Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Best deer hunting book to learn from?

I was looking to understand deer better and thus allow me to have better success next season. I was hoping for suggestions from the Campfire on books that helped you better understand deer behavior, biology, food sources, etc. and how to use those for better hunting.
Any help appreciated!
Thanks,
Jed

I love "Hunting Trophy Deer" by John Wooters is by far my favorite. I read every couple of years.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Still-Hunter-Theodore-Dyke/dp/1612037240

T.S. takes you by the hand into the deer woods.
Web

I would look for a book or studies that are based on the habits of deer in your region or a region that closely resembles yours. Reading about whitetail habits in Texas is of no help to me, but what works in ID would not be much help for a TX guy either.

Lots of variables too. Public land versus private land, hunting pressure, buck to doe ratio, terrain, agriculture, weather, etc...

learning general deer behavior can be very helpful; Whitetail country by Cox and Ozaga is a great read

Wooters and Van Dyke are both good places to start. I'm not familiar with the Cox book, but I just ordered a copy for $.75 from Amazon.

Wooters, it is said, invented the modern sport of deer hunting. As an editor for Field and Stream he certainly popularized it.

Van Dyke literally "wrote the book" on deer hunting.

Let me just make a confession here. I've got a bookshelf filled with outdoor books. Most of them I collected in the first 10 years of hunting. I read voraciously. When I started deer hunting, I figured that that I could research my way to success. It made sense at the time. I was a young urban professional, I had read my way to success. I figured I could read my way to a big buck.

The herds in those days were a lot smaller. I had to drive 3 hours to get to where I could hunt deer. It made sense to try and fill the days between visits to the woods with reading about them. In the end, I don't think it contributed all that much to my eventual success.

The best thing I can advise, 35 years down the road, is to get out and make direct observation of the deer. They are everywhere now, and it is far easier to get out among them than it was when I was getting started. Get some binos and hit the county parks, golf courses and cemeteries. When you are not directly observing them, get out and look for sign.

BTW: From now until leafing-out in April is usually the best time to scout deer, because the sign is easier to see. Remember that although the food sources, weather and such change constantly, the mechanics of deer movement do not. What you see in the dead of winter should give you a good idea.

The trick here is to learn how deer think, and how that thinking reacts to the environment. It is not what is written in books. My biggest revelation was that although deer are fairly intelligent, their intelligence is rather alien to ours. What we see as curiosity and fear and such are really quite different things in deer. However, it took years of watching deer to figure that out. In the end, it took throwing out most of what I had read in books to make me a successful deer hunter, and not just another schmuck in the woods looking to get lucky.

Having said all that, let me say that there is one basic truth in deer hunting. Find where they are bedding, find where they are feeding, draw a line between the two and hunt along that line. Where the hunter can find the most advantageous spot to see the deer without being busted, he will have the best chance of success.

Newer- Hunting Big Woods Bucks by Hal Blood

Old- Deer Hunting by Red Freeman.

But agree that time in the woods trumps all.

+1. Every deer hunter, especially every Texas deer hunter, should own and read this book.

Wayne van Zwoll's, "Mastering Mule Deer" is valuable for those of us who like to get "western" every now and then.

Francis Sell wrote a book about deer hunting whose name escapes me, but when I was a teenager back in the sixties, I checked it out from our public library multiple times. Like O'Connor, Sell could tell a story and you couldn't put the book down.

Shots at Whitetails by Larry Koeller

Hal Blood is a good one also

I liked Rinella's book on big game. Covers quite a bit.

I read just about anything on whitetails and find bits and pieces of good in just about everything along the way. While "deer are deer", it's particularly helpful to find readings that are more specific to your locale - i.e., farmland, big woods, south, western, etc.

While they've been around for eons, Roger Rothhaar's Whitetail Magic and In Pursuit of Trophy Whitetails are my two all-time favorites.

+1 on Rothhaar. Gene Wensel's Hunting Rutting Whitetails is one of the best ever.

If you want to understand deer better, the best I've found in almost 60 yrs. of looking is The Deer of North America by Leonard Lee Rue III.
If you need to understand throphy bucks, those with over four years of age, I also vote for Hunting Throphy Deer by Wooters.
Observing deer in the wild, something I can do in my own yard is fine for general deer knowledge. But, if you want to hunt throphy bucks, the only way to learn them and to do that is to do it. Wooters' book tells you how to get started. E

Larry Benoits first book.

How to Bag the Biggest Buck of Your Life by Larry Benoit.

The best thing I can say to do is go into the woods and learn from your mistakes. I'm far from a good hunter but I try not to make mistakes twice. but don't be afraid to make a few, you learn that way.

Read:

Hunting the Whitetail Deer
By Tom Hayes
A.S.Barnes & Co.
Library of congress card # 60-9875

also i learned alot about deer by spending time in my hunting area in the off season. i love watching deer anytime of the year.

pm me an address i have a book for you

I must add: You must hunt the wind. AKA into or cross wind. If you learn everything else and don't hunt the wind you will not be successful regularly.

