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Here are some excellent Whitetail tips from Sports
Afield magazine by John Wootters!

Whitetail Wisdom for the Ages


1) The first and most important "secret" should be
the most obvious: The activity most essential to
deer-hunting success takes place between a hunter's
ears--not in his boots. Hunting, especially for mature bucks,
is far more mental than physical. Most of us can't run a deer
down, but we may be able to think our way to getting the
drop on him. With a thorough knowledge of local whitetail
habits, state of rut, terrain, weather, deer responses to
hunting pressure, moon phases, and the status of
seasonal food and water resources, a hunter can churn out
good predictions--sometimes spookily accurate
ones--about when, where, and how to hunt. Without that
knowledge, he's back where we all started--stumbling
around in the woods, hoping to run into a buck by
accident...and accident is an unreliable partner in an
enterprise as subtle and complex as a deer hunt.

2) It sounds too simple, but the greatest secret to
shooting a big buck is not filling your tags with little bucks. If
you dump the first thing with antlers that trots by each
season, you'll probably grow a long gray beard waiting for
your wallhanger. Old bucks are scarce everywhere, and live
according to very different rhythms from those of young
bucks and does--which is why it's easy to be out in the
garage skinning a forkie when the mossyhorn ambles by
your vacant stand. Learning to pass up immature bucks is
the most basic step toward taking that career deer of your
dreams.

3) Our deadliest weapon is an understanding of
the process hunters call "the rut" in all its phases and
manifestations. This is the critical component of
buck-hunting knowledge, ecspecially when the target is a
mature buck. For half a century I've watched our body of
knowledge about the rut grow and change. What "expert"
deer hunters taught me about the rut when I was a boy was
a pretty primitive and in some ways skewed version of
whitetail reproductive rituals. It may be that 50 years from
now hunters will find themselves looking back on the states
if today's knowledge with amused condescension, but we
can only go with the best information available. It's out there
somewhere in the veritable avalanche of whitetail how-to
being published these days. The problem comes from
sorting out the real McCoy from the, er, Meadow McMuffins.
Beware of false prophets. I regularly read discussions of
the rut that include statements I beleive to be the exact
opposite of the facts. Accept nothing blindly (not even what
you find here); compare authors' statements with your own
observations. You'll soon identify those writers whose
reports agree best with what you see happening in the
woods and whose theories, explanations, and advice offer
helpful insights for your own hunting. Ignore those who only
boil the pot--merely filling white space month after month, or
rehashing their own or others' material. Beware pundits
who reveal a very narrow regional focus, ecspecially if that
focus is not on your region. Keep in mind that the timing on
the rut varies as much as a month or more with latitude and
other factors. In my home state of Texas it's usually almost
over by opening day (first week in November) in north,
central, and northeast texas but still at least a month away
from ending in the famed Brush Country of South Texas.

4) Equipment does not kill bucks; hunter
know-how does. This means that the most powerful and
accurate long range-rifle wearing a spage-age scope is
useless in the hands of a hunter who does not know how to
find a buck. Likewise, rangefinders, grunt calls, decoys, the
slickest new tree stands, the current "irresistable" scent, the
hottest camo pattern, the latest canyon-crawling ATV...none
of these--nor any other technological wonder--will, by itself,
get you a buck. They're useful aids for a skilled hunter, who
knows them to be simply refinements and not basic hunting
techniques. Even the best of them are not substitutes for
knowledge and personal hunting skills. I hate to say it, but
you can't purchase skill; you can only buy the means to
apply your own skills more effectively.

5) Weather, though certainly significant, is probably
much less so than we've believed. Like all wildlife, deer are
tough animals, able to live and function in an often-harsh
environment from which they have no escape. Certains
activities must go forward, regardless of weather. They
have to eat and find water. Their biological programming
insists that they participate in the rut, not just when the
weather's nice but whenever the rest of the local herd does.
You may, therefore, find a whitetail on the move even when
you think it's too hot or too cold or too windy for deer. A
plummeting barometer just before a cold front comes close
to stalling herd activity, and days on end of steady rain will
sure slow them down. Bitter weather can keep deer in their
beds all day, but only when the cold is truly abnormal for the
region. But most of the weather "rules" of deer hunting are
violated pretty regularly by the deer themselves. Just one
example: I've often found lots of bucks out and about during
a windy, dry norther when the orthodox wisdom says the
strong gust wind should suppress movement. In each
case, the rut was peaking and it was cold--but not
unseasonably so. In other words, the bucks' drive to leave
no doe unbred just overwhelmed by their traditional dislike
of howling winds. This reminds us that no single weather
parameter perfectly predicts deer activity; we have to
consider all factors together to make an educated guess.
Prevailing weather conditions, therefore, may alter your
hunting location or method but should not keep you in camp
except perhaps in extreme circumstances. I've killed
several of my finest whitetail bucks on days when, due to the
weather, I almost didn't go hunting at all!


6) Moon Phase, on the other hand, may affect deer
movement even more than we thought. The trouble is, we
do not understand exactly how the moon exerts its influence.
There are plenty of personal opinions and theories around
(often conflicting and a few preposterous)...but not much
hard evidence. I beleive I do possess hard evidence, in the
form of a database of correlated moon and deer-movement
observations comprising more than 13,000 individual deer
sightings collected over 21 seasons. It's much too
complicated a subject to examine here in detail, but based
on the information in my database I strongly urge you to pay
attention to the moon phase. Plan your most important
hunts during dark-of-the-moon periods if possible, and
never miss a chance to hunt on a morning following a
moon-dark night. If you have no choice but to hunt on a full
moon, be sure to remain on stand alert at least through the
midday hours.


7) The critical knowledge most often disregarded
by hunters is that the gun was personally, recently
sighted-in with the identical ammunition to be used in
hunting. Guns--Even today's super-rifles in plastic
stocks--do change their zeroes unexpectedly and for
mysterious reasons. Occasionally these changes can be
quite large--even large enough to miss a deer altogether at
50 yards. Although it's admittedly better to miss cleanly than
wound, neither should occur. If it does happen, I guarantee
it will always be on a deer that's terribly important: your only
chance at a buck all season, or maybe the biggest buck you
ever saw. The only assurance that it won't happen to you
comes from sighting-in your rifle carefully, yourself...and
then checking zero at least once a week throughout the
season! I do this without fail, even with rifles that haven't
changed zero since I've owned them.