The author tagged this Kansas brute last fall when hunting an area for the first time. This tactic has accounted for more than 60-percent of the author's trophy whitetails to-date.

Being a dedicated member of the bowhunting fraternity, it goes without saying that I spend a lot of time up a tree doing nothing. As a direct offshoot of this practice, I often find myself spending a lot of time meditating on a wide variety of issues. Sometimes I even find myself actually, seriously, focusing my cranial efforts upon the immediate task at hand--bowhunting! When this occurs, my thoughts always seem to drift back to that age-old dilemma: what are the secrets to this pursuit and how can I apply them to my efforts to become a better archery hunter?

Of course, we all know that there is no secret gadget that will open up the "Pandora's Box" of success. Yet, there certainly are things that we can learn, do and use that will put us well ahead of the status quo. It's the fellows that put out the extended effort, correctly calculate the results and then adapt to the savvy gleaned that rise heads above the rest. In far simpler terms, it's the guys that spend a lifetime "morphing" into consummate hunters that not only fill the freezer, but also cover their walls with "big bone."

As I sat in the whitetail woods this past autumn and reflected upon the countless hours that I'd spent trying to become an excellent outdoorsman, I realized something slightly ironic in the formula. I had spent many years trying to get my first big buck. After that was accomplished, it then took me many more years to get consistent at harvesting big bucks. Finally, it had taken many more years to harvest a respectable number of big bucks. Yet, in spite of all the time that had been required to become successful, more than 60-percent of the trophies that I'd taken to-date were harvested the first time that I hunted a particular location. Huh? It takes forever to get good at it, yet most big bucks will be taken on first hunts? As the reality of this fact settled into my psyche, I knew that such fact was far more than coincidence. Fixating upon this knew "revelation," I began to try and put reasons to the rhyme.

Understanding The Rules
As I've matured as an archery hunter of mature whitetail bucks, there's one hard fact that I've had to face: consistently killing mature whitetail bucks in 100-percent fair chase conditions consistently is as difficult of a challenge as the bowhunting world offers, one which no one will ever totally master. Why is this? Because our quarry is an extremely refined, survival orientated machine that has all the goods and means by which to rarely ever (outside the peak breeding season) place himself in a time and place where he is vulnerable to danger, a.k.a. an archery hunter. Sure, there are a few exceptions to the rule, but generally speaking, mature whitetail bucks easily out-smart, out-maneuver and/or out-class virtually every bowhunting effort that we have devised for them.

Okay, so let's say that there's nothing we can do to guarantee our success, so what's the next best crutch to lean on? Ever heard of LUCK? Yes, you say, but who wants to rely on luck? I can hear you thinking: I don't want to be lucky, I want to be good. Certainly, I agree, but then again, we just admitted a short while ago that no one could ever do it by 100-percent skill, all the time, right?