Hunt Trophy Does, Turn Off the Damn Phone, Befriend Your Neighbors, and Make Deer Hunting Fun Again

Hunting and killing a mature whitetail buck is hard. Repeating the feat, season after season, is really hard. And when your hunting season isn’t working out as planned, it can get frustrating. Especially when you open Instagram and see that every influencer has killed a “giant” – or so it seems.

This time of year, many serious deer hunters start to get grumpy, bitter, or pissed as their seasons unravel. That’s a shame. Because in my opinion, the most important reason to hunt deer is because it’s fun.

Set Realistic Expectations

Focus on Age, Not Score

Forget about score for the rest of the season. Instead of judging bucks by the size of their rack, start evaluating them by their estimated age. Most of us don’t have access to prime private land that regularly produces 160-class deer. Some regions aren’t known for big bucks. That’s okay. Deer grow old everywhere.

Hunt Trophy Does

An old doe is just as smart and cagey as a mature buck, if not more so.

Meet Your Neighbors

One of the biggest mistakes hunters make is thinking in terms of individual deer rather than a population. You’re managing a population, not individual animals.

Most times, individual bucks have a “non-measurable impact” on a deer population. If, overall, you’re moving bucks into an older age class, it doesn’t matter if a few young bucks are killed by neighbors or hunters on your property.

Hunting is more fun when you have a good relationship with your neighbors, so be friendly. In the best cases, you can share information that will help everyone have a better season. If you’re cool with your neighbors, they’ll let you know if a big buck shows up on their trail cameras or if they’ve killed him, preventing you from chasing a ghost for the rest of the season.

Take Someone Else Hunting

Want to shake up your season? Invite new folks out to hunt your place. These could be new hunters or friends without hunting grounds. Sacrificing the disturbance to the property will be well worth the camaraderie of a good old deer camp.

But that social element is just as important for veteran hunters who have been doing all-day sits by themselves week after week. If nothing else, mentoring a new hunter will help you see deer hunting through a beginner’s eyes when everything is new and exciting.

Hunt Public Land

Turn Off the Phone

Social media makes us unhappy. So why bring an agent of unhappiness into your happy place? When you’re hunting, turn your phone off and stash it in your pack. Cutting out distractions is the only way to enter that near-meditative state that all good hunters strive for. Free from social media, text messages, and emails, you’ll start to pick up on nature’s little details, and you’ll probably sense that big buck coming in just a little sooner.

Social media makes us unhappy. So why bring an agent of unhappiness into your happy place? When you’re hunting, turn your phone off and stash it in your pack. Cutting out distractions is the only way to enter that near-meditative state that all good hunters strive for. Free from social media, text messages, and emails, you’ll start to pick up on nature’s little details, and you’ll probably sense that big buck coming in just a little sooner.