How long till success at being a BEAST!

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Boogieman1
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Re: How long till success at being a BEAST!

Unread postby Boogieman1 » Mon Mar 26, 2018 12:15 pm

Personally don't see how you can put a timeline on something like this. Just to many variables, would think a target rich environment would yield results way sooner than a overrun stretch of woods with few animals.

It's not a race anyway, there's never a finish line and we will never know everything about the whitetail deer. To me it's situational learning, your screw up enough situations and learn from them. Then reapply them to similar situations. Then there's always new situations, it never stops.

In my opinion spend as much time in the timber as you can afford, not just walking through the woods, but looking and listening to the sign that is there. Whether it takes 1 year or 10 it shouldn't matter the reward is just as sweet the important thing is your having fun and learning. With those 2 the rest will fall into place.


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Re: How long till success at being a BEAST!

Unread postby Jonny » Tue Mar 27, 2018 12:21 am

How fast of a learner are you? How much time can you spend in the woods, and how many bad habits do you have to break?

A guy with zero bad habits, all the time in the world to scout and hunt, and a natural predator, should be doing well relatively quick.

Another guy with a bad killer instinct, other habits that don't include hunting/scouting, bad habits that need to be fixed, and only a couple weekends a year to hunt/scout, might never find consistent success.

Some guys pick up stuff really quick but that isn't everybody. Some people can hunt and scout a lot, and others just don't have the time and resources. Some live within a mile or two of good public, and others have to drive an hour or two to get to where they need to hunt. Not saying everybody needs to make excuses for themselves or to take away from somebodies success, but I think to find success, you need to be honest with yourself and define what success to you is.


For me, success is having fun, learning new things, not making the same mistakes, and putting meat in my freezer and belly. I had a very successful year last year according to my own standards but probably not to others, which is fine by me.


I think if you give it your all, you should start seeing changes by the end of your second year. Thats 2 full years of scouting, hunting, and getting better every day at what you do (bow, stand set up, training/conditioning). Might not have a buck on the wall by then, but you will have a better idea of what success is going to mean for you. After that its all on you to continue to learn and grow as a hunter. If you aren't moving forward, you are probably moving backwards.
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Re: How long till success at being a BEAST!

Unread postby tgreeno » Tue Mar 27, 2018 5:42 am

I think alot has to do, with the land that you are hunting! And what you consider "success".

IMO, some areas just don't hold mature bucks. It may take you a couple years to find the caliber buck you are wanting to harvest. If I see 1 or 2 mature bucks a season, that's a good season for me. For others, that may be one weeks worth.
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Re: How long till success at being a BEAST!

Unread postby Enkriss » Wed Mar 28, 2018 5:43 am

I moved to a new location so its like starting from scratch.

I dusted off my Hill Country DVDs last night.....lol.
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Re: How long till success at being a BEAST!

Unread postby Ognennyy » Thu Mar 29, 2018 2:21 am

Since I started hunting three seasons ago I've been coming to this forum for all the great information and everything it has to offer. The closest thing I've had to beast style success was finding a bed and jumping a buck from it during a hunt a few seasons back. I was still-hunting up a steep ridge to a bench near the top where I figured there might be some buck beds. But I have never returned to seal the deal.

At some point during Spring scouting last year I had thrown in the towel and given up on beast style hunting, deciding it just didn't work in my neck of the woods (Capital District / South-Eastern corner of the Adirondacks of New York). The terrain where I hunt doesn't fit neatly into any of the categories largely discussed here; there are no cat-tail marshes, I don't hunt farms, and none of it is flat but it doesn't really look like the topo maps I see for "hill country". I once posted an image here of a swamp I wanted to scout, and got consensus on where the buck beds would likely be. I went there, but didn't find what looked like a primary buck bed. So I gave up and in my mind wrote off the beast style of hunting.

Reading through this post caused me to re-evaluate my situation, and to be brutally honest with myself.

