feeling like real deer hunting to him.
“I don’t like box stands. I don’t like food plots,” Bordelon said. “I had them. I don’t hunt no more deer.”
That may sound harsh to hunters who love a comfortable stand and a prepared plot, but Bordelon’s point was not that those methods never work. His point was that they were not the kind of hunting that made him feel like he had truly beaten an old buck on its own ground.
Learning Where Big Bucks Live
Bordelon said the change came when he started going into the woods, talking to older deer hunters, and asking how to target big bucks instead of young three-points and six-points.
The answer, as he learned it, was simple but not easy: mature bucks spend daylight in nasty places, not standing around in pretty openings waiting to be seen.
“Man, them deer run around in the woods all day,” Bordelon said. “They won’t come out in the fields.”
Where he hunted, the terrain was ridges, sloughs, water, swamp cover, and rough woods. Bordelon said he had jumped big bucks in those areas while duck hunting, which told him where they liked to bed and hide.
That became the heart of his strategy. Instead of waiting on a food plot and hoping a mature deer eventually came out, he started setting up near the bedding cover itself, often on a dove stool in the swamp.
That is a different kind of patience. It is not just sitting still; it is studying why a buck is using one ridge, one wet crossing, one patch of button woods, or one opening in the cover.
The Swamp Buck That Proved The Point
One of Bordelon’s clearest examples came from a Wednesday afternoon in the 1990s, when his father told him to go check a hog trap.
Bordelon said he knew there was a swamp past that trap, with a big willow leaning over and the kind of cover deer liked. He eased in to look around and jumped a big buck.
He did not push farther. Instead, he studied the area and found heavy sign in the water and button woods, with water up in his boots.
A couple of days later, after dropping his young boys off at daycare, he went back with hip boots, his old .30-06, a set of rattling horns, and a plan based on the wind.
“It took me 30 minutes just creeping,” Bordelon said of the short approach.
He set up in the swamp at about 10 a.m., opened his dove stool, and waited. Before he even rattled, he spotted movement in the button woods.
Through his scope, he saw a big rack.
Bordelon said the buck was in the nastiest cover, and he could only see part of the deer. He picked a small opening on the ridge and held his rifle there, waiting for the buck to cross.
When it stepped through the hole, he fired.
He later found the buck about 65 steps away. It was a big 11-point swamp buck that weighed 235 pounds and aged at 8 and a half years old.
“I outsmarted that son of a gun,” Bordelon said. “That is what I call deer hunting.”
That story shows why Bordelon’s method stuck with him. The deer was not killed because it made a careless trip into a food plot. It was killed because Bordelon found the buck’s bedroom, backed out, played the wind, slipped in quietly, and set up where the deer already wanted to be.
Wind Shift, Quick Move, Another Giant
Bordelon also told Maxwell and Myers about another major buck he killed after reacting quickly to a wind shift.
He had a box stand, and his brother had another stand on the opposite side of a food plot. Bordelon said the deer had learned how hunters used those setups, often coming out on the edges instead of walking straight into danger.
One morning around 7 a.m., he opened the door of the stand and sat down, but the wind switched. It had been a north wind, then shifted to the south.
Bordelon said he immediately picked up his gun and dove stool and moved about 100 yards toward the lake so the wind would work in his favor.
“You got to have that wind in your favor,” he said.
Before he could even get fully settled, he saw a horn moving through thick cover. The deer was cutting across in the direction Bordelon had predicted.
“I had planned it right,” he said.
He grabbed his old .30-06, rested it against a tree in the swamp, and shot the buck at roughly 60 yards. It was a cold, frosty morning, and Bordelon remembered the deer taking its last breaths as smoke came from its mouth and wound.
The detail is raw, but it captures the kind of old-school hunting memory Bordelon was sharing: wind, cover, timing, instinct, and one fast decision.
Why Food Plots Weren’t Enough
Bordelon’s message was not that hunters can never kill good deer from food plots. He said he had done it himself.
But he told Maxwell and Myers that his biggest satisfaction came from sitting on a small stool in the woods without food plots or fancy stands, figuring out why a buck passed through a place and using that knowledge.
“So that’s sitting on dove stools with no food plots,” Bordelon said. “That’s deer hunting.”
He said he killed several big bucks in bedding areas, including an old 10-point with worn teeth and broken points. That deer, Bordelon said, was old and on the decline, but he still felt he had outsmarted him.
There is something useful in that lesson even for hunters who do use stands and plots. Mature deer rarely become mature by making easy mistakes. The older the buck, the more likely it is to use cover, wind, water, and pressure to survive.
Bordelon’s approach required more scouting, more discomfort, and more willingness to hunt places many people would avoid. That is probably why it worked.
Effort Was The Real Pattern
Toward the end of the clip, Bordelon said the best deer hunting came late in his career, when he killed some of his largest bucks by putting in the effort to understand the woods.
“You got to eat, sleep, and breathe it to figure your way,” he said.
Eventually, he said, his passion for deer hunting faded. The last deer he killed was a buck in a field, and when it fell, he said his first thought was that he now had to clean it.
That was when he knew the feeling was gone.
Bordelon told Maxwell and Myers that he never lost the urge for duck hunting, though. Instead, he shifted that same intensity into duck calls, decoys, and the craft of waterfowl hunting.
Still, his deer hunting stories remain valuable because they are not about shortcuts. They are about reading land, respecting wind, moving slowly, and understanding that a mature buck’s daylight world is often far away from the places hunters find comfortable.
Bordelon’s biggest lesson is simple: if a hunter wants to kill the kind of deer that almost never steps into the open, he may have to stop waiting for that deer to show up and start hunting the hard places where it already feels safe.
Gary’s love for adventure and preparedness stems from his background as a former Army medic. Having served in remote locations around the world, he knows the importance of being ready for any situation, whether in the wilderness or urban environments. Gary’s practical medical expertise blends with his passion for outdoor survival, making him an expert in both emergency medical care and rugged, off-the-grid living. He writes to equip readers with the skills needed to stay safe and resilient in any scenario.
