As in all things in life, if you want to get better at something, a good plan is to repeat the things that work for you, and stop doing or change things that aren’t working.  It sounds like pretty easy common sense, but it can be very hard to change bad old habits.  Especially when those bad old habits are easy or ingrained in how we do things.  Making things harder is the pressure we put on ourselves to do the things that everybody else is doing, even when those things aren’t working for us. 

I used to hunt in a way entirely different than the way I hunt today.  Some of these changes have been made along the way as I transitioned from being a private land hunter, to a public land hunter, and then back to private lands.  Others have been made because I’m getting older and am no longer able to hunt in some of the ways I did in my twenties.  But, most of the changes I have made along the way have been adaptations to things that I tried that didn’t work; or things that I tried that did work and then I tried to perfect.  There is no doubt in my mind that if I still hunted the way I used to, say 5, 10, or 30 years ago, that I would be less successful in my goals of growing and harvesting big deer.  The following are the top mistakes I have made over the years and how I corrected my tactics.

1.  Relying on gadgets

Back in the day, I used to attend the spring Deer Classic every year.  I would listen to every seminar I could fit into the schedule then I would walk the floor for hours.  I was easy prey!  Anything and everything that would catch my eye was a potential buy.  The latest and greatest deer calls, scents, sights, broadheads, stands, clothes, oh the list is really endless.  I didn’t have much money but the money I did have got budgeted toward hunting equipment.  If I saw a gadget on a hunting video, those got special attention.  I don’t know if I ever actually thought of it this way, but I was convinced the more stuff I could buy and put to work for me the better my chances of killing a buck would be. 

And so, it was for years I accumulated hunting stuff.  There were days I felt like a hunting catalog walking into the timber on a bow hunt.  To be honest, some stuff worked and helped me.  However, relying on hunting stuff and gadgets sent me down a bad path of thinking I could have better hunting by buying more and more gear.  I spent less and less time trying to perfect skills of woodsmanship and understanding deer behavior.  To be sure, I spend way more money today than I did back then on hunting (mostly because I’m not totally broke today), but very few of those dollars are on gear or gadgets. 

2.  Scent Elimination

If only it was possible!  To eliminate all human and any other odors foreign to a deer.  What most hunters wouldn’t pay to have that in their back pocket.  From scent eliminating clothes, to scent eliminating sprays, and washes, and soap.  Even portable ozone generators.  All in an attempt to take away a deer’s number one survival tool.  You can get in to your stand, hunt all day, and leave no scent behind or disperse no scent while on stand.  But the reality is this; today I don’t see a way to do it, not all of it.  And a deer can smell incomprehensibly good, so good that even that little bit you leave behind or dispense while on stand is enough to spoil it all.  The problem with relying on scent elimination, is you put yourself in a position to get busted…over and over.  Thinking you are scent free just doesn’t work, not today, not yet.  Oh, you might see it work or think it works on a hunt, or maybe even convince yourself you are scent free (I once did).  It’s a mistake. 

I used to spend enormous amounts of time and money trying to be totally scent free.  One system I had got me very close, but took so long to prepare between each hunt and was so uncomfortable on stand that I just threw the towel in.  I’ve also hunted with guys that totally relied on the latest and greatest scent elimination technologies, and they got busted.  It’s just not a guarantee, and when you think you can hunt scent free you get busted…and then slowly but surely you burn out your hunting area and make your hunting worse. 

Today, I still take a shower before every hunt.  I keep all my clothes clean as I can get them.  I don’t pump gas or fill diesel in my tractor wearing my hunting clothes.  I store my hunting clothes away from household scents.  You get the picture!  BUT, each time I take to the field I assume I smell like a bloated dead goat, as if deer hated the smell of bloated dead goats so bad that it would be impossible to see one if they smelled me.  I’ve learned how to use the wind and wind currents like thermals to actually and totally make it possible to not get smelled.  Yes, reduce your scent load, but hunt, scout, hang cameras, and access your property like you stink bad…really bad, and you’ll have more success.

