Book Excerpts
Table of Contents
Preseason Scouting
Scrapes & Rubs
The Rut
Deer Habits
Whitetail Body Language
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION & APPRECIATION o III
PREFACE o VIII
INTRODUCTION XI
SECTION I: BEFORE THE HUNT 1
CHAPTER 1 - PREPARATION FOR THE HUNT 7
CHAPTER 2 - PROPER HUNTING ATTIRE 13
CHAPTER 3 - HUNTING GEAR & ACCESSORIES 19
CHAPTER 4 - HUNTING & OUTDOORS INVOLVEMENT 29
CHAPTER 5 - CAMOUFLAGE 35
CHAPTER 6 - SAFETY 41
CHAPTER 7 - KNOW YOUR WEAPON 69
SECTION II: SCOUTING, WHAT TO LOOK FOR, WHEN & WHERE 77
CHAPTER 8 - PRESEASON SCOUTING 83
CHAPTER 9 o FOOD SOURCES 105
CHAPTER 10 - SCRAPES & RUBS 123
CHAPTER 11 - THE RUT 141
CHAPTER 12 - TRACKS EXPOSE DEER & THEIR ACTIVITY 155
SECTION III: DURING THE ACTUAL HUNTING PROCESS 163
CHAPTER 13 - SHOT PLACEMENT 169
CHAPTER 14 - DEER HABITS 177
CHAPTER 15 - WHITETAIL BODY LANGUAGE 189
CHAPTER 16 - UNDERSTANDING GOOD DEER MANAGEMENT 197
CHAPTER 17 - HUNTING TACTICS & STRATEGIES 231
CHAPTER 18 - DEALING WITH THE SCENT PROBLEM 267
CHAPTER 19 - WIND DIRECTION 275
CHAPTER 20 - YOUR TREE STAND & SET UP 281
CHAPTER 21 - STILL-HUNTING FOR WHITETAILS 291
CHAPTER 22 - STALKING A DEER 297
CHAPTER 23 - DRIVING THE DEER 303
CHAPTER 24 - RATTLING FOR BUCKS 311
CHAPTER 25 - DEER CALLS ARE VERY VALUABLE TOOLS 317
CHAPTER 26 - BOW HUNTING FOR WHITETAILS 321
CHAPTER 27 - MUZZLELOAD HUNTING FOR WHITETAILS 333
CHAPTER 28 - WHITETAILS WITH A RIFLE 337
CHAPTER 29 - RECOVERING YOUR DEER 343
CHAPTER 30 - FIELD DRESSING YOUR DEER 353
CHAPTER 31 - HUNTING ETHICS 363
SECTION IV: NOW THAT YOU HAVE YOUR DEER IN CAMP 369
CHAPTER 32 - SKINNING YOUR DEER 375
CHAPTER 33 - BUTCHERING YOUR OWN DEER 383
CHAPTER 34 - ROUGH SCORING YOUR BUCK 395
CHAPTER 35 - DETERMINING THE AGE OF YOUR DEER 411
CHAPTER 36 - WHITETAIL OVERPOPULATION VERSUS POTENTIAL EXTINCTION 419
CHAPTER 37 - THE CLOSE OF A SUCCESSFUL HUNT 423
CHAPTER 38 - TWENTY-FIVE GREAT VENISON RECIPES 431
CHAPTER 39 - POPULAR WHITETAIL DEER & OTHER
OUTDOOR/HUNTING RELATED WEB SITES 449
A LITTLE ABOUT THE AUTHOR - 479
BIBLIOGRAPHY - 483
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Chapter 8 (Page 83)
Preseason Scouting
In order to be a successful deer hunter every year, you absolutely must get out in the woods or field and do a sufficient amount of scouting. This should be done at various intervals throughout the year. There are several situations that can possibly change the deer habits from year to year and even from the last time you scouted to the next. You may think they are doing a certain thing in a certain area, but yet since you last scouted the area, the adjoining property may have been logged and they stopped approaching your area from that direction. The weather may have caused a drastic change in their movements. A forest fire may have consumed their food sources and cover. The only way you will be able to stay on top of their current activities is to periodically check their activities, by adequate scouting.
Scout several times throughout the year and document all of the different sign you find. Study these notes throughout the year and formulate your strategy, based on what you perceive the deer to be doing, by the time hunting season arrives. It's very important to determine their patterns in order to properly plan your hunting strategy.
Locating the deer sign is extremely important, but equally important is when or what part of the day or night it was made. All sign other than sign found during the heavy rut, should be related to the fact that normally the deer will feed at night, midday and very early in the morning or very late in the afternoon and bed down during the day with a few exceptions. This tells you what they are doing and when, so if you can add to this puzzle the 'where' factor, you can formulate your strategy. Scout for the current bedding areas and current food sources and find their trails into and out of these areas.
