Deer and people are so much alike. There are many subtle similarities that never occur to the hunter, if they did the hunter would be able to see more mature bucks. The purpose of this writing is to enable you to focus on the many ways deer and hunters are alike. By doing that, we will begin to shed the myth that mature bucks possess some sort of super natural ability that enables them to evade the hunter. You have already learned one important aspect concerning the hunting of mature bucks … focus … focusing your mind upon the pursuit of your quarry. Deer hunters have a hard time focusing in on how a deer’s mind works; because around deer season every year our brains become bombarded with articles from hunting magazines. Many of those articles are written by good intentioned writers quoting from other writers and using opinions formed from studies. The adding of two and two together seems to be the filler many writers use for their articles. Far too many of them haven’t ever hunted deer other than being placed in a stand before the red of dawn and picked up after the black of dark. A few real facts are thrown into a story about some successful hunt the writer has been on, and by the time you finish reading the current years published stories the facts have become all mumble jumbled. Contributing to the problem, of unraveling the facts, many well intentioned writers simply don’t have time to stay in the woods, living with deer until they learn what alarms or does not alarm them. I promise you if a mature buck is not alarmed you will see him … and if he becomes alarmed you may never see him. Many professional hunter-writer-seminar speakers portray mature bucks as possessing some sort of super natural ability that enables them to turn nocturnal at their own free will. A hunter's patience and persistence suffer as a result. Let’s get that nocturnal business out of the way first. Nature gave the deer a very small stomach. That is typical of all rumen herd animals. A deer can fill its small stomach in a very short time then lie or stand motionless while it belches up its food, chews, swallows and digest it, until it empties its stomach. This is a process that takesaround 4 hours, then the stomach must be filled again, or the deer will go hungry. The matter of the fact is, about every 4 hours a mature buck is going to move around a little and fill his stomach … 24 hours a day! Take that to the woods with you and see if you can’t stay on stand longer. If deer have to eat ever 4 hours, you may ask: Why don’t I see more deer when I’m hunting? All we have to do to see more deer is, be where they are when they are eating or digesting their food. The question then becomes, where is he? I will narrow this down a little further. During daylight hours a deer won’t be where he was during darkness and during hunting season he won’t be where he was when there was no hunting pressure. The point of this article is to teach you how to think like a deer that’s being hunted, rather than a hunter who is hunting. Before we can go any further I must digress. I wish to give you the basis whereby I have formed my opinions. After all, every thing you read about deer behavior will be some one's opinion … unless, that is, a deer wrote it. In 1969 I decided I was not hunting where the bucks lived because I had been hunting since 1958 and thus far hadn’t killed my first buck. My hunting career, in North Central Texas where very few deer lived was my problem, I thought. I had the desire to join a local hunting club with twenty members, holding a lease of 640 acres in North East Texas. The club had been operating for 10 years and the land they leased held a fair deer population. Besides that, 50 dollars a year, how could I refuse? When a vacancy came open in the club, I gladly accepted their invitation to join. However, upon revealing I was not very fond of the stand site I inherited — the unwritten law (don’t jeopardize my stand) was made clear to me — by the other 19 members. I began, by necessity, hunting where the other hunters could not or would not hunt. To the surprise of everyone I began killing bucks — some good racked ones — and became accepted by the others as “a good hunter.” Except for the area around my “inherited” stand, there were only two other places left for me to hunt in the whole 640 acres. One place being a huge thicket of dogwood, wild plum, sumac and berry briars, known to the club, as the “Briar patch.” The other place was a 50 acre swamp known as, “Flag pond.” The flag pond had a hump of high ground area between it and Big Pine Creek. A hunter must wade to access the high spot, but I was young and the bucks lived there! I never told anyone where I hunted. When asked, “Where did you kill ‘im?” my pat answer was “Why … did you see me?” I stayed on the lease from 1970 until 1982 and killed my one buck limit every year except the first year. I knew big mature bucks lived in the briar patch although I never killed one there. I would hunt through the briar patch, in the most obtrusive manner, known to deer. I never learned why I failed to get a shot at any thing but white flags, until years later when I learned to hunt submissively. It wasn’t until I read an article about a sagely old deer hunter who killed a big mature buck every year, that I knew why I was always successful hunting the flag pond. The Author asked the old man, “How do you manage to kill a big buck every year?” The old hunter’s reply was:“Deer aren’t smart, hoss. They survive by scent and sight, that’s all. Take that away from them and they ain’t any brighter than a cardboard box. It’s not intelligence — it’s hyper-sensitivity to predators, is what they got going for them. I always use the wind, worry only about human scent and sit perfectly still and then, of course, I only hunt where the big bucks live.” I immediately gleaned from the old hunter’s reasoning that I killed a buck every year because I hunted where the bucks lived. The real meat of the old man’s wisdom, the part about bucks being hyper-sensitive to predators, went completely over my head! Here is the kicker, so to speak. If you hunt were big bucks live and learn every thing there is to know about their bailiwick, your big buck hunting soul may be most wretched unless you learn to coincide with them in their bailiwick. You must learn how to get into their woods without them thinking you are their predator. You can do it! I will reveal to you the circumstances under which I learned how to hunt submissively and teach you the basics of what I term, “Submissive hunting techniques.” CHAPTER 2
May all your goings be downstream easy! Wildwood Dean, here ...