Top 10 Deer Hunting Mistakes

now you know this this YouTube channel is a whitetail strategy channel I try to bring my experience to the videos and and help you oh and I hope if I'm not helping you guys out there then you know what good is this and so so many different types of strategy lots of strategy I have it broke down and whether it's mocks grapes or water holes or nocturnal bucks creating daylight parcels working on small parcels food plots trail cam strategies just so many different segments on my playlist on my channel and you know I think I have enough content I can go on for years and part of that's because you never get to a point where you know know everything I'm in the field scouting whitetails on 70 80 90 clients per year to the tune of about 900 so far in 26 states since 2005 so you imagine when I'm scouting those properties it's not that I'm just scouting the properties I'm scouting the properties with a landowner in a lot of times they have a history of what's going on in that property so we come to a certain spot that I think about should bed and he's either betting there is not because of these reasons and so you get to learn over and over and over again and so I want to keep bringing strategies to you for a long time to come because I keep learning over and over again every property I go to I learn something every hunting season I learn more I love hunting publicly and I love hunting small property so I can really see how deer move because if you go buy a lot of the scientific studies they're based on large tracts of public land or large tracts of private land and that's meaningless when it comes down to 500,000 acres let alone 100 acres 40 acres 20 acres or even on public land where you're going in and trying to hunt a specific block you know how do you do that how do you actually hunt that property lots of strategy but there's lots of mistakes that can be made and so I'm hoping you can learn from my mistakes and in I like talking about the mistakes too but it's not as glamorous of a subject you know I'd rather talk about how to hunt a nocturnal buck how to place a trail camera to keep from spooking deer how to build a water hole food plot how would hang a mock scrape what mock scrape strategies work the best but there's a lot of mistakes that can be made some of the lump them all quite a few in this video top 10 deer hunting mistakes they are in no order and they apply to a lot of times gun season bow season whatever and so these are the top ten that I came up with and I was actually sitting around with Diane my wife talking about these the other day kind of going through and she's a new hunter I mean we're both the same age but she's hunted three years and I've hundred thirty three years and you know many levels of experience difference so I'm always trying to teach her her much as much as I can but there's just information overload a lot of things so we we try to build on what we can top ten deer hunting mistakes and I'm hoping you can learn from these number one and again in no specific order is I find far too many times people are sitting in the same stand in the same location all day and that's not a good thing there are very few stands and there are stands out there especially during the rut where you're between bedding areas and food sources all together you're in that perfect exa movement where you're not out in the field you're not in a bedding area but you're in movement in between and you're hunting funnels where amateur block could come through at any time and it's appropriate to hunt those all day but most stands if you're hunting on food plots if you're hunting on AG fields it's probably an evening hunt you go in there in the morning you don't see anything till the afternoon you just wasted your morning if people say well if you're out in the woods you're not wasting time you know all that kind of stuff if you're in if you're fishing you're not wasting the time whatever it is but if you're limiting your success by your choices for how you hunt then to me you're wasting your time and so a lot of times food source stands our afternoon stands unless or a small food source and a pass-through area of all that movement between bedding areas and major food and then especially major food sources and then morning stands or related to bedding and if you think about it even if you're in the perfect bedding stand I shot my buck this year between bedding areas he was cruising he would not have been down on the food plots at that time and but at the same time even though that's one of my favorite stands the closer it gets too dark in a lot of my morning stands they're not appropriate because every deer is leaving those bedding areas and going to major food sources and so if you're at the bedding area or between bedding areas and unless you're on the way to a major food source then you're you're actually seeing less movement the closer it gets too dark so you can maximize your potential by actually hunting different stands based on morning or evening it's gun season close it's just around the corner right now and gun season is one of those times where I like to sit any blind all day long I go to the thick stuff I go in areas where I believe I matter BOC is going to come to which is not out in an open food plot which is not out an open AG unless he's running through at daybreak lightning speed trying to get back to thick cover where I actually want to be an opening day so think about that that's one of the biggest mistakes I see people make and they they even brag about it online sometimes we're heading to an all-day stand your years of snacks here's the gear and they go to that stand and portions of that day are a waste of time maybe for that stand you might be able to find something better somewhere else for you to the morning or evening because last time stands or either morning or afternoon stands this is something that so many products are thrown at number two is thinking you can fool a buck amateur