HOW DID THEY DO THAT?
Perhaps most importantly, deer hunting is not a two-week or month-long affair for perennially successful hunters. It is something they think about and study all year. Serious hunters also spend hundreds of hours each year with their weapon of choice in their hands. They know they may only have one shot all season, and that skill and familiarity with their gun or bow can make or break the season. They also understand the physical demands of hunting. Staying in shape is second nature. They also understand that a successful hunt begins with scouting trips months before the opener, and most have intimate knowledge of the areas they hunt and the deer they pursue long before the beginning of the season.

FINDING DEER
Although good deer hunters practice with their firearms and exercise throughout the year, let's begin with scouting. This makes sense, because getting out in the field and seeing deer serves as an impetus for increased target practice and conditioning.

West Coast hunters, depending on the state in which they live, have the opportunity to pursue blacktail, mule and white-tailed deer. Each species exhibits different behaviors, prefer different habitats and require slightly different hunting tactics, but the basic scouting strategy is essentially the same, regardless of species. The purpose of scouting is to identify and pattern the habits of a specific animal or group of animals and then figure out the best place to be during the season to get a clear shot.

Deer are creatures of habit driven by their life-sustaining searches for forage, water and cover. While more and more deer seem to become nocturnal as hunting pressure increases, dawn and dusk mark their most active periods, when they move from food and water sources to bedding areas. This is the time you should be in the field and at a selected site with binoculars or a spotting scope.

I like to break down scouting strategies into two distinct categories: macro scouting and micro scouting. Macro scouting entails large-scale searches that are necessary to simply locate a population of deer in an area where they can be hunted. This is what hunters do when they prospect new territory, especially mule deer country.

Macro scouting is relatively uncomplicated and can often be accomplished from a vehicle and with short walks. Unlike, road hunting, you won't have a rifle along on these scouting forays; your "weapon" is a spotting scope, a pair of binoculars, or a camera because you'll be driving through deer country months before opening day.

Hunters who return to the same area year after year, of course, don't need to spend as much time on macro scouting as someone who is scouting new territory, but fires, development, logging and other activities could have an impact in deer country. It is always a good idea to visit even familiar deer haunts to prevent an ugly surprise on opening day.

Once you have located deer and see them regularly, it is time to fine tune your scouting to identify specific bucks, maybe even trophy bucks. This is micro scouting.

You definitely need to get out of your vehicle for this type of work. In with unobstructed visibility (most high desert mule deer country, burns, clear cuts, etc.) spotting scopes enable you to view deer from considerable distances. That is what the good hunter I mentioned earlier was doing.

The haunts of blacktail and white-tailed deer, however, do not often lend themselves to such optical scanning. You need to hike into the woods or hills and look for deer sign. It requires a lot of energy, locating trails, water holes and bedding areas, and it also requires you to sit for hours at a time.

In areas where the season opens before the leaves are off the trees or before the bucks lose their caution in the rut, this can be difficult. But the effort usually pans out for the hunters who stick to it. They typically know the habits of at least one legal deer they have spotted and observed before the first day of the season.