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Chapter 10 (Page 123)
Scrapes & Rubs
When hunting the whitetail deer, scouting is a definite pre-requisite for a good successful hunt if you omit luck from the scenario. Depending on what part of the season you are in, will determine what to look for when you are scouting. During the rut, you stand as good as or better opportunity to get a nice buck than any other time. The primary reason is that the bucks have one thing, and one thing only on their mind, and that is servicing those does. This fact alone makes them most vulnerable to us hunters. This is the time of year to focus most heavily on scrapes and rubs. Scrapes are especially pertinent only to the rut. There are certain types of rubs that you may find early on in the season, created as the bucks are rubbing the velvet from their racks, and also from the creation of signpost rubs. It is exciting, and always gets my adrenaline flowing, when I find rubs and/or scrapes especially in the same area.
Pay close attention to rubs when you find them, since they can tell you a great deal more than simply the fact that the deer was there. These various clues are revealed in the chapter on Preseason Scouting. Learn how to really analyze each rub that you find and make notes of your findings for future reference.
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Chapter 11 (Page 141)
The Rut
The most exciting time of year for deer hunting is during the rut. This is the time of the year when does come into estrous and the bucks become obsessed with the right to service those does. During this time of year, there is much increased deer activity. With both sexes at their peak sexual cycles, there are more deer killed on the highways, and more deer observed in general, because they tend not to concentrate as heavily on safety, but more on their sexual drive. This condition makes them much more vulnerable to us hunters and offers us our best window of opportunity to successfully bag them. This period varies somewhat from the northern states to the south, with our peak rut here in Tennessee falling around the second to third week of November depending on certain conditions.
There is a great deal more vocalization, body language, and glandular scent communication during the rut, between the bucks and the does. Whitetail deer have scent glands between their toes on the outside of each hind leg, on the inside of each hind leg, just below each eye, at the base of their antlers, and in the case of bucks, in the roof of their mouth, all of which are used for communication purposes, and especially sexual communication.
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Chapter 14 (Page 177)
Deer Habits
In order to be a successful whitetail deer hunter, you must learn their habits. You need to know what they are likely to do under certain circumstances, and why they are doing it. The whitetail deer is one of the most challenging animals you could ever hope to hunt, and probably the most challenging in North America. He will constantly surprise you with his ability to evade you in the field or woods, and for this reason, it is here on his own home territory that you must study him. If you are a fairly new deer hunter, spend a lot of time in the woods just studying him and his habits. Take a camera, field glasses or a spotting scope, a note pad, and your stand into the woods, and set up and spend hours getting to know the whitetail deer. You will never completely get to know him, but you will learn much valuable information to help you when hunting season comes around. Read books, watch videos, talk to veteran hunters, and absorb all you can to qualify yourself for the whitetail deer hunt.
Deer have some habits that are instinctive, others that are strictly rut related, some that are stimulated by hunger or thirst, and still others that are generated by their association with man.
Deer communicate through their scent glands, body language and actions, and their vocal sounds. These are all very powerful means of communication among the whitetail deer. We as hunters can learn a great deal from them about
their communication simply by observing them in their natural habitat. What you learn about their communication, will greatly enhance your ability as a hunter.
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Chapter 15 (Page 189)
Whitetail Body Language
A good whitetail deer hunter possesses many qualities and capabilities that have either been bred into him or learned over the many years of deer hunting. A serious deer hunter has spent many, many hours in the woods or field doing
nothing but studying the whitetail deer. If you enjoy something thoroughly, as most deer hunters enjoy hunting the whitetail deer, you can't help but become very knowledgeable on the deer. Sitting on a deer stand for hours and hours at a time, a hunter sees many deer and most of them are not the deer he will harvest, so a hunter has many subjects to study in their natural habitat and nothing but time to do it. The whitetail deer communicate in various ways and it is greatly to your advantage to learn all of them as early in your hunting career as possible. They use body language, scent glands, and vocal sounds to communicate with each other. All of these methods are very powerful means of talking to each other. Naturally we don't know all of their secrets, and never will, but here are a few of their communication abilities.
When a deer suddenly sees something, and isn't quite sure what it is, it becomes suspicious, and as a result will bop or dip its head up and down sharply a few times. Once they have satisfied their curiosity as to what the object is, they will either relax and begin their original routine, or if they suspect danger, may bolt and run away. Often as they bolt away, they will stop a few yards away out of sight and have another look and snort a few times before leaving the area.