box knows while you're on the deer stand maybe you could limit it a little bit but depending on how you hunt where you haven't we have 40 minute walks to the stand up Hill 450 feet in elevation sometimes and so we get pretty sweated up once you're on stand I look at like that's my safe spot that's my spot where I shouldn't spoke deer because I'm hunting one side of the stand or my winds are being controlled by thermals and they're taking them out of the deers nose no matter what is done in that stand for that period of time in the morning or evening and so thinking you can fool a deers nose in stan is a huge mistake and that'll lead to a lot of failure it's not a recipe for consistent success people say I used XYZ product the wind was blowing right at it and I still shot that buck well was it really blowing at it were their thermals involved was he did he not care because there was a doe involved it was the rut there's so many other different factors but if you rely on a product to eliminate your scent while you are understand you are going to fail where you can actually help yourself especially when it comes to scent is the amount of scent you leave in a trail to and from your stand in that spider web spider web of hunting access trails keeping clean boots clean clothes cleaning pants and limiting the grass and weeds and debris that are either trails and then I do like using a Sun elimination spray we use a limit shield I've used sun elimination spray since late 80s when I could barely afford them we talked my dad into buying one one time he had a sweat suede jacket type thing and he spilled some gas on it and we were like well if you buy the Sun elimination spray you can spray and you know what it did take the gas spray away so that was pretty interesting but we kind of talked my dad into that one because he had that gas on his jacket and that was one way to get some you know a parent to buy a hunting Sun elimination spray when they're actually not a hunter when you're 15 13 years old around that range but you can control your scent on the way to and from stands but boy really try not to live by and a cop you know count on every year that you're gonna eliminate your scent ma on your stand because it will lead to a lot more failure than success the tracking too soon I just had a number one blood tracking fail when it comes to deer and it was a real popular video but I see this I saw it again on Facebook on a friend's post just yesterday but we're backing out that's a good thing he shot a deer in the evening you're backing out because you realize it was a bad hit but if you've already tracked the deer a mile or two or you've already tracked the year an hour or two or it even tracked him just 20 30 yards in that direction you jump them one time if he's a gut shot deer liver shot deer and test and shot deer that deers gone and he'll run 500 yards I mean think about it most white tells when they're spooked they don't just run 200 yards look around and you know go about their business they're running a quarter mile to a half mile and they're gone that is a huge mistake and leads to the majority of deer they're not found are not recovered because people are tracking too soon it's always better just to back out in fact sneak down the tree a half hour after the shot an hour after shot walk directly away and just assume that it's a bad hit if you didn't see it fall you didn't hear the crash my son Sam shot a real nice buck on our 25 acre parcel that we bought this year and worked on and I thought it was a bad hit at the shot in fact in the on the video you can even say I think you missed but he got the heart and it was a low shot and the deer ran we could hear a crash in the video within six seven seconds that deer was was gone so we knew we can go look for that deer at that point or otherwise we just waited till the next day but please wait folks please even just going to look at your arrow unless you can see that the deer went out of view you know around a corner behind a thick line of brush Cedars switchgrass went over a rise behind a ridge and you know that he can't see you for that first twenty thirty forty RG and go examine your arrow if it's laying there in the first blood but if he can see you he's gone the quarter-mile half-mile think about that and and if you do spook them don't think well he's probably just in the next bed and you know 100 yards away think about that I need to expand my search grid grid to that four hundred five hundred yard mark and and maybe even up to a half mile and locate that deer number for overhunting stands and blinds so you know I'm the forty eight thirty acres a couple that we have where we have tree stands we have eleven tree stands and two blinds on the eight acres of cover that we have on 40 acres it's all open fields and we have four blinds and four tree stands on the 25 acres that we have we have three stand locations and then we have one blind that's in place already and we'll have another blind and so having multiple stands with access and entrance to those stands and knowing that every stand has its purpose in its place is a really solid way to hunt we have upper elevation lower elevation on our land and then east and west one of the main properties you hunt so a lot of times we'll hunt upper left if you just look at it like you know you're looking at it as a picture we'll hunt upper left then we'll hunt lower right then we'll hunt upper right then we'll hunt lower left we try to skip around even if we're hunting every other day because those access routes are all different and we can sit on different stands from warning evening all different kinds of wind and so we're constantly hunting fresh stands because we haven't hunted a particular stand in a week or two at least and sometimes a sees them going into a stand tomorrow with Diane where I shot two bucks last year I've said at one time this year and had an incredible hunt and I'm taking her into that stand for the first time she's never sat