First of all I did find a bed in my second season using beast tactics (the ridge / bench mentioned above); I've just never put in the effort to go back to it, investigate, and set up. Granted that bed is a 2-hour drive from here. But.... what I've told myself "Beast style tactics don't work for me where I hunt" is wrong. Truth: "The bed I successfully found using beast tactics is 120 miles away so I just haven't put in the time and effort required to take advantage of my success so far". Those two statements are far cries from one another.

I did not find the buck beds I had hoped in the swamp I mentioned above. The Eastern edge of this swamp (where I did most of my scouting) is only 300 yards from the road, with a dirt path that leads right to it from the road, where everybody sights in their guns. So in fairness even if there is no deer sign there to be found, that is likely attributable to its accessibility, not ineffectiveness of beast hunting tactics and scouting methods. Truth be told, though, I did jump a deer from a small point sticking out into the swamp. It went crashing off through the water when I broke a stick 30 yards from the point. I saw no antlers and so wrote it off as a doe. Also I didn't find what looked like a well-worn buck bed on the point. Now I'll put on my brutal honestly lenses and rewind.... The ground on the point was pretty hard; lots of tree roots near the surface, a mix of pine needles and moss. Very typical of points into swamp islands in the Adirondacks. Even if that were a primary bed there would not have been a large, visible oval-shaped depression. Granted I did not see many droppings, but I also did not look in the woods right next to the point. The deer did not have antlers but I made that scouting trip in June or July, when the bucks wouldn't have antlers anyway. And I'm not experienced enough to tell if a deer is a doe or just a buck without antlers. I've never been back since for another look. So in truth, beast tactics might have actually worked there. I've just been too lazy to go back and spend a few hours to investigate further.

This got a little long-winded but here's what I've learned:
- Beast style tactics do, in fact, work in the areas where I hunt.
- Beast style hunting is much harder work, and takes far more of a commitment than I had originally believed.
- I'm lazy. Or, at least, definitely lazier than those of you veterans here who regularly tag mature bucks. To make this worse, I'm very good at lying to myself about it.
- I give up too easily. Every winter I struggle with seasonal disorder due to lack of sunlight. I sit on the couch and get fat and out of shape. I get excited for pre-season scouting and go out once or twice, but quickly feel defeated when I can't do 8 hours of scouting over 10 miles in my first day off the couch in months.
- You guys are all awesome. Without threads like this, in addition to other moral support I receive here, my evolution as a hunter would probably be non-existent. Thank you.

Action Items:
- I need to temper expectations for myself, and be more realistic.
- I should make it a high priority for the winter of 2018-2019 to maintain my physical health.
- Don't give up!! No matter what!!

Goals for the 2018 white tail season:
- Do some form of hiking / scouting up in the mountains where I hunt at least once a week. If I go at least once a week, scout for as long as I can until my energy levels crash, my stamina will gradually build over time and I'll eventually find the buck beds I'm looking for.
- Revisit the two beds mentioned above and have a closer look around.
- Locate one or two buck beds - for a total of three known beds - with solid setups in mind so that I can return in the fall and know exactly how I need to enter, hunt, and exit.
- This is the ultimate "would be nice" goal: See a buck coming out of his bed right where I thought he would. This probably involves several factors out of my control, though, so I won't give up if it doesn't happen.

Thanks again everyone for the posts in this thread, and for inspiring me to revisit this topic and be honest with myself.

Thanks Dan for providing us junior hunters with a path to follow.
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Re: How long till success at being a BEAST!

Unread postby Wetfoot » Thu Mar 29, 2018 11:14 pm

:oops:
Last edited by Wetfoot on Thu Mar 29, 2018 11:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: How long till success at being a BEAST!

Unread postby Wetfoot » Thu Mar 29, 2018 11:16 pm

Ognennyy wrote:Since I started hunting three seasons ago I've been coming to this forum for all the great information and everything it has to offer. The closest thing I've had to beast style success was finding a bed and jumping a buck from it during a hunt a few seasons back. I was still-hunting up a steep ridge to a bench near the top where I figured there might be some buck beds. But I have never returned to seal the deal.

