Folks seem to think there is a lot more to deer hunting than there really is.

General Mattis:

‘The most important six inches on the battlefield is between your ears.’

This is your most important tool. The rest is gravy. Whitetails are not hard to kill. Equipment is largely unimportant. It is all skill and experience.

1) Know where to find deer. Don’t hunt them where they ain’t.
2) Learn how to regulate your body temperature. Know how to stay warm under your hunting conditions, and especially know how to keep from sweating. This is the single biggest reason for folks not staying out long enough to be successful.
3) Learn how to be a hunter. Mattis also said, “Learn to be the hunter and not the hunted.” This sounds stupid in the case of whitetails, but waaaay too often folks get their heads in the wrong place. They attribute near-supernatural powers to the deer and their supposedly superior eyesight and hearing and especially their sense of smell. Truth is, if you can sit still and hide well enough so that a human can’t see you, chances are a deer is not going to see you either. Smell? Read my weblog about using baking soda. The short of it is, a shower and clean clothes go a long, long way in this sport. Hearing? Yeah, they can hear, but I’ve dropped a flashlight out of a metal treestand, had it hit the seat, the floor and then drop to the ground only to have a deer come up and sniff the lit flashlight. Do not ascribe supernatural powers to an animal that will feed next to yesterday’s gutpile.
4) Successful deer hunting comes down to one simple statement: “Find the food. Find the beds. Draw a line between the two and hunt that line where it is most advantagous to do so.” Learning how to do that successfully will take a lifetime, but having a basic concept of what to do is a start in the right direction.
5) Shooting deer: James Barsness is known for writing “Pointy end towards animal. Aim for the front half.” That pretty well sums it up. Just about any centerfire rifle cartridge will kill a deer given a reasonable distance.

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