there tomorrow so it's November 15th today and so as of November 16th that favorite stand will only be hunted two times as of tomorrow morning when I go sit with Diane in that area so even a favorite stand what should your favorite stand be it should be the next stand you shoot a giant bucket of not necessarily the last stand you shot a giant bucket of deer blinds we have our we love our redneck blinds and I love them because with the hard fiberglass blinds I can put them off in a distance we're gonna rifle hung out of those or I can put him behind switchgrass Egyptian wheat and we can hide those blinds and get him to a point where the deer just recognize them as part of the landscape and because they're hidden I see far too many now it looks great on the sportsman channel in Outdoor Channel we're well-known hunters are hunting out of blinds on a food plot and I'm here to tell you folks unless you're in a fantasy land state like Kansas or Iowa or Kentucky where there's very low deer numbers or very low hunter numbers great deer herds where deer are not used to being spooked by hunters out of those blinds then you stick a blind in most areas in Wisconsin Michigan Ohio Pennsylvania Minnesota New York Vermont New Hampshire he can the whole North half of the country let's say then you're gonna run into trouble with those blinds if they're not hit and we try to hide ours see if they can pass a 100-yard test from the deers view meaning that they're looking back up at the blind can they see that blind within a hundred yards and if so think of ways that you can actually screen it hide them put them behind a berm locate them somewhere else put them in a cluster of trees so that least are broken up that outline and unhidden blinds look it this way there's lots of trail cam footage out there a big box coming in looking at a trail camera one time just the Box during the daylight and they never get a picture of that buck again the hunters and so that's a box this big and they don't like it so think about that as it translates to a box out in the woods and if it's not hidden unheeded hunting blinds are one of major and as a lot of people are going to hunt their gun season stands right now and especially if they're out in food plots and big AG areas deer get used to you're really quick when you can't get out of those blinds and keep from spoken here spooking deer let alone if they can see the blend now number six checking trail cameras too often I mean we've all fallen victim to that and that's a constant when I talk to clients they're checking these trail cameras that's one of the biggest questions I get is when should I check my trail cameras well I only check my trail cameras when I hunt most of my trail cameras say ninety percent are right next to a deer stand and in folks that say that the trail cameras going to spook a deer you know next to a deer stand they just don't have enough experience and and they're not hiding them well enough and so if you place that camera 6 feet 7 feet high and you have that trail camera on a tree that's wider than the trail camera and the profile is hidden by another trunk or brush nearby we have some that our lower trail cameras might be like a 4 foot set up and our 5 foot set up or they're surrounded by branches and the backdrop is incredible and the deer just don't recognize that it's even there so if your trail cameras are hidden then it's very appropriate to play some by tree tree stands and the best thing is you're already going to that tree stand to hunt at some point anyways so it eliminates the urge in the temptation to go in too early and check that trail camera and we're starting to use cell cameras this year the Exodus render cell camera is incredible I love it we sold our panels on them so I don't even need I have camera at trail cameras next to a couple of those and I haven't checked those trail cameras and so long because we're getting all the footage from the cell cameras in those spots and I don't need to go there the batteries to stay in fresh it gives you a daily battery meter let you know where it's at we haven't run out of batteries even during this cold because we have the solar panels on those cell cameras the bottom line is those cell cameras are at your your or your trail cameras are at your stand locations you're not duplicating or tripling up on your access to go to a stand and go to a location where a trail camera is at and pull that card in fact there's a lot of times we can pull two or three going in and out and so you're not adding any pressure to your land you get to see exactly what kind of bucket until you want a tan a specific stand occasion so to me you get to know your mature bucks better on the land because you're going to those areas anyways you get to know the mature box as it relates to your stand location and what is better than that to know which box are by which stand and you'll find what's pretty cool is if you have mature bucks around they'll slot into certain areas even on a 40-acre parcel or we'll get pictures of bucks in one set up at a stand okay soon we never get them that same buck at another stand location with another trail cam set up especially the older they get number seven using ATVs to hunt with now I welcome all my neighbors it's an open invitation to use your ATVs to get to your stands and drive all the way up the ridges because we'll have that one property in the area where no ATVs are being used and yes it's a pain walking up those hills and some people can't do it and in that case we've used the quiet cat ebikes and those are awesome electric hunter eyes golf carts are very very quiet and then they have the electric actual hunting vehicles UTV's that I find the batteries don't last as long on as sometimes a golf court cart but they do have four-wheel drive they sometimes our louder they're bigger there's more parts on them but regardless using a gas ATV to get on and off your land while you hunt and get to your tree stand I've been in Michigan