Legend has it that Daniel Boone was a heckuva deer hunter. I don’t doubt that for a bit, but the best deer hunters who ever walked North America were undoubtedly American Indians.
Yes, the white settlers eventually learned to shoot lots of deer with their crude muzzleloaders, but for thousands of years, American Indians flourished in part because of their uncanny ability to put the sneak on unsuspecting big-game animals — including the whitetailed deer — and then kill them from the ground at close range with bows and arrows.
These people instinctively knew then what many hunters are still grappling with today: To get the drop on a wary whitetail, you have to know how to play the wind.
Indeed, nothing spooks a deer faster than a snoot full of human stench. Unfortunately, many modern hunters still don’t know how to take the wind into consideration when attempting to move about the forest undetected. Sometimes, all it takes is predicting wind currents in advance. At other times, it takes changing direction in order to take into account a subtle shift or an errant breeze. Either way, playing the wind correctly is paramount to success, and the most challenging aspect of deer hunting.
