Failure To Fill Tags by James L. Bruner
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There are copius measures with which one will use as benchmarks to gauge success and failure when it comes to filling your deer hunting tag at the end of the season. Some are very subtle instances which, when tallied together, will spell inevitable failure. Others are as clear as the tail of a buck running for the next county but are often overlooked or regarded as regional or traditional hunting techniques. In either scenario the end result is another year passing without fresh venison in the freezer. For this article we will open the pages and dive into the blueprint of mistakes that many hunters follow with great anticipation for consistent failure in the field.

Scouting

One of the most common infractions, if you will, is the announcement of arrival or presence of danger in deer country. It’s a repetitious story I hear played out year after year where the hunter carefully scouts a possible hunting area with the precise adequacies of a fine tuned predator. Cautious to leave any scent or create a disturbance he, or she, runs a plethora of advanced safeguards to ensure minimal impact on the game animal or environment. In the process the hunter observes the surrounding information with meaningful intent and creates the judgment call that this is indeed the place to setup for the upcoming season. All is well at this point. Two days later the same hunter returns on an ATV with a hunting blind, saws, feeders, and a small bottle of cover scent to mask the area that has just been turned into a tract of forest laden with all the warning signs that tell the local herd that this area is no a longer safe harbor. It goes without saying that when you have the knowledge and forethought to carefully scout your hunting area in a concise and pre-determined manner that these actions should carry over into the hunting aspect for optimal success. Not to say this will not work in your favor but it is counterproductive to your scouting. Treat your hunting as you did your scouting and you will view more deer in a natural state and in turn provide yourself with a more relaxing shot on the game animal.

Case in point.

An old friend of mine hunts a sprawling farm country that holds a substantial deer herd with numerous large whitetail bucks. If you were to view the antlers hanging on his wall you would undoubtedly be impressed. If you were to view his daily hunting routine you may think otherwise. This consists of driving his pickup truck out into the field a short distance from where he has a solid hunting shack situated in a very visible location. There’s no hiding the fact that it’s there by any stretch of the imagination so the deer have become accustomed to it. The following process is to shovel the corn from the back of the pickup roughly 80 yards from the hunting shack. Next you slam the tailgate and drive home, which is roughly 200 yards, and then sneak back on foot and wait. In reality you cannot ’sneak’ back to begin with as the shack sits in the center of a field. Regardless, the theory is he announces his presence by the food that has just been delivered and the danger has passed by the sound of the pickup leaving the area. All must appear well in the eyes of a whitetail, right? The hook comes when he walks back out to hunt shortly afterwards. At least in his eyes. And this does work for him to a certain extent yet overtly contradicts the days he spends on the same small tract of land glassing for deer before season in preparation for the upcoming hunting season. It’s irrelevant. He’s going to hunt the same spot year after year using the same technique. Although this is an expanded view of the previous scenario it is actually one in the same using a larger scale. You are probably wondering how this intersects with a failure to fill his hunting tag.

Let’s remove this traditional method he uses, and, the tract of farmland, and, set the hunter in an unfamiliar rugged wilderness area. I can say firsthand he hasn’t developed the skills to efficiently scout and pursue whitetail deer on the level where most of us begin and end our hunt every single year. In short, he’s lost and looking for answers. Although all the signs and information is on the ground staring back up at him he is unable to digest what the big picture says. Your scouting is learned through the years of gathering information and, again, if you effectively treat your hunting and scouting as one in the same you greatly increase your percentages of success.

Misuse Of Scents

Mixing scents with surroundings can be rewarding in both the attractant and masking qualities that deer find acceptable. The whitetail, for all it’s built-in survival mechanisms, is also a creature of curious habit but it is my interpretation that there is a distinct line of perception when evaluating the possibility of danger. In an extreme visual sense you could take this very pointed research I performed years ago in order to gauge the immediate response level of perceived danger.

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