White-tailed Deer Hunters....Your favorite tip

[yelp]

All of you seasoned veterans out there What is the best tip you can give new white-tail hunters.  What works for you...smelling like pee...rattling...scent free...what is your best tip for success

[Gutpile]

Know the area you hunt very well and be persistant. You can smell like *censored*e and it wont matter if you follow those two rules. That's assuming were talking rifle hunting. I know nothing about bow hunting.

[Todd_ID]

Hunting whitetails is all about patience.  If you can stay in one place all season you'll know most of the deer in the area and have your choice of shots.

[Machias]

Hunt funnels, get in a treestand and NEVER hunt that stand when the wind is wrong.  Try to be scent free as possible.  Rattling and grunting are effective, especially pre-rut.

[CP]

Whitetails have two traits that can be exploited to your advantage:

1.   When unmolested they are creatures of habit.  Once you determine their habits and patterns it’s fairly easy to get in the right place at the right time to make a kill.
2.   They are very curious.  They will readily check out new sights, sounds and smells.

[Colville]

Depends on the pressure your area gets. In high pressure public forest areas rattling and grunting have never worked for me. I hunt a very high pressure area. What has worked there is avoiding the obvious spots.  Stay away from relatively young clear cuts, meadow openings near the road, hunting right on the tank trapped or berm'd roads. Hunters have a bias for the most visibility, "covering the most ground" within their rifle range. It's a poor whitetail bias in public wooded areas imo.

Find someplace where there are cuts or obvious feeding areas then look for a steep slope or ridge that takes some effort to get into that is at some distance from that cut. New cuts attract the deer but no decent buck in a high pressure area will be anywhere near it in daylight. But he might start staging his way along the ridge or thick slope in the direction of the feed area before dark. Find game paths in this area and look for the rubs or scrapes to tell you he's there.

If you can find an old cut down some long since closed road and then hunt the ridge above the cut you'll likely be alone and see game most days. Cuts that are too old to hunt with tree stands or to offer a lot of view from it's edges stop getting hammered because people can't see into them. But the deer still love them. There's always going to be a game path on all of it's borders. Find a cut, one where the top of the cut is near a ridge top. A cut full of 15+ foot trees offering no visibility and hunt the ridge line edge of the cut and you will find deer. Any little seeps or saddles on a ridge like that will have scrapes in it as the bucks work that ridge edge checking on the status of does. Even without the cut just off ridge edges where seeps and saddles reach the top are solid spots.

There's lots of strategies that'll work and there's enough Whitetails that you can get lucky sometimes doing it wrong. By the time I hunt late the deer have been hunted several times and except for the does just don't show much in the obvious spots, aren't pattern-able and don't respond to calls/rattles.

[Gobble]

Colville,
I agree with you 100%. Thats how I shot my 5 x 5 in your backyard last year. Stay away from the areas close to the roads, don't be afraid to hike to get away from the general crowd the big bucks won't be anywhere near them. I shot my deer last year after I hiked up 1500 feet and caught him bedded at about 10:00 am, he had no clue I was there. In fact he bedded so ofter in this area that his bed was worn completely down to bare earth and looked like he had been using it for years.

The key is the find an area where the people aren't and you most likely will find deer.

[Machias]

I seem to have pretty good luck with whitetail bucks and grunting.  Rattling not so much in the sense that you see on TV, more like antler tickling, is very effective in the late season in the eastern WA.  I also only hunt public land and completely agree you have to get away from the roads!!

[yelp]

great advice guys...what about scents..anyone use them...doe pee.... tarsal....mock scrape...keep it coming I am soaking it up.  Thanks again.

[Tall Chief Hunting Club]

with white-tail being very spooky animals i try and stay as scent free as possible. i try and stick with scent killers and earth smelling scents. i know guys who are successful with deer scents but i always think that if they smell another deer they will be LOOKING for that deer and i don't want them looking for anything. just my thoguht

[PolarBear]

Stay scent free (no cover scents at all) find a good spot and sit still and quiet as long as you can stand it.  Most hunters push whities away from them and dont even know it.

[Colville]

totally agree with PB. I search for my likely spot, I use no cover scent. I try to sit it relative to wind and where I think the approach is and then I sit there as long as i can stand it. If you have a good spot and the wind is ok put in a few days and you'll be rewarded. It can be tedious but I've had damn little luck trying to still hunt the buggers. I only do that on high wind days to cover some of my sound.

[MountainWalk]

A trick an old man taught me was, like these other folks are saying, find your spot according to wind direction, then get an interesting book with very small type. Read it, and when your done with a page, just lift your eyes to scan, then go back to reading. Ive done it and it helps keep your squirming down and helps the time pass. I cant stay in one spot all day withot doing this. It sounds silly, but give it a try if you have a hard time sitting still.

[Coasthunterjay]

well as said before when you are rifle hunting you arent usually taking a 50 yard shoot, otherwise you might as well be archery hunting...which where i am going with this is at longer distances you really dont need to worry about being scent free.....but then again take in consideration that you arent the only human a deer has smelt, so sometimes you get one that doesnt care of your smell and then one that had an experiance in the past and well hates it....
dont use any scent stuff except for scent killer stuff.....

MY TIPS FOR SUCESSFUL WHITETAIL HUNTING......

DONT WORRY ABOUT ANYTHING.......HAVE FUN!

use common sence.....hunting isnt brain surgery.....

if you want any size deer then shoot the first legal one you see....if you want a little bit bigger then wait......patience will make you sucessful but remember not to be greedy.........

If you hunt in a tree stand you limit your self to the amount of deer you will see......hunt stands(or edge of big clearings and Wheat fieldws like i do) in early morning and late night while deer are moving and then get the heck out and push them around during the day.......Recommended you not push by yourself......

and my number one thing would have to be........get to know the land you hunt on......
but with that, know where your deer are going when you scare them out or you see another group of hunters pushing them out.......the hunters pushing may not know where the deer are going, but knowing could help you put a deer in the freezer and onto the plate.

and finally, know what you are shooting at.....to many times i see people who just assume that WT have eyeguards and count a forky hoping it has eyeguards to make it legal and it isnt.....

count all your points and make them count.......and remember have fun!

I hope some of this helps, and if you have any more Questions feel free to PM me your questions and thoughts and ill see if i can help........have fun man and dont let any of those mulie hunting , whitetail haters get you down......lol........

[BC CHASER]

I like to sit in my spot all day with very little movement.  I want to build a blind in my spot but I am not going to beable to make it there this year before the season.  I did not know much about whitetails until 3 years ago when I got the fever.  The first day hunting them I shot a 147 5/8 5x6.  I found a clearing and sat until about 45 minutes before dark and he showed up.  I shot a 130 4x4 the following year in the exact same spot but he showed up at around 1 p.m.  As far as scent I do use scent killer but am not to sure on how well it works if you have been in the bush for two weeks.  I swear that they have a sixth sense as well.  My buddy and I were sitting in my spot when I turned really slow to find a nice 5x5 looking right at us.  We had the wind in our favor no movement and no noise.  He was 100 yards away and before I could shoulder my rifle he was history.  Sounds like there are some very knowledgable guys on here.  It is a lot of fun and you should see a lot of game.  I hope to make it back this year depending on how the high hunt goes.  I miss the snow and the amount of sign we see.