Learn from the deer ...

Whitetails can keep a hunter honest.

This doesn’t mean that my valued readers are dishonest. It simply means that deer have the ability to make hunters think and learn.

They also can make hunters pretty humble when sportsmen start thinking they know everything about deer hunting. Hunters who feel superior about their hunting skills often get humble pie to eat.

Be quiet and pay attention around good hunters and you’ll learn.

One thing I’ve learned over many years is to watch hunters. It doesn’t take long to determine who are the great sportsmen, and who are braggarts. I’ve hunted in many camps over the past 44 years, and the loudest and most aggressive hunters are usually the ones who make the dumbest mistakes.

An old saying goes like this: it’s better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. The best rule is to keep the mouth closed and pay attention, and you’ll learn more.

Picking people’s brains, and learning what they know, is fun and can provide valuable information. Savvy hunters never venture an opinion unless they know what they are talking about. That is especially true when talking about hunting whitetail deer.

Southern folk have some great sayings. They’ve been distilled from years of hard work and minding their manners. One saying that has a whole bunch of learning in it is “My momma didn’t raise no fools.”

Folks who gather around savvy hunters should keep that thought in mind. That means less talking and much more listening.

Experience is a great teacher. Asking questions can help.

Last year a man took his son hunting. The boy met the other hunters, made a dumb remark about deer hunting while several of us planned our evening hunts. We were tossing around ideas, and discussing where everyone would sit, and checking the prevailing wind direction.

The boy kept nattering on and on. He was taking up precious planning time by constantly interrupting with foolish statements.

One of the guys eventually spoke up rather bluntly and loudly, and said: “Boy, you better learn more about deer hunting before speaking your mind. You want to learn about deer hunting, sit down, shut up and listen. You’ll learn more than you ever will by talking nonsense about a topic you know nothing about.”

The kid didn’t follow directions well.

The boy sat and listened for a minute, spoke up, and one man looked pointedly at him, and the kid went running out the door. His daddy had money, and it’s almost certain that no one had every talked that way to him before.

I’ve been around whitetails all my life, and spent more than 50 years hunting and studying the critters, but there are many others who know many things that I don’t know. I listen intently to them and learn.

There are countless ways to learn things but in-the-field experience is the best teacher when it comes to learning about whitetails. Hunting the animals, and studying them as you hunt and during the off-season, is the best way to accumulate knowledge. Reading about it, and absorbing that knowledge and putting it to good use, is another. What is most important is the hunter must learn to convert that knowledge into an action plan that works in the woods.

Experience will put a fine point on your acquired knowledge. Some of my early deer-hunting knowledge came from talking to old-time hunters and guides, and using some of that information on my hunts.

The more days spent afield will continue to add to a solid footing, and one day after learning a great deal about deer hunting, you’ll know you’ve come a long ways in your gathering of deer-hunting knowledge.

That will be the day when you can honestly look yourself in the morning mirror, and confess: “I don’t know as much about deer hunting as I thought I did.” And then you go out and learn some more.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors