When it comes to hunting, everybody wants to get better. If you improve your hunting skills, you get more animals. So I have compiled how I have gotten better at hunting, so you will be able to get more animals.
Hunt small game
Hunting small game is a great way to get better at hunting big game. Small game will help you get better at stocking, being silent, and spotting game.
Squirrel and rabbit hunting will help you get better at spotting, hearing, and stoking game. The fact that these animals blend in with the forest makes them hard to spot. Rabbits help you be able to decipher between what is a bird scratching in the leaves and a rabbit taking small steps.
Rabbit and squirrels will spook if you are too loud or are not walking slowly. By not hunting these animals with dogs, you will improve your still hunting by an unlivable amount.
Small game also makes you a better shot. Rabbits and squirrels have small organs and small pea-sized brains; being able to hit a small target will help you hit a bigger target, such as a deer.
scouting
To get better at hunting you need to hunt in the right spot. And to hunt in the right spot you need to be able to scout. If you hunt in the wrong spot that has no animals, obviously won’t get or see anything. You have to do your research, scout, and find where there are the most animals to hunt.
To find the right spot, it should have a lot of signs like scat, tracks, rubs, and scrapes. If possible, and you aren’t scouting during the middle of hunting season, you want to be there when animals are most active, at dust and dawn, and try to spot animals with binoculars.
More scouting. More scouting can help for a ton of reasons. The more scouting you do, the more you know about the area and the game that lives there, what the animals eat, where the animal’s bed and feed, where to set up for hunting. Along with finding out more about animals, you get better at tracking
Preperation
When hunting, if you aren’t prepared for most situations, you will not get to pull the trigger. You need to layout everything before you go. You need to get your clothes, calls, knives, gun/bow, phone, other gear, etc. I can’t tell you how many times I have left to go hunting and forgot extra ammo or my bow release.
Practice. You need to practice with your weapon,= how you would hunt with it. If you are shooting across valleys, at 200-300 yards, you need to practice that far; If you are hunting out of a treestand, where your average shot is only 14 yards you should practice shooting that far. You need to be able to shoot in your hunting clothes, yes hunting clothes can and will get in the way of a bowstring or rifle stock. You need to be able to shoot off a backpack or tree limb if rifle hunting, and shoot out of a seat when bow hunting.
Gear
To hunt right you need the right gear. Your gear is your starting point of a hunt. without the right gear, you will have a hard time hunting, tracking, and hauling game.
You need a sharp, quality knife from trusted brands. You need your knife to be sharp to cut through the hide and muscle of an animal or a tree branch in the way of a shooting lane. Your knife will go dull through this process, it happens with all knives, so you need a sharpener. Some knives have replaceable blades so you do not have to go through the hassle of sharpening in the field. Make sure you choose the right knife for your application.
You need the right clothes when you are hunting or else you will be too cold or too hot. Good hunting clothes keep you warm during below-freezing temperatures and cold when hunting in hot climates. The best way to achieve such a thing is a layering system.
Top-of-the-line brands like Sitka, First lite, and Kuiu offer clothes that are expensive, but enhance your ability to stay in the field. You will dry off faster after a rainstorm. You will be warmer when sitting in treestands in below-freezing temperatures so that you will be able to stay in the treestand all day. These clothes are also light, so they are easier to hike with.
Mid-priced clothes are what I hunt with. They allow me to get the lightness for hiking and the warmth of high price clothes. Brands like Plythal, some Cabelas clothing, and Nomad. These clothes are just a step down from the more expensive brands but a step up from cheap clothes. These clothes often will break the wind from passing right through you but are also light enough you won’t be sweating by the time you get to the stand.
Cheap clothes will work for a beginning hunter, but the more you hunt and the harder you hunt, the more you will want to upgrade. These clothes are often made of cotton, which when it gets wet takes a super long time to dry out. The cheap coats are often too heavy to hike with and you will be sweating by the time you get to the stand. To be warm with these clothes, you will have to put on a bunch of layers, which moving super hard, and is tough to get up a tree stand ladders, hike up a mountain, or even draw your bow.
The point of hunting clothes is so you can stay in the field longer; The longer your hunting, the higher chances you have of getting an animal, and nobody likes a hunt cut short due to clothing.
Boots are a very important part of hunting, they dictate how you hunt and how long you hunt. Rubber boots are good for hunting in the midwest for whitetails as they leave little sent behind and are waterproof, but are too heavy and bulky for western hunting. Hiking boots are good for walking up mountains and chasing elk but might not get you through the mud and water of the midwest or swamps of south Florida. I like to have both hiking and rubber boots in my arsenal, one for the treestand and one for the mountains.
An interactive map such as onX or HuntStand will greatly help your chances. You can plan where the animals will move; You can drop markers where you see an animal. Things like onX are worth their weight in gold.
Use the weather to your advantage
Weather is a huge part of knowing when and where to hunt. All animals change the way they act if the weather changes; Elk rut in September and if the weather is too hot, they might not even rut during the day, lowering your chances of success. A cold front will often get deer moving later in the morning and earlier in the evening, heightening your chances of tagging a buck.
Make sure you have a good weather app that tells you when there are cold fronts and warm fronts, that way you can plan accordingly.
if you use the weather to your advantage, use the right gear, prep for the hunt, and do some scouting, you will see your odds increase. By following all the things mentioned above you will become a better hunter ( I know they made me one).
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