The old sayings that tend to stick around have the high odds of sticking due to the truth they hold. Without a doubt, if I only knew during my formative years of hunting, and I consider that from when I started up to my mid-40s, what I think I know now I most certainly would have tagged more bucks than I was lucky enough to tag! There is no doubt about it.
That said, it actually was those mistakes that profoundly impacted future successes. Over time, those failures taught me to not be the least bit afraid to make them, as I learn next to nothing and my abilities merely stay the same, on those rare times everything works as intended. The mistakes are not really knowing what I was doing are how I learn and really take my game up big steps.
Here are just a handful of examples of how failures turned into repeated successes!
1. Overhunting Stands
It took well into my late 30s before I had close to enough stands to match the amount I hunted.
By that point, I was supremely confident of a couple things regarding stands. I’d already consulted for outfitters long enough to learn fast that most every stand site is hot for a period of season, and that’s it. Hunt it much at all before it heats up and one risks educating deer after we leave the woods, merely from the odors left behind. Hunt it after the hot period and most of the deer are gone, at least during daylight.
Contained in that was the other thing I was confident of. Each time we hunt the same stand we risk making it worse, due to the deer’s abilities to pick up our scent for as much as days after we have left the deer woods. Add the two and it only makes sense to hunt stands when hot and leave them the rest of the year.
Unfortunately, between what I could buy, build and make, I never had more than a dozen until somewhere north of 35 years of age. I hunted at least five days a week many of those years.
Additionally on the unfortunate side, I also knew well that trashing the woods to put up stands during season wasn’t a great move. I’d eventually figure out ways to minimize, by prepping the trees and removing the stand, well before season opened. Then, merely arrive 30 minutes early, quietly slip up the stand and hunt it.
The other thing it forced me to learn was how to craft the approach, hunt and departure without getting winded or seen. I’d learned long ago that busting deer trashes areas. What this taught me was that if the deer do not see me, hear me or smell me, as far as they are concerned, I was never there.
Under those specific conditions, I even learned that “overhunting” hot stands only makes sense: so long as it’s done safely. Assuming one can, why in the world should you hunt less action somewhere else or where the buck you’re after isn’t even around? So long as one learns how to and successfully pulls it off safely, overhunting the hottest stands only makes sense.
Being forced to make the mistake of hunting limited stands too much forced me to learn all of that!
2. Scrapes
I also eventually learned that timing plays a huge role in scrape hunting. That was an easy one to learn, as hunting stale scrapes or those only hit after dark becomes increasingly obvious with each deerless sit. Frankly, it doesn’t take many sits to turn near pure excitement of finding and setting up on that scrape into pure frustrations at just watching squirrels and birds.
Those frustrations and deerless sits both taught me that there is a window when certain scrapes get hit most during daylight and that a bunch of the most promising looking scrapes just next to never get visited during legal hours at all.
They also drove me to figure out the “trick,” which would eventually be to find the most pounded scrapes before spring green up. Those overly large and/or dug out ones that also happen to be within deer cover or small openings, were the ones to focus on. Set them up early and leave them alone until the last week of October, or whenever the peak scrape phase is rocking in the extreme north and south of the Midwest.
3. Rattling
Calling and rattling taught me similar lessons, as well as a bonus that has been huge for me. When I was first exposed to calling and rattling, they were mostly done separately and at a ridiculous level. The thought was that because the bucks we’re hunting right before, during and after the rut, are moving near constantly, we needed to call or rattle with no more than 5 minutes between sequences. Anything less was too big a risk of the cruising buck never hearing it.
The abject failures of those attempts were painful and humiliating, watching bucks I hadn’t seen before the next sequence exploding as I’d start smashing antlers or grunting for the next minute. Still, other hunters did it very successfully, so it had to work.
I continued faceplanting until I found the formula that works best for me. My success rate at blind calling and rattling is well below 2%. It’s actually 0% when tagging the blindly called in buck, as I have never shot a buck I blindly called or rattled in.
The formula for success for me is no blind calling and rattling at all, as I spook way more than I ever bring in myself. Instead, I only do it when a buck I see is out of range and heading away, with next to no hope of swinging back.
When that occurs, I grunt loud enough for him to hear, if possible. If he can’t, I jump straight to the louder antler clashes. Assuming the grunt stopped him, I wait to see if he comes in. If not, I hit him with a couple doe calls and observe. If still not, I snort wheeze and observe. Still not, the moment he turns away, I smack the antlers. That has worked somewhere over an honest 10% of the time for me, ending with me placing a tag.
Still, the truly invaluable lesson for me in all that was simply that different things work better or worse for different hunters. That’s very often because they are hunting very different areas with deer having very different experiences. However, it’s also often true for two hunters in the same exact area and chasing the same exact deer.
Different things merely work better for others. It’s up to each of us to find our own sweet spot, regardless of what does and doesn’t work for others. Repeatedly faceplanting when calling and rattling taught me that invaluable lesson of finding my own sweet spots in all of this stuff, which has been huge for my enjoyment and success.
