Picking up the phone and hearing the words Gully Drive meant one thing and one thing only – action! The famous scheme was born a quarter-century ago in my hometown of Cream Ridge, N.J., and to this day, those two words accelerate my pulse more than any others.

Midday downtime is the perfect time to employ the "easing" tactic. When things work according to plan, the result is close-range shots at deer that have their attention focused elsewhere

Though the caller would state the words in a questionable tone – "Gully Drive?" – it was assumed each member of our group would show up unless a key limb happened to be severed or something of that sort. However, I'm getting ahead of myself.

As teenagers, patience was a tool not often found in our bowhunting repertoire. We were famous for getting to our morning stands exceptionally early and deserting them well before 9 a.m. This left our group with an extensive amount of time before any whitetail would even think about replenishing its growling stomach and venturing from its bed again. However, sitting on our behinds was something we failed miserably at!

Now, I must mention, success did not come without failures or hard-earned lessons. And to give you an example, smearing a Granny Smith apple on an oak tree in the middle of a forest and waiting for a trophy buck to show up and lick it, 10 miles from the nearest apple tree, is one of those for which I might someday seek therapy. Nonetheless, even a blind buck stumbles upon an acorn once in a while!

One of our better farms had a strip of mature beech, poplar and oak, which offered little undergrowth and cover. No matter which way we approached, bedded whitetails would detect our presence and hightail it for the next county. It was frustrating to hunt the other wooded areas and leave empty-handed, only to find our quarry safely feeding in the adjacent hayfield next to the strip of woods each evening.

'Operation Gully Drive'
Consequently, after huddling up at our meeting point one evening, we devised a plan.

Though it is embarrassing to think we spoke in such terms, our plan was dubbed "Operation Gully Drive." It was to commence the following afternoon.

The strip of hardwoods was nearly a faultless rectangle with a width of 150 yards and a length of 500 yards. The "drive," so to speak, would begin at the northern end and culminate at the gully on the southern side. One of us would be the pusher and two others would strategically stand behind any one of the enormous beech trees that lined the rim of the gully just before the hay field.

With any luck, whitetails bumped early in the push would filter down the strip and across the 80-yard gully. A few old-timers and our own reconnaissance told us many of these whitetails paused for a moment at the rim before scurrying across the hayfield to a neighboring swamp. The shooters were to position themselves along any one of the many pronounced trails and connect when the deer paused before crossing the field. Drawn up in the dirt with a stick, it looked like a slam-dunk.