Welcome to my world of white-tail deer hunting

Welcome to my world of white-tail deer hunting.

I have been an avid hunter since I was a young boy and remain as passionate about it to this day. I think one of the things I find the most challenging is trying to figure out this highly intelligent white-tailed deer. What is it about this amazing creature that has almost driven some hunter’s crazy with their infatuation of trying to outsmart the “The Elusive Brown Ghost”?

There are many factors that a hunter needs to keep in mind when trying to outsmart a white-tailed deer. You first have to really get into its everyday routine and learn it activities; where it sleeps, where it goes to find food and water. Does it have the same route when going back and forth from its bedding area to where it plans to eat and drink? Does it move about these places at a consistent time each day?

Today we are very lucky to have items that will help us in figuring out a deer’s daily routine without them even knowing it. We now have trail cameras that can be placed next to a food source or along what we think might be the deer’s walking trail. The trail cameras today are equipped with highly advanced infra-red sensors that are activated by motion. When movement is detected it will take a picture that automatically puts a time and date stamp on the photo, this gives you the opportunity to learn the deer’s travel times. Once we have figured out this part of a deer’s activity, we can move on to the next step of tree stand placement.

Before we can setup our tree stands, there are many factors that we have to still break down. The white-tail deer is gifted with many sensors that help it detect danger. Smell, sight, hearing and instincts really make this animal very hard to outsmart. Keeping the deer’s high sensitive instincts in mind, we need to be aware of the wind direction in the area. Setting up the stand, downwind of the deer’s travel route, is very important. This will help with the task of trying to outsmart the deer’s nose. Next we will need to look for the shortest and quietest route for walking to and from the ladder stand, this way we don’t give our location away and spook the deer into running to the next county.

Now that we think we might have outsmarted the deer’s smelling and hearing sensors, we still have a couple more factors that need to be figured out, like how to defeat the deer’s sight and instinct sensors. We always want to keep as still as possible while setting in a tree stand. We also need to make sure that we are hidden as good as possible, because the white-tailed deer can pick up on the slightest little movement that might be made in the stand. If you think that just because you are setting 15 – 20 feet off the ground that a deer will not see you, well you are sadly mistaken. The white-tail deer keeps its sensors on high alert every second that it is awake; I even think they’re on alert while they sleep.

With all this in mind, now we have to find the perfect tree that meets all the requirements to place us in the right place at the right time, to take on this incredible creature.

Let’s keep this hunt going. Next we’ll get into checking out what it takes to prepare ourselves and our gear before the sun comes up.