At some point during Spring scouting last year I had thrown in the towel and given up on beast style hunting, deciding it just didn't work in my neck of the woods (Capital District / South-Eastern corner of the Adirondacks of New York). The terrain where I hunt doesn't fit neatly into any of the categories largely discussed here; there are no cat-tail marshes, I don't hunt farms, and none of it is flat but it doesn't really look like the topo maps I see for "hill country". I once posted an image here of a swamp I wanted to scout, and got consensus on where the buck beds would likely be. I went there, but didn't find what looked like a primary buck bed. So I gave up and in my mind wrote off the beast style of hunting.

Reading through this post caused me to re-evaluate my situation, and to be brutally honest with myself.

First of all I did find a bed in my second season using beast tactics (the ridge / bench mentioned above); I've just never put in the effort to go back to it, investigate, and set up. Granted that bed is a 2-hour drive from here. But.... what I've told myself "Beast style tactics don't work for me where I hunt" is wrong. Truth: "The bed I successfully found using beast tactics is 120 miles away so I just haven't put in the time and effort required to take advantage of my success so far". Those two statements are far cries from one another.

I did not find the buck beds I had hoped in the swamp I mentioned above. The Eastern edge of this swamp (where I did most of my scouting) is only 300 yards from the road, with a dirt path that leads right to it from the road, where everybody sights in their guns. So in fairness even if there is no deer sign there to be found, that is likely attributable to its accessibility, not ineffectiveness of beast hunting tactics and scouting methods. Truth be told, though, I did jump a deer from a small point sticking out into the swamp. It went crashing off through the water when I broke a stick 30 yards from the point. I saw no antlers and so wrote it off as a doe. Also I didn't find what looked like a well-worn buck bed on the point. Now I'll put on my brutal honestly lenses and rewind.... The ground on the point was pretty hard; lots of tree roots near the surface, a mix of pine needles and moss. Very typical of points into swamp islands in the Adirondacks. Even if that were a primary bed there would not have been a large, visible oval-shaped depression. Granted I did not see many droppings, but I also did not look in the woods right next to the point. The deer did not have antlers but I made that scouting trip in June or July, when the bucks wouldn't have antlers anyway. And I'm not experienced enough to tell if a deer is a doe or just a buck without antlers. I've never been back since for another look. So in truth, beast tactics might have actually worked there. I've just been too lazy to go back and spend a few hours to investigate further.

This got a little long-winded but here's what I've learned:
- Beast style tactics do, in fact, work in the areas where I hunt.
- Beast style hunting is much harder work, and takes far more of a commitment than I had originally believed.
- I'm lazy. Or, at least, definitely lazier than those of you veterans here who regularly tag mature bucks. To make this worse, I'm very good at lying to myself about it.
- I give up too easily. Every winter I struggle with seasonal disorder due to lack of sunlight. I sit on the couch and get fat and out of shape. I get excited for pre-season scouting and go out once or twice, but quickly feel defeated when I can't do 8 hours of scouting over 10 miles in my first day off the couch in months.
- You guys are all awesome. Without threads like this, in addition to other moral support I receive here, my evolution as a hunter would probably be non-existent. Thank you.

Action Items:
- I need to temper expectations for myself, and be more realistic.
- I should make it a high priority for the winter of 2018-2019 to maintain my physical health.
- Don't give up!! No matter what!!

Goals for the 2018 white tail season:
- Do some form of hiking / scouting up in the mountains where I hunt at least once a week. If I go at least once a week, scout for as long as I can until my energy levels crash, my stamina will gradually build over time and I'll eventually find the buck beds I'm looking for.
- Revisit the two beds mentioned above and have a closer look around.
- Locate one or two buck beds - for a total of three known beds - with solid setups in mind so that I can return in the fall and know exactly how I need to enter, hunt, and exit.
- This is the ultimate "would be nice" goal: See a buck coming out of his bed right where I thought he would. This probably involves several factors out of my control, though, so I won't give up if it doesn't happen.

