AUGUSTA — Joe “Salty” Saltalamachia knows how to find big bucks.
In the last 13 years, he bagged four over 200 pounds, gaining entry each time into the Biggest Bucks in Maine Club. He’s passed up younger, smaller deer just to shoot a 200-pounder.
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“Thirteen years ago I made a decision I’m no longer going to shoot a yearling buck on a Maine tag,” Saltalamachia said. “I really try to wait for a 3-year-old buck whenever possible. Three years old in Maine, they have a really good chance of hitting 200 pounds.”
Saltalamachia manned a booth just inside the door Friday afternoon at the Augusta Civic Center during the 31st annual State of Maine Sportsman’s Show. He conducted a seminar later Friday on how to become more successful at bagging larger deer and he’ll be on hand for another seminar at 6 tonight.
There are no shortcuts to shooting big bucks. It takes time and patience. If not for the show and Friday’s storm, Saltalamachia would have been in the woods.
“I start scouting as soon as the snow is off the ground,” Saltalamachia said. “Actually I look for sheds when the snow is on the ground.”
Salty scouts in the summer, too, looking for signs big bucks might leave on trees or tracks at the edge of fields. He hunts in Waldo County in the Unity area where he works associate director of admissions at Unity College. A graduate of that school with a degree in wildlife biology, Saltalamachia also writes for Maine Sportsman’s Magazine.
He also spotlights deer in late August, waking up a 2 or 3 in the morning and looking for what are called bachelor groups.
“Those bucks are going to be in that area,” he said.
A native of Oswego, N.Y., Saltalamachia has hunted extensively throughout the U.S. and Canada, often bagging more than one deer a year on different licenses. Deer are tougher to find in Maine these days and he would like to see the number of doe permits reduced to help rebuild the herd.
“I was there in the good old days when there were 20-plus deer per square mile,” he said. “Now there are maybe 10 or 15 tops.”
Saltalamachia generally hunts alone, using a tree stand with a bow and waiting patiently on the ground during gun season. He loves the woods and doesn’t mind spending eight hours in one spot, waiting for the right buck to come along. He passed up several while waiting for the big one, but it’s not an exact science.
“I shot a 2-year-old (last year) that I mistaked for a 3-year-old,” he said. “It dressed out at 163 pounds.”
Saltalamachia hasn’t bagged a 200-pounder for six years. In the interim, he’s shot deer that dressed out at 185 and 198 pounds.
That he came with two pounds of getting a 200-pounder was no accident. a lot of hunters, he said, trim out too much fat when the dress a deer and remove the vital organs.
“There’s a lot of weight in there,” he said.
Deer are extremely smart and get smarter as they get older. Saltalamachia said they’re as intelligent as Labrador retrievers and have an exceptional sense of smell.
In the past, he’s made a great effort to “smell like nothing,” admitting you can never totally remove the human scent. This year, he tried something different, filling a pillow case with fir bows and putting it in with his hunting clothes.
Deer never picked up his scent, he said, even when they were downwind.
For Saltalamachia, the preparation is half the fun. He realizes not every deer hunter feels the same way.
“A lot of people don’t want to work for it,” he said. “They want to go, eat food, get in their stand and shoot a deer. I’ve heard the term for what I do called unnecessary sophisticated tactics. I don’t believe them to be unnecessary, they work for me.”
Saltalamachia admitted there were plenty of hunters at the civic center Friday who had bagged more big bucks than he had. But at 41, he has plenty of time to catch them.
“I hope to be that 60 year old man who has 20 200-pound bucks,” he said. “I don’t know too many people like that.”
Gary Hawkins — 621-5638
ghawkins@centralmaine.com
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