Randy Kukral decided it would be best if he had company to recover his most recent deer, a 220-inch Ohio slammer he dubbed \u201cTrifecta.\u201d But Kukral didn\u2019t get in touch with a buddy or a family member. He called a local game warden instead.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The deer hadn\u2019t run onto an adjacent property, and the legality of Kukral\u2019s hunt was never in question. Kukral simply didn\u2019t want to deal with people speculating that he must have poached it. This isn\u2019t because no one would believe he killed Trifecta \u2014 but because it was his third<\/em> 200-plus-inch deer in as many years.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAfter all the chatter after my second one, I wanted to make sure that the game warden came with me to recover the deer,\u201d says Kukral, a pro bass angler who competes in the National Professional Fishing League<\/a>. \u201cI have not heard one peep of poaching since I did that.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to see why people thought Kukral must be up to something. Three 200-plus-inch free-ranging deer in three years is all but unheard of, and to Kukral\u2019s knowledge, it\u2019s never been done before he pulled it off. So what are his secrets to success? Outdoor Life<\/em> caught up with Kukral to learn how he tags such impressive whitetails, year after year. Here are six keys to his recent run of success in the whitetail woods.<\/p>\n Patience is a virtue, particularly when it comes to deer hunting. But there are different versions of patience: long term, middle term, and short term. In Kukral\u2019s years of hunting whitetails, he cites all three as mission critical.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kukral, who lives and hunts in Ohio, points to a small parcel of family land that was clear cut in the 1990s as an example of how long-term patience can reward the hunter and land manager. Through careful management, strategic development of food plots, and two decades of patience, Kukral and his family have stewarded the land into what it has become today.<\/p>\n \u201cIt turned into a buck producer,\u201d Kukral says. \u201cThese [200-plus-inch] deer in particular were not off that property, but it has produced multiple Boone and Crockett bucks.\u201d<\/p>\n In the mid-term, he points to the deer he dubbed \u201cDiesel,\u201d which kicked off his three-year run of 200-plus-inch whitetails back in 2021.<\/p>\n \u201cThat deer was probably 2.5 [years old] when I first saw him. He was 160, then 180, then the next year 210,\u201d Kukral says. \u201c[When I first saw him] he looked like a puppy with a huge rack on his head. I shot him when he was probably 5.5.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n As for short term patience, Kukral says it all comes down to picking the right days to hunt.<\/p>\n Kukral doesn\u2019t hunt just to hunt. He picks his spots and goes in with the intention \u2013 and often the expectation \u2013 of being successful. It\u2019s this intersection of patience and strategy that\u2019s paid dividends.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kukral\u2019s 2022 deer, one that he calls \u201cDrop Tine,\u201d is a case study in picking your days. Despite having a good sense of where Drop Tine spent most of his time, Kukral gave the deer space for most of the season until the buck started showing up on his trail camera.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t hunt that area [for most of the season],\u201d Kukral says. \u201cI had 170-inch deer walking past my stand every day, and I didn\u2019t sit until Nov. 13 when I finally had that deer coming by.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n With a cold front in the forecast and a couple pictures of the buck in hand, Kukral knew it was finally time to make his move.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest key to my success was that a front had just come through and I felt like that kicked him into gear,\u201d Kukral says. \u201cI knew that day was going to be special. I went into that stand at about 2 p.m. and as soon as I got in, I started seeing deer. At about 3:45 he came in.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The buck scored 232 inches, according to the Buckmasters scoring system. (All three of his 200-plus inch bucks were measured by official Buckmasters scorers using BTR\u2019s \u201cFull-Credit\u201d system<\/a>, which adds up every inch of antler and does not recognize nontypical features or make deductions of any kind.) He killed it by hunting with intention on the right day under the right conditions. He made a plan and then executed it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kukral knows as well as anyone that one of the most frustrating challenges in killing a megagiant is that everyone else is trying to kill him, too. When a 200-inch deer turns up in an ag field day after day, word gets around. Kukral says his hunt for Trifecta was a perfect example.<\/p>\n \u201cI would have guys literally walk out into fields the next property over during prime time and all the deer would blow out,\u201d he says. \u201cI met another hunter on a neighboring property who told me like a dozen people knew about [this] deer.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Kukral knew he had to adapt, so he bypassed the obvious features that most hunters would gravitate toward. Instead he thought about the features the deer would use to avoid those hunters.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMy key tactic is to figure out how the deer are gonna get around these guys,\u201d Kukral says. To that end, he set up on a ridge where thick cover and topography gave the deer just enough confidence to exploit. Kukral\u2019s strategy paid off when his target buck showed up in the middle of the day just 20 yards from his setup.<\/p>\n Kukral is whitetail obsessed, and that obsession manifests itself in hard work. Whether he\u2019s knocking on doors, setting cameras, logging windshield time, or glassing bean fields through the summer, Kukral never turns it off.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTwo days after harvesting Trifecta, I was already back hanging cell cams and mineral sites,\u201d he says. \u201cThere is no offseason.\u201d<\/p>\n Kukral believes it\u2019s this mentality that\u2019s helped him tag big deer year after year. All three of his giant bucks were killed on private land, and he says that putting in the offseason effort and building relationships with landowners is crucial to his success.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people don\u2019t do the door-knocking, or offer to put in sweat equity. People really appreciate that,\u201d Kukral says of gaining access to new private parcels.\u00a0<\/p>\n After that, it\u2019s all about doing the recon work to pattern the buck. For Kukral, finding the acreage a buck is living on isn\u2019t enough. He wants to know exactly how the buck uses it. The kind of bucks Kukral goes after have few weaknesses, but there are some.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve had a lot of deer duplicate their exact pattern \u2026 a year or even two later.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Kukral stresses that cell cameras are the most important tools in his arsenal when it comes to figuring deer out. Once he\u2019s put the work in to find a buck, gained access to the property, and patterned the deer, in Kukral\u2019s mind, the game is already won.<\/p>\n Big bucks are not like little bucks, and Kukral believes that if you want to have success, you have to learn how to take some calculated risks. Kukral isn\u2019t afraid to break what many of us know as the cardinal rules of deer hunting, like giving a deer your wind if it puts you in a better position.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re gonna have some sort of odor, but particularly with urban deer, you can get away with more,\u201d Kukral says. \u201cA few times, the wind was blowing into the bedding [area] when I got into my stand. I was okay with that because I had the best scent control and the freshest doe pee I could have. Guys will say that\u2019s the dumbest thing they\u2019ve ever heard, but it\u2019s working for me. You gotta have a good program.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Aside from cheating the wind, Kukral isn\u2019t afraid to make non-traditional moves in the Ohio whitetail woods \u2013 moves that by some standards are more Western than Midwestern. In one of his first encounters with Trifecta on Nov. 2, he nearly sealed the deal by moving in aggressively on the buck.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n1. Be All Kinds of Patient<\/h2>\n
![\"randy](\"https:\/\/www.outdoorlife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/randy_krukal_three_year_streak_4_redact.jpg?w=1950\")
2. Hunt with Intention<\/h2>\n
![\"randy](\"https:\/\/www.outdoorlife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/randy_krukal_three_year_streak_7_redact.jpg?w=1950\")
3. Use Pressure to Your Advantage<\/h2>\n
4. Put in the Offseason Work<\/h2>\n
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5. Don\u2019t Be Afraid to Get Aggressive<\/h2>\n
![\"randy](\"https:\/\/www.outdoorlife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/randy_krukal_three_year_streak_5_redact.jpg?w=1950\")