Thanks again everyone for the posts in this thread, and for inspiring me to revisit this topic and be honest with myself.

Thanks Dan for providing us junior hunters with a path to follow.

Hang in there and it will eventually pay off for you. Don't be fooled by how easy it appears to happen for other guys. That's a tough area you're trying to tackle. Big woods! Deer densities aren't anything like what some areas of the Midwest are like. Beds worn to the ground may not be there to be found at all. The best advice I can give, if you've only been at this doe a few years is to spend as much time as you can outdoors and learn where the deer in your area generally are and how they utilize the habitat. I always have my best success following water ways and watching for sign along the transitions. Pay attention to the size of deer droppings you are seeing. Average and small droppings being does/ younger bucks and fawns. And very large droppings being more mature animals. As you begin to really cover some ground and observe the sign you are seeing plan on sitting some of those areas so you can match what you observe to the sign on the ground. The Pharoah Lake Wilderness area was highly underused when I lived back east. You might give that a shot. There are some great areas in there to look at. Most importantly, enjoy yourself and try not to measure yourself against others on the beast,but against yourself. We all learn at our own pace and hunt vastly different areas.with different challenges. The Adirondacks total lack of farms and logging activity might we'll be the ultimate challenge for us as whitetail hunters. Good luck. :!:
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Re: How long till success at being a BEAST!

Unread postby Ognennyy » Sun Apr 01, 2018 3:45 am

Wetfoot wrote:Hang in there and it will eventually pay off for you. Don't be fooled by how easy it appears to happen for other guys. That's a tough area you're trying to tackle. Big woods! Deer densities aren't anything like what some areas of the Midwest are like. Beds worn to the ground may not be there to be found at all. The best advice I can give, if you've only been at this doe a few years is to spend as much time as you can outdoors and learn where the deer in your area generally are and how they utilize the habitat. I always have my best success following water ways and watching for sign along the transitions. Pay attention to the size of deer droppings you are seeing. Average and small droppings being does/ younger bucks and fawns. And very large droppings being more mature animals. As you begin to really cover some ground and observe the sign you are seeing plan on sitting some of those areas so you can match what you observe to the sign on the ground. The Pharoah Lake Wilderness area was highly underused when I lived back east. You might give that a shot. There are some great areas in there to look at. Most importantly, enjoy yourself and try not to measure yourself against others on the beast,but against yourself. We all learn at our own pace and hunt vastly different areas.with different challenges. The Adirondacks total lack of farms and logging activity might we'll be the ultimate challenge for us as whitetail hunters. Good luck. :!:



Man I'd love to get up to the Pharoah Lake Wilderness. What a challenge that would be, to set up on a mature buck bed and get a deer out of there all by yourself. Thanks for the encouraging words!
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Re: How long till success at being a BEAST!

Unread postby hunter_mike » Sat Jan 09, 2021 6:10 am

Wetfoot wrote::oops:


X2

I did a European mount of a big buck for a guy recently. I had never measured antlers before and I got really curious and measured the rack of this big buck.

Then I got really curious and measured my best buck because I never actually had measured it... 99 inches lol.

I have had a ton of fun scouting and hunting ever since finding the beast. And during that time I killed a bunch of bucks that I can confidently say i never would have killed if dan never shared his tactics and founded this site. I would call that success.

But I also think it shows that the average joe is not going to just read up on these tactics, walk out the door and start consistently slaying the biggest bucks around on any old land available.

Figured I would bump this. Was fun to look back at. I know lots of folks have had some big successes since posting in this thread in 2018.
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Re: How long till success at being a BEAST!

Unread postby OH nontypical » Sat Jan 09, 2021 10:48 am

Biggest lessons learned here that will help kill bucks:

Have fun.
Never stop expanding your woods IQ.
Scout more than you hunt.
Hunt bucks where they walk in daylight.
Be mobile and adaptable.
Look for overlooked spots both near and far.

