Center Feature:  

Making Your Own Luck
In the deer woods

By R. G. Bernier

Recently, I sat down to watch a cooking show. Can you believe it, me, of all people watching the Food Network. What caught my attention as I channel surfed was the spunky New Yorker, Rachael Ray, who routinely converts even the most mundane food into a culinary extravaganza and calls it, “delish.” Not to worry, there’s no threat of me being converted into a chef, nor do I have any desire to dabble in the kitchen. After all, I have a hard enough time boiling water without burning it and making toast still remains a challenge. So what was it that intrigued me about Rachael and kept me glued to the tube? My initial interest was captured by her enthusiasm. She was so excited about what she was preparing, and once I got sucked in, I was amazed at how she could turn a simple macaroni and cheese dinner, one that could have been dumped out of a box and fixed in five minutes, into a mouth watering cuisine. She was making her own version of the dish, from scratch, and made it look fun in the process.

The outcome of this 30-minute meal was not the result of random chance any more than luck played a part in Lance Armstrong winning the Tour de France seven straight years, Big Papi routinely hitting mammoth game winning home runs for the Red Sox, or Donald Trump making another multi-million dollar deal. Unless your number comes up on a roulette wheel, or a pair of rolled dice hits snake eyes, luck has little to do with your success, even as a deer hunter. The reason Rachael’s meal came out with perfection simply put: She was prepared, had all of the right ingredients, is experienced, implemented the plan flawlessly, was not afraid to make changes in mid-stride, and she didn’t settle for anything less.

Those hunters that routinely hang big bucks, year after year seldom, if ever, rely on luck. In fact, you won’t find them carrying a rabbit’s foot, or relying on magic from a four-leaf clover tucked into a hatband; they’re hedging their bets based on the following logic.

Being Prepared

No athlete, regardless of his or her sport, embarks upon a contest ill prepared and expects to win. Can you imagine a boxer getting into the ring for a championship bout without first training? It would be laughable. Yet, each fall many deer hunters head off to the woods with high hopes and little preparation.

Over the years I have heard countless sad sagas of how the buck of a lifetime was lost due to preventable negligence on the hunter’s part. For instance, one “sport” had the biggest buck of his hunting career standing less than fifty yards away with nothing between them but air. When he shouldered his rifle and pushed the on button to his red dot scope, no dot appeared, thus rendering his weapon essentially useless. Unless of coarse you think by firing rounds, hitting who-knows-where will be enough to scare the buck to death. Failure to replace batteries in his scope from the previous year cost him that buck.

And then there’s the guy that never quite got around to bringing his malfunctioning rifle to the gunsmith. Every so often the firing pin would not strike the primer correctly preventing the gun from firing. Well, that trivial matter had long been forgotten until…yup, you guessed it, until the buck of his dreams gave him that one broadside shot and the gun misfired.

Check, recheck and insure all of your hunting equipment is functioning properly. If you have any doubt about anything, replace it. Enough unforeseen things can go wrong on a hunt; the last thing you want to have happen is something that could have been prevented.

The Right Ingredients

Just as any good recipe needs all of the correct ingredients, and the right amount of each, the deer hunter must be able to recognize good deer country and have an understanding of how whitetails are using the terrain. A lot of time and effort is wasted each season because a hunter is hoping to find deer in places they are not.

Deer are drawn to specific geographic features for a reason; these natural land formations meet their needs and provide them security. Whitetails are never far from water. Streams, rivers, small ponds and bogs all provide thick underbrush, succulent plant life, and a safety net. You won’t be able to see nearly as far as you would on an open hardwood ridge, the walking will be a lot tougher, the going much slower, but isn’t that why it’s called hunting rather than shooting?

Whitetails, like all creatures have to eat. In fact, short of the rut, it is the number one motivator that drives a whitetail. Their stomachs dictate where they reside. Deer tracks indicate where whitetails have been, food determines where a deer will eventually end up. Knowing what the resident deer are feeding on will reveal a multitude of trails leading to their culinary preference.

Experience

Experience is really the best teacher. Whether the lesson comes first hand through trial and error, or from some other credible source, each stage in the learning process should build upon the last. Be inquisitive enough to ask yourself a multitude of questions and work hard to validate the reasoning behind your findings. Don’t just take things for granted; there is a reason why a whitetail is behaving in such a way at a specific time and place.

For instance, why is that buck crossing an opening in broad daylight? Can I bank on other bucks to do the same on a regular basis and doing so at the same time of day? Look for patterns. Why do deer seem to prefer this trail during the morning hours? Why am I constantly jumping deer from their bed in this specific location? Could it be because it’s a bedding area? And if so, why do they prefer this location and from which direction are they entering the bedding grounds?

Implementing A Plan

All of this cumulative knowledge will then help shape a game plan. Based on current conditions, temperatures, phase of the rut, what you know about whitetails behaviorally, and the nuggets that have been uncovered in your recent forays should provide a sound plan of attack. And isn’t it more rewarding to initiate a plan that actually comes together rather than capitalize on a situation where you were simply in the right place at the right time?

Changes

The best athletes are those that can perform well under pressure and who are not afraid to change their game plan when necessary. In football, this would be known as an audible. The quarterback walks to the line of scrimmage, looks over the defense and realizes the play he had called in the huddle is doomed to fail. He quickly shouts out a different play, the ball is snapped and the defense is suddenly caught off guard.

If the wind is not right, abort the initial plan. If a set of big, fresh tracks are discovered crossing a snow-covered road while driving to where you were going to hunt, park the truck and strike off on this buck. Just because you’re supposed to meet Joe at a prescheduled time doesn’t necessitate leaving a favorable position that suddenly has erupted with deer activity.

The Outcome

You only get out of something what you put into it. No one is going to succeed each time, but those that are diligent, and work hard at perfecting the craft of killing deer on purpose will do so far more often than those that don’t. These are the second milers. These are the hunters that will not settle for or be satisfied with knowing that just being there is enough.

Those hunters that constantly see, study and understand deer behavior are the ones making their own luck in the deer woods. In addition to these virtues—hardihood, patience, and capacity to take disappointment—they acquire by first hand experience a type of knowledge of whitetails that is lost on many of their counterparts.

And in the process, they find the greatest satisfaction bestowed upon a huntsman.