Leonard Lee Rue ... + 2

John Wooters ... +2

I learned how to 'still' hunt and 'stalk' hunt and the difference from John Wooters.

Good Luck

Jerry

John Wooters is good as is Larry kollers Shots at whitetails. Also Greg Millers Rubline secrets.But I learned a lot about the wind and thermals when I read Francis Sells book below.

http://www.amazon.com/Deer-Hunters-Guide-Francis-Sell/dp/B0006BLZIY

One of the best I have read is Mapping Trophy Bucks by Brad Herndon. Great book with descriptions as well as explanatory pictures so you can actually see what he is describing. Deer are creatures of habit from the East to the Mid-west and if you can understand how they consistently use the terrain, you can consistently put yourself in the right spot to be successful anywhere.

Yep, this. If you read and absorb that knowledge you'll know more about deer (not hunting them) than 99 out of 100 hunters.

Laffin at the idea that Wooters invented the modern sport of deer hunting.

What someone said above about where and how you're hunting being a major factor in selecting a book is very important.

For deep woods public land hunting, I like Greg Miller's books.

There is far more combined knowledge on this forum than you'll find in any hunting book, so ask questions as they arise.

Hunting Mature Bucks by Larry Weishuhn is excellent if you can find it.

I have read just about every whitetail book out there. There are some great titles and authors already mentioned. For me the Kroll books includes everything you could ask for knowledge and behavior wise. They are more scientific based than just stories.

I reread it about once a year and always glean something new and I own a whitetail management business and have been in operation for almost 10 years now.

http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Gui...mp;ie=UTF8&qid=1453948809&sr=1-1

A man is cheating himself if he does not read Shots at Whitetails by Larry Koller. powdr

You'll learn a lot more from the deer you dont kill than the deer you do kill...

Read most all of them, but got the most from the books written by David Morris;and the "patterning" articles by Dick Idol in North American Whitetail, in the early years of that publication.

Both these guys were the first I read to break mature buck travel patterns down by seasons, and different phases of the rut. They also keyed on different areas of the Lower 48 and Canada.

After years of watching big, rambling tracks cross mountains and swamps,and wondering where the hell he is "right now",these books made it easier to understand what you were seeing. Also showed me there is a world of difference between the habits of "deer",and mature bucks.I sometimes think they should be treated as a different species.

Anything from the Benoits is worthwhile. Hal Blood has a great reputation,and the Berniers as well, but the Benoits were the gold standard originals.

Real World Whitetail Behavior - Jim Roy
Shots at Whitetails - Koller
Hunting Big Whitetails - Bruce Nelson

Gene Wensel has a good book. Good luck.

This.... truer word were never spoken!

DD: Big puzzle to unwind in big woods with low deer densities.

Back in the 80's a first time deer hunter was invited into our hunting camp. His FIL was friends with my father and we did it as a favor. He spent 3 or 4 days hunting with us and when he left camp he said he would like to come back next year but felt he failed as a deer hunter because he never saw a deer in his brief stay. He didn't understand our lingo--- Hookings ,scrapes, shinny deer droppings ,etc and what they all mean. We explained to him that he did not fail and not seeing a deer in days of hunting is common here. --- the next year when he showed up we already had 2 or 3 bucks hanging. His three day hunt turned into only a one day of hunting without seeing a deer. As he was walking out the door he asked my brother and myself if there were any books about deer hunting he could read or schools that taught deer hunting . We answered him " Yea read some books is good but the school your looking for is right out the front door -- the thousands of acres of woods we hunt " The more hours one spends in the woods the more they know the woods. Best and only way to learn.

From the many I have in my collection I would recommend: Art of Successful Deer Hunting by Francis E.Sell, and for us woods hunters: Hunting Big Woods Bucks by Hal Blood.
IMO, reading only gets you so far and gives you ideas to try. You gotta spend time in the field under the tutelage of the real teachers: DEER!

wldthg: There is no substitute for time in the woods.My learning meter jumped when I started following them,and had the entire month of November to hunt.

What I thought I knew about them, I didn't.

But reading has filled some gaps here and there.A lot of buck hunting is educated hunches.

I have read many of the sources cited here and they have shortened the learning curve about deer, however the experience, theories and science in the material maybe outdated. In other words conventional thinking may have been true then, but may not be true today.

The one thing that is constant, science. I have simply broken it down into food, water, habitat, disease, predators and sex. To make this complex, within each category, someone has no doubt wrote a PHD dissertation. Except for sex drive, all can change and you need to read the sign.

We all can agree that when hunting deer we must pay acute attention to the deer senses, smell, sight and hearing. In most cases the hunter wants to minimize his presence in each category. In other instances not so, for example attractants, calls, rattling, running a chainsaw, operating farm machinery, drivers in a deer drive, or nondescript human activity.

While working with horses for decades, pressure is what I was taught to use in training and utilizing the horse's skill. In deer hunting I place pressure as the umbrella over all that I have read and experienced.

I can't find an icon for "corny", so will assign this.

The book that turned the corner for me was "advanced deer hunting" by John Weiss. Its been years and years since I have read it, but it was the first book I read that really helped my hunting.