Deer Hunting Tips For Beginners & Experts: How to get the big bucks

You should be thinking about how to improve your deer hunting skills year round. During the Summer season, you will start preparing for the upcoming Fall season. Whether that means planting food plots or sighting in your bow, there’s something to be doing at all times to improve your hunting experience.

Right now, it’s the opening modern gun deer season for a lot of states. If you’re scrambling last minute to learn some new tips about hunting, then you’re at the right place.

In this guide, we’ll take a look at some deer hunting tips that can help you improve your hunting skills and bag nice bucks year after year.

Lets get to hunting.

Deer hunting tips

Our list of deer hunting tips is broken down into different sections. Keep reading below on how to improve your deer hunting skills using the tips and hunting tactics below.

Go shed hunting

Being good at shed hunting can give you insight to what bucks you have on your property and where they hang out. You don’t want to put all the money and effort into hunting your property when there are no deer nearby.

Look into the thick cover for sheds. Deer like to hang out where it’s shady and hidden from everything. The thick cover has twigs and branches that could knock off a pair of antlers, making them hidden in the thick cover.

Good sheds are also found near places where deer are jumping tall or wide distances such as creek beds, fence rows and thickets. When a deer jumps up and lands, the pressure from the landing could result in the antlers jolting loose and finding a place on the ground.

It can also be an easy way to give you a nice free rack to hang on the wall. These gathered antlers not only offer a decorative trophy for your wall but also symbolize the culmination of your efforts.

Know your equipment

Whether you are hunting with a compound bow, crossbow or firearm, one of the most important things is knowing how to use it.

Make sure to check out my guide on how to choose the best firearm.

Data has shown an average of 1,000 accidental hunting injuries every year in the United States and Canada. About 10% of those injuries are fatal.

Before the hunting season starts, it’s important to practice and know every feature on your equipment. If you are using a bow, then you should be target shooting regularly, especially during the summer to make sure you are prepared for early Fall hunting.

If you are using a firearm, then set up targets to fire at in a safe area.

For each piece of equipment, run through all the safety features and know exactly what each item does. Restring your bow if needed and keep them waxed during the offseason.

Make a salt lick

I’m a fan of making my own salt licks. It makes a whole lot more than the salt blocks you buy in the store and it gives me something to do out in the woods with the boys.

Salt licks are an easy and effective way of attracting and keeping deer on your property. They love the salt and minerals and need those to thrive in the woods.

>> Check out my deer salt lick recipe here.

Don’t shoot everything

If your goal is to shoot big bucks, then let the little ones walk. Get to know your property neighbors and see what kind of deer they are shooting and try to come to some type of agreement on what deer to shoot.

If your goal is to provide meat for your family, then take a doe. They are plentiful and they need to be culled out if you want the bucks to move longer distances.

Know how to call a deer

There are many different sounds that deer make. Deer will make blowing and snorting noises for various reasons.

If you are in the tree stand or in a ground blind and hear a deer making a snort sound, you’ve probably been caught by them and they are alerting other deer of your presence. Snorting is a warning sound to other deer that there’s danger in the area.

A grunt sound comes from a buck and is mostly during the rut season when they are out looking for does. They will let all deer in the area know they are looking to mate and breed with a female deer.

I’ve used a grunt call many times and have stopped bucks in their tracks when they hear it. They think there’s another buck in the area being territorial and trying to get their female.

Be quiet in the woods

It’s crucial to be quite in the woods while in your blind or in the treestand. Deer have very good hearing and they can easily get spooked on every small sound.

If you’ve been in the woods and watched deer grazing and feeding around, they look up every few seconds to check for any predators. When they hear a sound, they are on high alert for danger.

Keep your Little Debbie wrappers to a minimum to keep the deer from hearing you. Also, if you have kids hunting with you, try to keep them quite as well. I know that’s a hard one.

>> Here’s some ways to keep kids entertained in the deer stand

Mask your scent

Deer have excellent scent detectors. You do not want a deer to smell a human or unnatural scent from you or they will immediately be alerted and leave the scene.

Make sure to hunt down wind from where the deer typically come from so they wont smell you.

There are plenty of scent cover ups and eliminators you can purchase in the store, so go pick one up before your hunting trip. I’m a fan of the Buck Nut Peak Rut urine scent or the ones that smell like fresh dirt.

Conclusion

Following these deer hunting tips can certainly help you to have a more successful hunting season.

What other tips have you found that work well to kill deer? Were you successful killing a deer this year?

I originally wrote this article for Outdoorzy, my previous site but have updated it for Made To Hunt.