The deer hunting properties on which you hunt will determine your best chance at a trophy buck. Joe Pacconi runs a free-roaming trophy whitetail and wild turkey hunting outfitter called Pacconi’s Trophy Whitetails, hunting exclusively on private properties located in Southern Ohio. Joe believes in harvesting mature Whitetail bucks in the most leisurely way possible. When it comes to big bucks, Joe has followed the record book kills for the past six years, recognizing Athens and Meigs Counties as great counties for producing free-roaming Pope and young bucks. His hunting business is built from a family tradition that goes back many generations. Take a listen for more secrets on harvesting your first trophy whitetail.

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Trophy Whitetail Secrets Joe Pacconi

Welcome to another episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. We're heading off to Ohio and we're going to connect with Pacconi's Trophy Whitetails of Southern Ohio. Joe, welcome to the show. 

Thank you, Bruce. It's a pleasure to be on the show and to talk about deer hunting with you.

It's always a pleasure. Let's start right out and tell us something about your hunting tradition. You've really delved in hard for hunting mature bucks. How did you get started in that?

It started when I was a kid in Pennsylvania. My entire family were hunters in PA; my dad and my grandfathers. In Pennsylvania, hunting deer, we even have the first day of deer season off of school. It's a pretty big thing there. It started there with me always seeing deer because we lived in an area where deer were heavily populated and some decent bucks. Nothing like what we hunt in Ohio now but that's where it all started for me. I just developed a love for always seeing whitetail deer in the wild and being out in the woods with my family members, my grandfathers, my dad, my uncles and all the traditions that we developed, going to the store at lunch time for pie when they're doing deer drives. Things like that are just memories that will be with me forever. Hunting deer with my family, it's just continued on into now that I'm an outfitter.

What are some of the early lessons that you learned that you're passing along to your kids, your family members or your guests at your outfit there?

Normally, first of all, we go through the basics: how to set a stand, how to scout for the deer and looking for rubs and scrapes. Trying to figure out if we're going to hunt on food plots early season. Late season, we hunt where the does are, obviously when they're rutting. In January, when it gets cold and the bucks run down looking for food, we'd try to hunt on the food sources and bring them in whenever they're run down and they let their guard down a little bit. That's the kind of stuff we teach everybody, even my kids. Why we harness a specific area at certain times a year as opposed to later in the year where we might be in a different spot, the little clues that bucks leave in the woods to where we can maybe pinpoint and get a line on them to set a stand.

Did you learn that from your uncles and early days in PA or is that something that you just matured into yourself? 

They weren't quite as serious as that because they were more gun hunters in PA but that's where it all started for me, the love of the outdoors with those guys. It developed for me into more trophy deer hunting instead of just getting a buck. It developed into learning how to kill these pook deer. That's basically where it's gotten to for me right now.

I think it's interesting that you talked about pook deer and I like to talk about mature deer. In your mind, let's take a look at both things. I think what you're saying is when you look at pook deer whitetail, that's 180, right?

We figure Pope and Young 125 and that's what we consider a pook deer because 90% of our hunters that c...