Becoming a better hunter: Before you can become a better hunter, you must understand the different pieces of the puzzle that make up a good hunter. There is a specific pattern that you must follow in order to truly become a good hunter. Hunting It can be divided into several small parts, let’s call them “The Hunting Essentials”. I am going to use deer as our main theme because it is the most hunted big game animal in North America. Now this chart showing the basic essentials is not listed in order of importance or in any order, what is important to realize is that there are many functional parts to being a good hunter.

Exploration: Exploration is by far the most important piece of the puzzle, because if you can’t find the game, nothing else matters. Scouting must be scientific and methodical so that you can consistently win a game the size of a trophy. The first thing you should do is create a journal or buy software that helps you keep track of your browsing data—well, not just track it, but make sense of it. In years past I have developed certain spreadsheets etc. to help me track and use the information I have collected. I have included these spreadsheets in The Whitetail Blue Print training program. But you can modify them to suit your needs.

Once you have a journal, you can start your 4 phases of exploration. Let’s mention them to give you a good overview:

1) Area selection
2) Research Area
3) Boot to the ground
4) Selection of the stand site

area selection, This is where I begin my quest to locate big bucks. I start wide and then narrow it down as I progress by meeting certain criteria. I start by looking for what land I have available to hunt public, private, WMA etc. I then take those areas and start my first cut by taking the state harvest reports and looking at where the most deer have been taken from over the last 5 years and correlating that to the areas available to me. Then I’ll see the number of registered hunters. in those areas and make another cut. I will then correlate the number of deer-related car accidents in those areas. My next step is to look at the numbers of P&Y or B&C entries over the past few years in those areas as well.

Investigation area:I then select 2-3 areas that meet my criteria, then track down the wildlife manager for those areas and call them to pick their brains. Once I’ve heard what I wanted to hear, I’ll get a topographical map and photo from Ariel from The Hunting Channel, where I’ll start looking for landscape structures, water holes, feeding areas, and bedding. I will plot various points on my map and record them on my GPS

Boot to the ground: Now that I’m armed with my maps and points, I head out to the field early in the morning for a chance to watch the game from a distance. Record all the behaviors and patterns you can observe. (Deciphering what usable information is the key to this part of the exploration, and I can’t teach you that in one article.) food and droppings. Aging everything I meet. I record all my observations. Once I have all my information and located the sign I’m looking for, I started looking for my booth site.

Booth selection: I don’t do a stand in one day or accomplish the above in one outing, also remember this is a summary of the hunting project. Now that I’ve clarified that once I’ve found trails or areas worth investigating further, I set up my trail cameras trying to cover as many areas and angles as possible to make sure I’m armed with all the information I can get. I always use cameras that record the time, date, moon and temperature, it is important information to know. Because you need to be able to match this information to the time of year you’ll be looking for that location. Now that I have my photos I can make a decision about which spot is best, the last thing I need to do is pick a tree that best meets my needs.

Once I’ve done that, I hang my stands as early in the season as possible and create a reason the deer will want to come to me. There are certain tricks etc. that don’t require baiting to get more deer to come through your stall, which I discuss in another segment of The Whitetail Blueprint. If you want to know the secrets of what I look for when choosing an area, what landscape structure. I look on a map, how can I tell what bedding cover or feeding areas on an aerial photo or how to age the sign, which sign is important, which trails to pay attention to, how to judge scratches and scuffs, how hang your trail cameras, pick a tree and much more to keep an eye out for in my book.