4. Let ’em Go
Speaking of my own personal enjoyment, “letting ’em go so they can grow,” really didn’t do much for the overall joy factor. Don’t get me wrong. Once I realized my mistakes, I truly love herding cats, errrr, I mean trying to manage free-range deer. Yes, it’s nearly as effective as herding cats, but I’ve always loved challenges that are somehow at least somewhat achievable.
The parts that drove me nuts were all the propaganda and attitudes. The first obvious one I learned is that once a deer in the Midwest hits 3, with bucks in the north and south generally needing to get to 4, double-digit percentages will add less than an additional 10 inches of antler for the rest of their days, no matter how old they were lucky enough to get. In some areas it’s considerably higher, others closer to 10%, which really stinks when he’s the one you limp that extra year into, with dreams of booners dancing in our heads and the next year looks the same.
The other part that’s not mentioned, at least accurately at all, is how ridiculously often bucks go down in inches from one year to the next. It happens due to weather, injury, a drop in food quality, increase in stress and just from rutting hard the year before. In fact, when population dynamics are truly rocking, I have a lot of bucks do next to nothing or actually go down in rack size from 4 to 5 years old. The reason is because the 5 and 6 year olds, as well as the healthiest 7 year olds, all are still stronger and better developed. So, the 4 year olds nearly kill themselves during the rut, typically resulting in poor, no or negative jumps the next year.
The other mistake was mine alone. The more I invested into these animals the more I tricked myself into thinking they were somehow mine. So, as they died of disease, other hunters, vehicles or whatever, I took it very personally. Getting over that and focusing on what I can actually control has increased both my sanity and joy factor immensely!
Getting rid of the faulty data I was fed and embracing reality has shot my enjoyment factor in herding cats up a very big step, as I understand that letting ’em go doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily grow, (even when they live and neighbors are almost always going to kill deer I wish they didn’t).
Embracing that makes losing deer and them not making the jumps I’d hoped an expectation much more easily swallowed. Besides, it taught me that with some practice, you can spot the long, skinny tines, junk starting to form on the racks and other promising traits that offer better odds of good jumps. As important, those disproportionately smaller racked 3-year-olds and older bucks are great ones to shoot, as odds are higher they won’t jump much.
5. Social Stress
Of course, not knowing a thing about social stress and how it impacts near everything in bad ways was a mistake most all deer managers make. For whatever reason, we believe more is almost always better. After a point, it sure isn’t, as it applies to deer numbers.
When hunting, we most all want a deer woods filled with as many deer as it can hold. The problem is that deer populations even close to the habitat’s carrying capacity, and the number of deer the habitat can allow to survive are in extremely tough shape. In fact, due to less stress and an increase in resources, deer populations at half the habitat’s carrying capacity can offer the same annual harvest numbers as populations at 100% carrying capacity, only with healthier deer and larger racks and body weights.
For as little as it is ever discussed, social stress is a burden on the whitetail world. Even the most dominant bucks and family groups are typically unhealthy in those settings, as they must work so much harder to get fewer and often less quality foods. When close to 100% carrying capacity, the only deer foods that flourish are the worst of the worst, as the good and better is all wiped as soon as it pops.
At half that level, the food is more abundant, allowing for higher quality foods to flourish better. Due to the better foods, more access to cover and less social stresses, does tend to have more twins and triplets. The increased nutrition allows for her milk production to keep up. Natural mortality rates are way lower and both racks and weights increase. More is definitely not better, once over 50% carrying capacity.
Understanding that has taught me to keep the deer numbers in balance with the habitat. In doing so, I tend to be much happier with my results, year after year, as the deer also sure seem to be.
6. Overhunting
Lastly for this piece is that I made the mistake of just plain hunting too much. Back when I held a real job, I arranged so I could get to work at 9 AM during season. That allowed me to hunt every morning of every week of season, and I strived to do just that.
The kids were still short and my wife was running crazy with jobs, school and kids, when I first made this my profession. I knew leaving for hunts wasn’t fair to any of them. So, I spent every second of legal light in trees I could, whenever on a trip. I needed to get home ASAP!
That pressure kept building and building until I wasn’t enjoying hunting much at all. Even filled tags were more of a relief that I could race home to give the wife a sanity break.
It was when I started honestly questioning if I’d made a mistake that I had a come to Jesus chat with myself. I gave myself permission to hunt when I wanted and not when I don’t want to.
The funny thing is that my success rates doubled from then on out. Hunting more wasn’t doing myself, my family or my success any favors. Hunting less, yet striving for quality sits, keeping my head in the game at all times, has resulted in a ton of fun and way more success!
Conclusion
I am so ridiculously thankful I didn’t just know all that stuff, as I’m supremely confident that I learned way more from those past, current and future failures than I ever will from success or simply knowing. It’s those failures that put our education on steroids and allows us to find our own sweet spots in all of this!
— Steve Bartylla is host of DeerTopia TV on Pursuit Channel and also the D&DH online video series, “Grow ’em Big!” and “Hunt ’em Big!”
