Now that I have a few minutes, here is what I think leads to consistent success. I use "consistent" because it differs from "blind" or "dumb" luck, which of course is its own kind of success. I shared a story about this once before around here, but I'll recap to show what I mean. I have a cousin who has been on a grand total of one deer hunt in her life. After constant nagging, my uncle took her at noon on Sunday of gun season when it was in the 50's and they sat on a hay field. She shot a 140" 10-point that was laying under a long deadfall in the middle of the field. She's never hunted again. I've spent thousands of hours in the woods and still haven't killed a 140. Who is the more successful hunter?
In my opinion, and this is all just opinion, what it takes to consistently kill mature bucks is, in order of importance: Access. Time. Skill. Money. Luck.
I've been kicking around the idea of an "article" for several months entitled "Killing Mature Bucks: It doesn't require skill..." However there is a small contingent of members (and former) who feel I have no right to give advice, let alone have the audacity to write such an article, so I've never completed the writing. The gist of the article is that killing big bucks DOES NOT REQUIRE skill and that other factors, e.g. access and time, far outweigh skill. There are a few perennially successful deer hunters here in Ohio that we all know, whose formula for success weighs heavily on access and time, with skills we could all acquire in short order if we had the money. So what's their secret? Pour the corn to deer in areas with quality deer. Find a target. Back track him using cameras until you know where he tends to bed. Park ass in stand until he comes out to head towards the corn. Does this take skill? Sure. Does it take the kind of skill that someone possess who hunts big timber without cams or bait, yet consistently kills big deer? Not even close. Skill is relative and it's a matter of interpretation. My opinion, again just my thoughts on the situation, is that 95% of the guys on this forum could trade places with those guys on their land, with their resources, and their time and accomplish the same thing. Are they better hunters than the rest of us? Perhaps. But I'd challenge them to trade places with some of us and do that same thing on the same consistent basis. It simply won't happen in most cases.
Access. To kill big bucks consistently, you need to have big bucks to hunt consistently. Beyond that, you need to consistently have big bucks to hunt that ARE NOT pressured to the point of vacating the area and/or going nocturnal. I feel this is one of the biggest factors in consistent success. I routinely have nice deer to hunt and routinely, those deer go underground around mid-October. I hunt a highly pressured area and left alone, I feel I'd be more successful. 80 acres is a small patch of ground to hunt, especially when you understand that we rarely hold deer. What deer I do get to hunt, are there for food or passing through. If they are getting pressured outside our farm, they stop coming to our farm and that makes them next to impossible to kill. Or, I just suck. Maybe it's a combination of the two. Probably is... Not all access is created equal and even good access can turn sour under pressure.
Time. I goad my wife all the time that if I only worked 3 days a week, I would get a lot more shit done. Including running cams and hunting deer. One particularly successful guy most of us know, gets all (or most) of hunting season off (or at least he used to). Talk about increasing your odds of success! For the weekend warriors, it is next to impossible to manipulate the odds in your favor like someone can who works favorable hours/days/shifts or has tons of time off. As long as you're smart about your presence in the woods, it's a huge boost to your odds of success.
Skill. I touched on this earlier. Is it a requirement? Depends on the skill. Assuming a certain level of weapons proficient and ability to keep your shit together during the moment of truth, then “skill” becomes more a question of putting deer in front of you, or you in front of deer. Our discussion on baiting, and my earlier examples of successful hunters using camera and corn, points to the difference between getting deer in front of you, versus you putting yourself in front of deer. They are not the same. One relies on manipulation; the other, skill. So what is skill in this equation? To me, it is woodsmanship. It is the ability to read terrain, sign, weather, and a host of other environmental influences in order to put yourself in the path of naturally moving whitetails. What is manipulation? Piles of corn. Cameras. Mock scrapes. Food plots. All those things that become man-made environmental influences that put deer in front of us. Does manipulation require “skill”? It requires “skills”, but not “skill” as it relates to woodsmanship. At least not to the same degree as it would without man-made influences…
Money. This is an easy one. If you have expendable resources, you can afford more/better land, more corn, more/better cameras and more time. Money tips the scale in favor of the man who has more whether it be in life, or in the woods. Money can create opportunity and people with enough money can be successful even if they couldn’t “hunt” their way out of a wet paper bag. We all know someone with an impressive trophy wall that has zero woodsmanship.
Luck. I list it last because it is the one thing we cannot control. I have one example I go to all the time for this. Greg Fleming is one of the most knowledgeable hunters I know. If you took this entire forum to big woods country and dropped them off with just a bow, my money is on Greg to be the first guy to locate a nice buck. My money is also on him to have the strangest, weirdest, most horribly timed luck. Conversely, there are guys, and we all know one, who can go sit in the wrong spot, at the wrong time, send an arrow off a limb, through the guts and nick the femoral on the way out, letting them drag a Booner home. Luck is a bitch. Or it is your best friend.
So there you have my take on the formula for “consistent” success. Why the quotations on consistent? Well we could have an entirely different debate on what is consistent. Does that mean every year? Is there a certain score/age that qualifies a buck as a “success”? Is it all just a matter of what it means to you and be damned public perception? Those are all questions for debate another day…