And most importantly to me, hunt hot sight when it’s hot.

There is only one Beast on this site but many super hunters to learn from and with effort we can all catch up to some good bucks.
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Re: How long till success at being a BEAST!

Unread postby tgreeno » Sat Jan 09, 2021 3:17 pm

Still waiting 8-)
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Re: How long till success at being a BEAST!

Unread postby babyshirt » Sun Jan 10, 2021 10:34 am

I know this thread is old, but the Beast style is still new to me.

This season (2020) was my first full season hunting the beast style. I started bowhunting seriously in 2017 and have made baby steps forward each year until this year.

In the fall of 2019, I started the year with 4-5 set stands around my local public land area. I would bounce from one to another based on wind and whether or not I had seen deer of any kind at that stand on the previous sit. I'd see a couple does, or maybe a spike every couple sits, but I knew there had to be more than that running around. The stands I had set were not doing it for me anymore, and I knew bombing in to an area with a big clanky stand and ratchet straps wasn't going to do any good either. I'm on a college student budget so a full on mobile set up wasn't really an option. I started just carrying in two sections of the field and stream climbing sticks that I sprayed full of expandable foam so they didn't make as loud of a clang when they bounced off of stuff. I'd find a spot that looked good when I was walking through the woods and set them up on each side of the tree then stand on them and strap to the tree with my harness, kind of like a saddle without the saddle? It was a little ridiculous but I started to see that being mobile was the way to go. Then, on a trip to Wisconsin with my dad, brother, and a couple friends, I was given a lone wolf alpha and four sticks to play with for the trip. It was the light switch I needed. On my first ever hang and hunt with that stand I missed a nice 8 on some public. The next day on another piece of public on my second hang and hunt I killed the biggest buck of my life at 163 5/8". That sealed the deal for me. I made enough money after the season to order a decent mobile set up for the 2020 season.

This season, the success did not rain down on me like it did on our 2019 Wisconsin trip, but I had a lot of time and was able to kill a 2 1/2 year old 8 point on Michigan public for my second ever hang and hunt buck.

I understand that it is very rare to kill a buck of that caliber so fast when just starting to use a mobile set up and I know I probably won't kill another buck like that for many many years but its the deer that got me hooked on the mobile game. I found the beast forum shortly after that and I've learned so much ever since then (even why I ended up killing that Wisconsin buck). I've got a ton more to learn but putting in the time this season has shown me its possible to do it.
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Re: How long till success at being a BEAST!

Unread postby Hawthorne » Sun Jan 10, 2021 11:36 am

Boogieman1 wrote:Personally don't see how you can put a timeline on something like this. Just to many variables, would think a target rich environment would yield results way sooner than a overrun stretch of woods with few animals.

It's not a race anyway, there's never a finish line and we will never know everything about the whitetail deer. To me it's situational learning, your screw up enough situations and learn from them. Then reapply them to similar situations. Then there's always new situations, it never stops.

In my opinion spend as much time in the timber as you can afford, not just walking through the woods, but looking and listening to the sign that is there. Whether it takes 1 year or 10 it shouldn't matter the reward is just as sweet the important thing is your having fun and learning. With those 2 the rest will fall into place.


Great post. 100%
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Re: How long till success at being a BEAST!

Unread postby HunterBob » Mon Jan 11, 2021 12:13 am

This past Fall was my third season of beast style hunting and I am finally putting enough of the pieces together to consistently get on deer. Had a string of about five hunts in a row of seeing deer, which is a record for me in my area of low deer density.

Finally had success too by getting two deer on the same day and having to kayak them both out! I finally learned that in my area bedding is important to know, but not the smartest way to hunt since bedding is everywhere.

Focused in on feeding and travel routes, along with hunting scrapes at the right time. One of my biggest learning curves has been recognizing the different patterns of the deer at different parts of the season. Everytime I find sign now, I am asking myself what time of year is this fresh, including the beds.


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