where literally there's a garage on the where they pull in the ATV and then from there they can get to a ladder and go up to the stand and they can close the doors and and that ATV is actually they drive right under the blind and and you can imagine I've welcomed ATV since the mid-80s severence Road by the cast River that's where I used to hunt near Cassidy off of Argyle road and when the neighbors would start up their big red ATC and travel down the dirt road and go 3/4 mile down and then go into the thin strip of woods it was long the river I could count on 20 deer coming to me within a half-hour it was awesome and I learned that in the 80s so what I learned in the 80s I've seen that repeated over and over again not only on my lands where I hunt but in the upian Michigan on public land where the onslaught this morning on November 15th I can guarantee their ATVs everywhere out there even areas where people could have driven a truck and been dead silent where I you can hear those ATVs across the marsh two and a half miles three miles away and so the deer yet you said they know what's going on they get used to in a bad way if deer get used to you riding an ATV on your land and it doesn't spook deer that means they're just young deer young doe is immature box those are all easy to shoot hunt kill when you're talking about mature box and mature buck hunting strategy now some people use ATVs and some of the Fantasyland areas even up in Buffalo County where you have large tracts of land there's a lot of mature bucks and so you're going into a stand and yeah you might not shoot the one or two or five that you spooked away but in the afternoon in a big one like still come by because there's a lot in the area most people do not have that luxury so I would challenge it to maybe find a different way than accessing your deer blinds with ATVs now if you have twelve fifteen hundred acres thousand acres then you can afford to push him gear around spoke from deer around Drive and a half mile walk 200 yards whatever you're doing but let's face it how many of you out there have a thousand acres or more I'm hunting thirty acres of cover eight acres of cover and 25 acres and so I can't afford to be haphazard when I'm going to my stand at ATV is the number one way you're gonna smoke deer before you even get to the property number eight this is one that most of my mature bucks if I look at these Bucks around here the majority was shot the worst shot in the morning hours majority these are bull box and there's some good rifle ones in here too but they're shot during the morning hours my buck this year was shot morning hours 8:30 in the morning last year my two bucks were shot morning hours morning hours are often really pushed aside for evening hunts especially when it comes to the rut now I don't hunt mornings in the early season even October loll I'm really you know mid October I'm really uh a little bit touchy on hunting mornings a hunted Monday mornings for opening day had gone maybe the second day but really for the most part I'm hunting morning specifically during the raht and even this past rut where I didn't shoot my buck can tell I'm a member of fifth or six whatever day it was I was mostly hunting mornings and taking breaks in the evening hours mature bucks that followed moved three times our cameras support this they move three times more during the morning hours up till noon one it seems like they're taking a break in the middle of the day and then they're hitting at it for the last hour hour and a half a daylight so the morning hours are so precious to and when we see the most mature buck movement it's there when I'm always looking for that next great morning stand and hunting during the morning hours I can't wait and and those are what consistently produced the box rich last year he shot two bucks on our lands where we hunt here in the morning hours and most of our opportunities come here in the morning hours now I'm talking more like 70% 75% as far as opportunities so if you're focusing on evening hours I figured I find that that's a big mistake because you're missing so much potential in the morning I'd trade one great morning for five evenings of hunting in a given week because I can put my stock in that one morning and and on top of that if you're I find people are hunting evening stands over and over and over again a lot of times that relates to food number one way to smoke deer off your property is to over hunt food sources over hunt stands and when you're hunting AG fields and food plots over and over in the evening you're potentially ruining your property really quick a lot of times with the first or second sit and and when you'll do blow and when you're getting out of your stand that is not a good thing especially whether you're getting in or out of the stand really try to focus on mornings that's a big mistake I see people make number nine you can't discount noise everyone that talks about scent and of course of the deer see year they're gonna they're gonna run away but how many hunts have been ruined because amateur block here is you're getting into your noisy stand with noisy gear with a noisy backpack from 200 yards or 300 yards away so I that to me is the number one way that that people spoke deer because your son should be taken care of when you're on stand if it's your downwind and people say well I can't define them honey and open hardwoods well I went hunt the open hardwoods and I'd hunt to the edge of the hardwoods on the swamp I'd Hut unaligned deer creatures of edge anyway so I'm always hunting edge I'm not just sitting in the middle of a hard woods I'm hunting you know in open areas where they can come from all directions that's just not my hunting style and it that wouldn't provide a lot of success I'm hunting edges movement funnels funnels I create movement I create movement I find on public land especially like you know you want to area like Ojai or where Diane and I might be in Pennsylvania here a couple weeks