My native Kansas didn’t have a deer season until I was a teenager, so my first real whitetail lessons came when I was stationed at Quantico. Those deep-woods Virginia deer kicked my tail. My main takeaway: I didn’t know nothin’. Later, I hunted whitetails in various places. I was never foolish enough to think I had them figured out, but by the time we bought a farm in Kansas I thought I knew a bit. I soon learned it wasn’t as much as I thought.
Nearly 20 years later, I know my Kansas woods and their deer OK. You probably know your deer country, too. I won’t tell you how to hunt whitetails in your area. Instead, let’s think about stuff that should apply to whitetail hunting everywhere. Things that we all probably know but, sooner or later, will ignore. Mr. Whitetail will be lurking, waiting for us to mess up.
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Author Robert Ruark wrote that the biggest thing he’d learned from hunting was patience. Maybe, but he wasn’t a serious whitetail hunter. You know the adage from the Northern woods: “He who sits the longest gets the deer.” It’s true, and it’s also difficult to execute.
Among those who hunt whitetails with us in Kansas, we might have one or two hunters in 10 who will sit all day. I am usually not among them. I can, if I must, but I’d just as soon take a beating. Sitting still for long periods is not my strong suit, even though I know it’s often best.
The whitetail deer is a classic crepuscular animal, most active at dawn and dusk, but whitetails are happy to go completely nocturnal when pressured. Deer pattern us as well as we pattern them. There is more midday movement than many of us believe, even in hard-hunted woods.
