Madness

Birdog428 on Hunting Chat.Net posts:

Post subject: 2004 Season Discouraging
And so I add another year to the 7 previous in which I have failed to kill a buck. With less than a week left to take a deer on home ground I find myself discouraged and wanting to bag it for the season. I had more free time to hunt this year than in the past 20 but it seems to have been of little help. No snow, and very little sign made for a difficult time in the local deer woods. I counted a grand total of 5 sightings while I had a gun in hand - all tails and headed in another direction. I estimate that I logged about 100 hours in the woods either still hunting or on stand and, with so little to show for it that I'm thinking about not even going out for the last weekend. I can't remember a more depressing season. Congrats to all here who were successful this year and I appreciate your posting pics - your skills as deer hunters are particularly evident in such hard year. My son bagged that spike during bow season so we are not without venison, but I sure would like to break this bad streak of mine.


A friend of mine in the Ministry once commented that the surest definition of madness was the repetition of an unsuccessful behavior in anticipation that the results will somehow change. I have to agree.

I can remember one season where the landowner asked me if I'd had any luck.

"Right now, I'd shoot a 3-legged doe if one showed up!" was my reply.

7 seasons is a long time, but I've got a neighbor who hunted 17 seasons before seeing his first deer, and I know another guy who hunted 10.

Some things that may help in the furture:

1) Stillhunting is hard. I figured out I was built for ambushing from elevated stands many moons ago. I'm big (no, I'm huge) and tall, and the ground quakes when I walk.
2) You may stink as a deer hunter-- scent can really work against you. If you're seeing a lot of tails, work on scent control. Check out my weblog (see my signature below) and dig up my pieces on sodium bicarb and scent control. It may change your luck dramatically.
3) Some years, the more I hunted, the less deer I saw. Don't give up, just re-allocate. Spend more time in post season scouting and then put more time into pre-season scouting next year. I scout year round, and actually hunt far less time-wise than I ever did. Scouting also improves your still-hunting chances, because you learn the subtleties of the property.
4) If you've been hunting the same plot unsuccessfully for years, maybe it's time to move on. Think about a finding a new place over the Winter. My first plot turned out to be a dry hole, but it took me several seasons to figure it out.


The trick in all this is to learn to define yourself in ways that do not require you bagging a deer every so many outings in order to consider yourself successful. I figured out early on that I enjoyed bowhunting enough on its own that the kill was incidental. Funny, but after I got over the need to kill deer, I started getting more shooting opportunities. Nowadays, I pass on more shooting opportunities in a morning that I would previously have in an entire season.