Editor’s Note: Two ways of bagging a buck include luck, which is a factor that a majority of hunters in many areas depend on solely, and experience—knowing the buck, his movement patterns, his behavior patterns, and what causes him to move from one place to another. Being able to predict deer movement is an important trait of the hunter who bags a buck year after year. Only a small amount of guesswork is involved in this type of hunting. The sportsman takes a set of given facts, studies the terrain, the available food, the deer’s mating habits, and the weather in his region, correlates them with deer signs he finds where he’s hunting, and comes up with a hunt plan that logically will put him in a position to see and have the best odds to bag a buck on any given day he hunts.

The hunter’s mind is the ultimate weapon. Like an onboard computer, an outdoorsman feeds in data; the information is processed between his ears, and the answer to where the buck probably will show up on any given day is fed out and put into the outgoing box of his intellect. Let’s look at the factors that are fed into a knowledgeable hunter’s brain and see how he comes up with hunt plans that consistently pay off in venison.

To be a consistently successful deer hunter, you must adopt the philosophy that scouting is far more critical to hunter success than shooting. The effective hunter will spend 80 percent of his time in the woods scouting and trying to determine where and when a deer should show up, and only 20 percent of his time in an attempt to take a deer. Less-knowledgeable hunters will spend 80 percent of their time wandering around in the woods or sitting on a tree stand because they find a few deer tracks or some droppings there. Then these same people will only spend 20 percent of their time trying to predict where the deer will show up.

However according to avid, successful deer hunters, the most important deer tracks to the hunter are the ones the deer is standing in when the hunter’s ready to shoot his gun or his bow. As evidence of this fact, in most sections of the country, you’ll find or know several consistent hunters who seem to always bag their bucks within the first 2 hours of the opening day of deer season. Although luck plays a role in their success, if you question them closely, you’ll learn that before the season has opened, they’ve spent days and weeks studying the deer, picking their stand sites, and paying close attention to the details that result in successfully arrowing a buck.

Dr. Robert Sheppard of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, a longtime deer instructor at several deer hunting schools, says, “There are no shortcuts. To regularly take deer year after year, you have to spend more time scouting than you do trying to shoot a deer. There are three major times for scouting that will consistently pay off in deer year after year for the hunter. These three scouting times are before the season, during the season, and at the end of the season.”

Looking for more content? Check out our YouTube channel and watch “Tracy Drury’s Hunting Family” by John E. Phillips.

Expert Guidebooks on BowHunting Deer: Best Sellers

How to Hunt Deer Up Close with Bows, Rifles, Muzzleloaders and Crossbows
To be more successful as a deer hunter, learn all you can about the animal, the wind, the temperature and the techniques required to get in close.

In this book, you’ll hear about some of the best hunters in the nation who know how to hunt deer close, including one of the greatest archers who ever lived, Howard Hill.

John E. Phillips also shares his own deer stories and hunting tips from 50 years of experience.

VERSIONS: AUDIBLE, KINDLE & PRINT

---

Many deer hunters have told me: “I want a deer-hunting book with regular hunters who are just like me” and “I want a deer-hunting book with the best advice from the best professional deer hunters in the nation”. 

Mossy Oak’s Pro Staff is made up of some of the nation’s best deer hunters, professional deer hunters, and TV hosts whose names and advice often are heard in deer camps all over the nation. But many of the more than 1,000 Mossy Oak Pro Staff hunters are everyday, weekend, and vacation deer hunters just like you.

Whether you hunt private or public lands, you’ll find tips and tactics in this book from the Mossy Oak Pro Staff that will increase your odds for locating and taking the bucks of your dreams. 

If you’re serious about learning to hunt and take deer with a bow, if you’re looking for a different strategy that will help you identify and harvest big bucks, if you want to learn from your misses as well as from the shots that connect, and if you enjoy being in the great outdoors that the Good Lord has blessed us with, then this book is for you.

VERSIONS: AUDIBLE, KINDLE & PRINT

How to Hunt and Take Big Buck Deer on Small Properties
In this book, you’ll hear from 14 hunters who either have gained permission or leased properties as small as six acres to as much as 250 acres, and how they consistently take older-age-class bucks off these little lands.

VERSIONS: AUDIBLE, KINDLE & PRINT

---

Jim Crumley’s Secrets of Bowhunting Deer
Using a black magic marker and a gray work jumpsuit, Jim Crumley of Buchanan, Virginia, drastically changed the nature and purpose of hunting camouflage when he created the first sportsman’s camouflage – Trebark. Crumley’s love of bowhunting and his desire to be more invisible changed hunting clothing forever. 

In this hunting guide, he shares the wisdom that he’s learned throughout his lifetime about how to be a hunter, how to find a deer lease, how to scout for deer, and more.

Special features include how to:

• Have a magic 60 acres to hunt 
• Decide the best equipment to use
• Find deer year-round
• Locate land to hunt
• Know the best place to put your tree stand
• Get bucks within bow range

VERSIONS: AUDIBLE, KINDLE & PRINT

---

How to Hunt Deer Like a Pro
How do you know if the land you hunt has a trophy deer on it? Wildlife manager Bob Zaiglin, of Uvalde, Texas and Jim Crumley, the father of modern-day hunting camouflage, tells you how to find out. GPS can make finding and taking that trophy buck easier. This hunting guide will teach you how to hunt big bucks where no one else can find them, how to call deer, and how to become versatile as a deer hunter, so that if one deer tactic doesn’t work, another one will.

In the chapter, “How to find Bucks at Scrape,” Dr. Keith Causey, retired professor of Wildlife Science at Auburn University, describes the best way to hunt a scrape.

Brad Harrison of Neosho, Missouri, is a nationally-known videographer, professional deer hunter and master at calling deer. Another master is Will Primos of Primos Game Calls. These two experts will tell the best deer calls and when to use them in this book.

And for over 20 years, Bo Pitman, lodge manager of White Oak Plantation, has been studying deer movement patterns. He explains what types of conditions are best for predicting deer movement.

VERSIONS: AUDIBLE, KINDLE & PRINT

---

In Chapter 10, Jacob Lamar tells you his tactics for consistently taking older-age-class bucks on public lands in several states. Chapter 11, Bob Walker explains how to find places on public lands where you can hunt that 99 percent of the other hunters never have considered hunting. The Bonus Chapter with David Ramey tells you how, where, when and with what equipment to take big Kansas bucks on public lands by hunting in 100-degree weather when others won’t hunt.

Chapter 13, Mark Drury, his family and his guests take mature bucks every season by having more small places to hunt rather than one large property. Drury explains the strategy of having satellite farms to hunt that only may be 50-150 acres each or less. Chapter 15, Pat Reeve, who hunts far-northern states and Canada, says, “I don’t like hunting for mature bucks until the weather is 20 degrees or less.” Chapter 4, Dr. Larry Marchinton says that funnels are the most-reliable stand sites to hunt for big bucks and tells why. 

VERSIONS: AUDIBLE & PRINT

Tomorrow: Predict Deer Movement During the Season