Stacking time in the deer woods

Whitetail bucks have a way of keeping a hunter honest
photo courtesy Dave Richey Outdoors ©2012

This doesn’t mean my valued readers are dishonest. It simply means that deer have the ability to make hunters learn new things on a regular basis.

They also can make those hunters who think they know everything about deer a pretty humble group of sportsmen. Hunters who feel superior often learn a humbling lesson at the hands of a savvy buck.

There's not much a hunter can't learn if he pays attention to deer.

One thing I’ve learned over many years is to watch other hunters. It doesn’t take long to determine who the great sportsmen are, and who are braggarts. I’ve hunted in a good many camps over the last 60 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 those who really know what they are doing.

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.”

Don't belong to the foolish group. Learn by studying deer

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

Last year a man brought his son up for a hunt. The boy would come up to the house, make a dumb remark about deer hunting while several of us planned our evening hunts. We were tossing about ideas, and discussing where everyone would sit, and discussing the present wind conditions.

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

One of my friends 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 hunting, sit down, shut up and listen. You’ll learn more that way than you will talking nonsense about a topic you know nothing about.”

When intelligent and good hunters talk, others should pay attention

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

I’ve been around whitetails all my life, and spent many years hunting and studying the critters, but there are many others who know many things 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 time to learn 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 way.

What is most important is the hunter can 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 personal hunts.

The more days spent afield each year will continue to add to a solid foundation, 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.

It's called stacking time. And then you go out and stockpile another dozen years of in-the-field experience. No matter how much you think you know, deer always have a way of teaching us a new trick or two.

Remembering early bow hunts

Locating big bucks became a habit but not all fell to my arrows.

Every now and then my mind carries me back to the so-called "good old days." Everything seemed larger than life when we were kids, and first getting involved in hunting was a big deal.

I can't recall the year of my first bow hunt, but I had an old recurve that I used. It seemed as if that bow was as tall as I was, but that is the fun part of remembering things from about 60 years ago. Our mind sometimes plays tricks on us.

My thoughts take me back to an era when very few people hunted with a long or recurve bow. This was long before the first compound bow was invented, and I remember trying to find straight wooden arrow shafts. Some were as crooked as a snake.

Things were much different 50-60 years ago.

Constant practice was needed to keep muscles toned for a quick draw, an even faster aim, and a sure release. There were no tree stands in those days, and the only rubber boots we owned were four- or five-buckle Arctics that were worn during winter months.

The deer seemed much larger back then than now. Of course, I suspect that was because I was smaller, and our size difference was a result of being a teenager.

Most of the hunting in those days came during the traditional November 15-30 firearm season. Blaze or Hunter Orange clothing wasn't worn in those days for one simple reason: it hadn't been invented yet.

Most of us wore green-and-black or red-and-black checked wool coats and pants. Ours were often hand-me-downs from an older brother or friend, and sometimes we hunted in whatever clothing we had. We knew about dressing in layers, and often wore everything we owned to stay reasonably warm.

We never worried much about human scent, and seldom took any precautions about hunting the wind. Many hunters simply walked into the woods, found a stump or uprooted tree to sit on, and would watch where two or three deer trails came together. If they happened to choose a downwind position, they might shoot a deer if they could sit still and not spook the animal.

Studying deer became my No. 1 practice while hunting.

I was fascinated by whitetails in those days. I'd often go hunting. It soon dawned on me that if I was upwind of deer, I seldom got a shot. My education had begun.

One of the first things I learned was to hunt the wind. I learned that a hunter downwind of a whitetail buck was seldom winded. I learned to hunt deeper in the thick cover so I'd have a chance at a buck before the guys lined up outside of the woods would see deer. Another lesson quickly learned.

It didn't take long for me to learn that a long bow or recurve wasn't made for long-distance shots, and I found most of the bucks I shot were between 10 and 15 yards away. I became an instinctive shooter because there were few sights in those days. I drew back, aimed down the arrow shaft at the buck, and when the sight picture looked right, I made my release. After time, those shots often killed that buck.

There are memories of scouting for deer. It was easy to find the main runways, and I avoided other hunters as if they had smallpox. The more hunters in an area, the greater the chance of the accumulated noise and human scent spooking deer long before dawn arrived.

So I hunted deeper in the thick cover, planned my adventure with teenage expectations, and studied deer. I wanted to learn all I could about these animals, because deep down inside, I knew that the more a hunter knew about whitetail deer, the better success they would have.

I hunted deer at every opportunity during the open seasons.

Weekends, holidays, days off from work, all would find me in the woods. I spent countless days studying them from afar, and many of those lessons I learned as a teenager are still being practiced today.

Hunting deer is much more than a casual thing to me. It is something I happily admit to being addicted to. Spending time in the woods, studying and watching deer, is as much a part of my scouting procedures as it was 50 years ago.

Perhaps the bucks were bigger back then, and perhaps they weren't, but it makes little difference now. The good old days didn't occur six decades ago, they are here today. Lots of deer doesn't make the deer hunting better. Hunting one buck, and concentrating one's entire efforts on that single animal, is what makes hunting so much fun.

After all of these years there is nothing better than going one on one with a whitetail buck. If he makes a mistake, you'll get a shot. If you make a mistake, chances are good you'll never know he was nearby.

For me, that's what makes hunting whitetails with a bow, such a worthwhile endeavor. Outwitting a deer means either acquiring a great amount of information about the game you seek or you are carrying a luck rabbit’s foot in your pocket.

Sadly, luck never played a very important part in my bow-hunting career.