second guessing how to stop it!!!

[shaman]

It sounds like you'll be hunting close to the truck for a while. That needn't be too much of a handicap. I've hunted as close as 40 yards from the truck and gotten two of my biggest bucks that way.

Remember that this is all a game of probabilities and tendencies, not hard-fast calculations. Bucks are a lot like sub-atomic particles. You can never predict their movements and their exact position with certainty. Heisenberg, the father of Quantum Mechanics could have been a deer hunter. If you think of it that way, it is easier for your gut to take it, and the recriminations of second guessing are kept to a minimum.

For those of you who do not mix particle physics with deer hunting, let me explain. There is a probability that a deer is in its bed. You can calculate that if you know when it last fed. The deer may be feeding; there is a probability for that. It may be on the move between bed and food. There is a probability that the deer is in your living room. It is small, but calculable based on observed data. A good physicist or a good deer hunter can only calculate the most likely spot a particle or a deer can be. If you decide the deer is going to be somewhere and it is not, you have just conducted an experiment. You have added data to your base of knowledge. It does not mean the experiment has failed.

When you, Luvhuntin, say that you've narrowed things down to a few funnels and pinch points, you are describing an experiment. You will test the hypothesis that deer moving from one energy state to another (feed to bed or bed to feed) will transition through a given field (gee, even the terms seem to blur) Okay. Go test that hypothesis. If they don't show up, go look for why they did not show up and form a new hypothesis to test.

The only room that then leaves for second-guessing is if you see that the mountain of experience you have amassed so far indicates you go one place, and you go taking off in another direction, because your gut tells you to. You can hunt in your Living Room. A deer may end up there, but the probability is very low.

Take yesterday for an example. Angus (#3 son) and I were out for KY Yute Season. It's mid-October. The rut is not fired up yet, but bucks are beginning to trail doe. I wanted Angus to get a chance to see deer. We could have been in the stands near the acorn trees. That was where they were feeding. However, I knew the deer would undoubtedly show themselves in the fields as well. I picked a ground blind overlooking two fields with productive oak trees along the edges. Sure enough, the deer stayed back in the woods for the most part, but they came out three times into the fields over the course of Saturday. All told, we probably saw a dozen deer. Two were bucks and there was another one that came by the blind a couple of times and grunted, but did not show himself for a shot. If I had gone to the stands by the acorn producing trees we might have seen deer or we might not.

[kellory]

Edison failed 10,000 times before he made the electric light. Do not be discouraged if you fail a few times.

Washington was a failed farmer, who was declared a bad risk by the farmer he borrowed from.

Lincoln tried and failed many times before he succeeded.

What can I say? You're in good company.

[luvhuntin]

Well i made it through a week of work. Had the knee drained then refilled with cortisone on Wednesday I`m not a fan of any kind of "modern medicine" but for as good as it felt before i went to the doc i thought I`d give it a one time chance. i just hate what it does to cartilage when overused. it worked very well actually, it feels better than it has in years.according to the doc there is a very very small tear in the meniscus. but if it feels good, use it, is his opinion at this point.

So, to the hunt! I`m going to have to take it a bit slow on the new ideas and advice I have gotten from everyone but hopefully I will hang a stand or 2 this weekend & be ready for the major cold front that is coming our way next weekend hope the forecast holds up. thanks to each and every one of you for the advice. I`ll keep you posted on how it`s working out, hopefully with pictures.

[deerslayer333]

Ouch i feel your pain with that knee thing since I'm just now getting over my left knee bike riding incident. September 8th of 2011 i was trying to get into bettr shape for deer season and decided to take my dog for a bicycle ride well I tried to stop with the front brakes while my dog tried to pull me like we were in the Ididerod and over my handlebars I went and landed all my 220 lbs on all my left knee and landed on the sidewalk at age 36. Hope your recovery is faster than mine is I still have pain with certain movements. Good luck and recover quickly.