3.  Aiming Center Vitals

If you miss a deer, or worse yet wound one that you can’t recover, it is an awful feeling.  Most hunters have been there.  I know I have.  Not aiming center vitals with archery equipment seems so wrong, it makes common sense to aim in the center of the heart and lungs right?  The problem with aiming center vitals is that unlike a 3D target, deer move.  It used to be that I would either hit my deer perfect (center vitals), I would hit them high, or miss high right over the back.  I didn’t know why and my solution was to just practice more.  Modern video equipment has changed my views on where to aim for about the past 15 years.  This is where I was able to watch frame by frame filmed hunts where I shot deer perfectly, hit high, or missed high.  It wasn’t long until I figured out what the problem was.

Deer have an incredible ability to react to the sound of anything…like a bow being shot.  In almost no time, literally hundredths of a second, they can react to a foreign sound and flee the scene.  When they hear a bow being shot, more times than not they will react by fleeing the area.  What happens next is what is getting hunting in trouble…when a deer wants to flee quickly, the first thing that happens is they drop to load their legs to run.  This dropping action is causing archery hunters to hit high or miss whitetail deer.  Once you understand what is going on, the fix is really easy.  Aim low!

Most archery hunters today are very accurate with their equipment being able to consistently hit small groups in their effective range.  The critical adjustment to avoid high hits and misses is to aim low.  For me, this is a heart shot.  I’m holding very tight to the front leg crease, and in the bottom third…right at the heart.  If the deer makes no movement, it’s a perfect heart shot.  If they start to drop, or significantly drop, the arrow finds its way into center vitals.   It is such a simple concept and based in physics.  This one simple adjustment to aiming lower can have huge results in how well you are hitting whitetail deer.  I can tell you this, I’ve had the luxury of watching dozens of my own hunts on video, and more often than not deer will drop and load their legs to get ready to run at the sound of my bow.  It doesn’t matter if they are calm, stressed, if I stop them with a soft grunt…they just want to flee when they hear a foreign noise like a bow.  Remember to aim low!

4.  Hunt Your Top Spots when Hunting is Best

Everybody knows that you should save your top archery spots for the best days to hunt.  Everybody knows this.  We are told by every expert, every TV hunting show host and personality that waiting to hunt our prized stand locations for that perfect cold front or peak rutting activity is prudent and critical in our successes.  I knew this once too.  I even preached it.  But there are very good reasons not to do this. 

First, I grew out of this tactic when I killed several great bucks on days that were the opposite of perfect.  I’ve also witnessed activity of huge mature bucks on days that were supposed to be bad.  Sitting out those days or purposely sitting a stand you feel has no chance….means you have no chance.   Second, I don’t hang or place blinds in areas that I would say to myself “I’ll just put this here so I have a place to go when the hunting is bad…to save my good spots”.  With the exception of observation stands, every set I put in has the potential to by a killer spot when I hunt it, as long as I’m hunting it with the correct wind and access.  If you find yourself not hunting certain stands because you don’t want to burn them out too early, or you’re saving them for when the hunting gets good, the problem might be access to that stand or it’s location to begin with. 

There’s also the issue of the working class or weekend hunter.  Suppose you are working full time, and have only limited time (let’s say weekends only) and maybe one week of vacation to hunt.  If you were trying to hunt only the famed cold front, and there were only 5 significant cold fronts in that season, and only one of them landed on a weekend off, can you see where self-limiting could be an issue?  Now contrast that with a full-time hunter who can hunt every day all season long, it might actually make sense for that hunter to self-limit how often and where they go.  Most hunters are weekend hunters or slightly luckier, which means being much more aggressive on those few days you can hunt might actually help your chances.  Again…making sure to have enough stands for every wind and great access means you can hunt great stands all season. 

And then there’s the issue of the sport we love.  The last thing I would choose to do is self-limit my hunting by not going at all or only going to poor locations unless some weather pattern or hunting app told me the hunting was going to be good.  If you are hunting smart by using the wind to your advantage, placing stands for great access, and using woodsmanship skills like being quiet, not moving around on stand, and avoiding being busted, you can hunt hard in great spots all season long.

We can avoid making mistakes if we can learn from what hasn’t worked in the past.  For me, I have learned that relying less on gadgets has made me a better and more successful hunter.  Using the wind to my advantage instead of thinking I can eliminate scent has gotten me more opportunities on big deer and has kept me from burning out my hunting areas.  Aiming for heart shots has almost eliminated misses or pour hits on deer; and being aggressive and planning my sets for season long hunting has kept me into game all season long.  If you have things that work for you, keep doing them—even make them better.  But if you are not successful year in and year out, take a look at what isn’t working too!