Blacktail Hunting Tips

1. Shiny sunlit faces and white hands scare game. Darken or camo your face and hands and stay in the shadows while moving. Avoid any quick sudden hand or body movements.

2. While you hunt concentrate on what your doing and where you're at. Letting your mind drift or thinking about other things besides the hunt will cause you to lose your edge.

3. To insure correct shot placement create your own "mantra". I repeat over and over, "pick YOUR spot , choose YOUR shot". This helps keep me from making bad or hastily placed shots

.4. Get your hunting gear ready well before the season. Put your clothes and boots in bags or containers with vegetation common to the area you intend to hunt to help disguise your human odor.

5. PRACTICE-PRACTICE-PRACTICE!!! Well before the season spend time with your choice of hunting equipment. Know where and how it shoots. Don't switch guns or bows without re-familiarizing yourself with your new equipment.

6. Slow and steady movements always beats fast and furious. Stop and smell the roses. See and enjoy all that you see and observe around you. The taking of the game should not be the sole reason we hunt. SEE- OBSERVE-ENJOY!

7. When you get back to your camp, car or home each evening, take notes on what you observed. Go over these notes year after year. You'll be amazed at what you forget and what you'll learn by keeping good notes.

8. Do your scouting several weeks prior to the season. Let the area settle down before hunting. Set up stands and cut shooting lanes or access trails well ahead of time.

9. When you cut access lanes to your hunting location you will find that the animals also begin to use them if they are situated correctly. If you want to keep the game off the trail to keep them from picking up your scent, take a couple of high sections of wildlife fencing and block off both ends of the trail a hundred or so yards from your stand location. You can easily remove them and put them back when you are using the trails.

10. Always carry some simple survival items with you. At a minimum carry a lighter and extra water proof matches, and two of any of the following, (dry pitch impregnated wood chips, small candle, Vaseline impregnated cotton balls stored in an old film canister, pyrogell or some of the small chemical fire starters, strips of bicycle inner tubes or various other fire starters), 2 foot section of surgical tubing (this can be used as a tourniquet, used to fashion a sling shot, used as rope to tie a splint around a leg or arm or use as an extended straw to reach hard to reach water sources) heavy duty closeable plaster freezer bag to use as emergency canteen, small sharp, pocket knife, 40 to 50 ft. of light weight nylon twine, 2 pair of throw away plastic gloves to help keep hands warm and dry, small compass and small 99 cent cigarette pack sized plastic poncho. Keep all of these items in a heavy duty clear baggy sealed with duct tape. Carry it at all times and don't open it unless it is an emergency or you'll find it short when you need it. Also carry at least enough spare batteries for one change for your flashlight. You do always carry a flashlight don't you!!. The new small compact led flashlights are excellent and have a very long battery life and basically unbreakable and lifetime bulbs. Keep these in a separate baggy and renew as needed.

11. Don't rely on your unmagnified eyesight even when you're hunting in thicker cover. A GOOD QUALITY LARGE OBJECTIVE binocular will allow you to see much more and actually look into and through intervening brush. 7 x 50's are my favorite for this type of situation. These larger objective lens binoculars will also allow you to see much better and much longer in deep wood situations with limited light situations and also allow you to take advantage of the first few precious minutes of shooting light in the morning and the last few valuable minutes of shooting light in the evening. More bucks are seen and or killed during these low light times.

12. Use a binocular support of some kind when using binoculars so that they don't flip flop around and drive you crazy and also scare game. You need a support which will keep the binoculars tight to your chest, allow you be able to use them with a limited amount of movement, be quiet, take some of the weight of the binoculars off your neck and not restrict your use. I've developed a strap which can be used on all binoculars, accomplishes all of the above requirements, is very inexpensive and simple to use. If you're interested I talk about them in my gismos and gadgets section at the back of the book. There are also a lot of other similar products on the market, just be sure that you use one of them or you most likely will not use binoculars for very long.

13. Pause before entering any opening in cover and thoroughly glass the cover on the other side, before proceeding through this area. Deer many times watch their back trail from protected cover. Better yet rather than proceeding through this more open area, work around the edges of the cover, keeping in the shadows and glassing continually as you move. Don't be in a hurry. You're not in a race. In this game the slow cautious one wins!!

14. Deer choose different bedding locations in the evening versus day time use. Evening beds are located in open exposed areas with good visibility in all directions. Day time beds are in heavier cover but which allow good protected visibility. Deer will typically bed with heavy protective vegetation behind them and with the prevailing winds at their backs.

15. Deer will bed with the prevailing wind at their backs so during our mid day still hunts, hunt into or crossways to the wind and concentrate your search in the direction you feel that the wind is coming from. Don't ignore other areas but pay special attention to the areas which you believe are most likely to hold game.