dan wrote:We are trying to assign absolutes to a field that is amply supplied with a mulitude of changing variables-variables which are beyond anyone's control. If we are going to make comparisons, it would be easier to compare apples to oranges.
I do not believe anybody here is trying to assign absolutes to deer hunting... Most of us hunt based on odds... So we are trying to determine what methods or tactics work the best for what we are targeting "most" of the time.
Yeah I think that's exactly right. Before when I hunted, sort of private public land, undeeded easement properties, most of my success came in October, but then I had a lot of time to hunt.
Now on the public, I'm using the same tactics, but the mature deer only move during legal in the last 90 minutes of legal, during the rut. The biologist there did a study on 18 years of data, and 90% of the P&Y deer were taken in the 2 weeks immediately prior to the gun season in November, in the last hour of legal.
For me things have changed in my work situation and I can't take much time from work so I focus my effort on the 13 afternoons in November, prior to lockdown.
There's no question that when I hunted 60-70 sits a season, I had buck encouters all year, suprisingly quite a few late season, when I did't have a buck tag. But I don't feel that I'm that handicapped hunting this little, I have Pope shot opportunities every year and this is hunting highly pressured public land. If you've done your homework and have 4-5 good sets and wait for the right time and just hunt each set 2-3 times a season. Man that is some good hunting there.
Although I am pretty proficient at killing because I'm pretty cold blooded at the moment of truth, I am not any particularly talented hunter. I had to learn what the deal was on hunting these animals, I didn't see anything for bucks initially and slowly that evolved to reading sign and seeing bucks and identifying bedding, differentitaing mature buck sign, changing the focus of the effort and then I found myself seeing mostly bucks and then more mature bucks. It's not being boastful when we say it's skill. When we say skill we mean the learnings that we recognize increase our odds at shot opportunities at mature deer.
Those of us who have ground out this journey, know luck has little to do with it, we stack the odds. If I hunt 60-70 times a year compared to the 13 hunts I do know, maybe it increases my odds 15-20% max. It's not the time it's not luck, it's the skill to stack the odds.