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

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.