I'm hunting Hills and hunting funnels in those hills meaning I'm humming the saddles and the ridges I'm hunting the benches that go around the ridges I mean the connections of the saddles and the benches and then when you add in where people access the land from and where food sources are word says standard White Oaks or if they're hitting beach not search area at the time then you can narrow it down to where you have pretty defined stan locations where you're sitting in those stands and you're bowling you're sent to an area where you don't expect deer and you really can divine that movement so when you have defined areas to hunt you can get in and out of stands control your scent because they're defined deer movements you can control how many deer actually see you and then it all boils down to how many stands have you gotten to where your sons controlled deer didn't see on the way end but you made some type of noise I can member back to an opening day I think it was 99 or 2000 where I snuck in to a great spot in Michigan October 1st and I thought I got in very quietly got into the stand and I was facing north the wind was coming from the north I was watching a small food source movement a deer heading back to a bedding area I thought the deer would be on the major food sources that were 300 yards away 400 yards away started to get daylight and I wanted to see what time shooting our light actually was where it looked light in the woods I actually went to look at my watch left side right here I had my release hanging from my wrist it hit the top of my bowl when I was looking and deer blew at me to 300 yards in front of me and that was my opening day set you know that I spooked the deer be right at first light by just ticking the top of my release on the top of a can or the top of a cam of a bowl and so you really have to control your noise and that goes down to the clothing the fanatic series from Sitka they made it 50% quieter this year I don't even think they needed to but they did and so whether it's brushing against a tree when you go to take a shot some slight movement where there's noise I believe you can get away with a lot of slow movement in a tree stand if you're very patient but you can't get away with any noise and then number 10 you know as hunters we try to pattern deer I mean that's so important so patterning deer and patterning deer and getting on mature box getting on doe is getting on small box whatever you want to shoot there's so many times we're trying to pattern deer but we allow deer to pattern us how many hunting properties did the deer have hunter's pattern way more than the deer the hunters have those deer pattern and we can't avoid hunting pressure we can't avoid the occasional noise we can't avoid making bad stand decisions running into deer in the woods but we can lower the percentage in every single area and everything you think about if you're putting a bunch of clothing on at the base your stand leaving a lot of scent are you making a choice that is allowing deer to pattern you are you accessing a certain way that's a lot shorter but you know you're gonna spook some deer are you hunting a food plot too much and every time you get on and off you're spooking deer and by the third set you're not even seeing a deer during daylight or they're coming out right at dark there's so many ways that we as hunters allow deer to pattern us overusing stands a lot of these top ten mistakes that talk about talked about their mistakes because we allow deer to pattern us not all of them but a lot of them have to do with deer hunting recognition and those deer recognizing their movements their patterning us and those deer are incredible they may not have a long memory for a year to next season but don't remember 4 to 3 weeks even four weeks and it doesn't take long for them to pattern us and that could be even the number one mistake is in general just allowing deer to know that you're hunting them and you're not being that predator and you know what bottom line to follow this and those top 10 mistakes is I want to have fun you know a lot of this stuff this is just what I do but I've done this for decades I tried to teach other people to hunt this way but it's all that goal of you know being the best hunter you can but if your goal is just to go out to you a bunch of small box dolls don't worry about a lot of stuff you don't have to you bottom lines you want to have fun I don't care if my neighbor shoots small bucks that means they're not placing a tag on one of the big bucks in the area doesn't matter to me I love seeing happy hunters I love to seeing people you should never have to make an excuse for what you shoot these tips and strategies that I offer on this channel to me are advanced they're for the person that wants to take their hunt to the next level and not only this year but to be consistent and add that hunt for decades to and again I'm learning every year and that's why I think that the content will never run out on this channel at least while I'm alive and can still do this kind of stuff and that's why we'll always work on client properties because that's dozens of opportunity to learn and glean intel from hunters on those properties in in the woods and actually looking at it that is a huge huge advantage for me when it comes to hunting and looking at other people's property and going forward for decades to come it's the opportunity to learn every single year I'll try to keep bringing it to you so that you can avoid mistakes that you can find your ultimate level of success whatever that is whatever that goal is and whatever wherever you want to take it this season

Channel: Whitetail Habitat Solutions

Views: 1,659,137

Rating: 4.828433 out of 5

Keywords: deer hunting, deer hunting tips, mistakes, myths, deer, hunting, deer season, how to hunt, hunt deer, best deer hunting tips, deer hunting mistakes

Id: K-f6QOD9R0M

Length: 27min 16sec (1636 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 24 2019