How to not get frustrated

From Deer & Deer Hunting Forum

auman
New Member

Posts: 6
Joined: 9/28/2008

It seems the more I hunt, the less I see. Being in 'bama the rut is still a couple of weeks away. It should be heating up shortly. I just have it in the back of my mind: " Here we go, another wasted season." Don't give me all that got to be positive crap. I've tried it before and it doesn't work. Gonna have to try some off the wall tactics I guess.

What have you done when all else seems to have failed?


Don't worry about the silly positive stuff. Don't worry about the negative stuff. It's all just stuff. The shaman is here to tell you that you need to find a middle road of not caring one way or the other. If you want to go out and hunt, go out and hunt. Otherwise, the couch, the six-pack, and the football games await thee.

There have been many seasons where caring about what I bagged really got in the way. In the end, I found that if I concentrated only on the moment and enjoyed the whole process, could I get myself out of bed at 0300 and be on my stand at 0500 and sit out the morning in the cold. There are times when the only thing keeping me from hanging it up was the thought of what it would be like if I had stayed home. There were times when I was so embroiled in that inner struggle that I missed a nice deer coming in.

Some seasons, it is victory enough just to come out of the woods for the last time and know you stayed on your game. I started hunting before the herds really grew. There was always very little chance of me actually tagging a deer. My neighbor, 70, just sold his rifles after bypass surgery. He went 10 years at the beginning without getting a deer, and most of those years he did not even see one. That was back in the Sixties. I started about 15 years after him. I went several years where I saw deer nearly every time I went out, but not one close enough to shoot. And there were times when just seeing a buck during season was enough. We kept going, because we found something in the act of just being afield.

This is a tempering process. There will be many blows. However, in the end you will learn how to stay sharp without having a brittle ego getting in the way. Just go out and enjoy the woods. The rest will come.