Matthews Nate - 250 amazing hunting tips : the best tactics and techniques to get your game this season : deer,. bear,. waterfowl,. small game,and more!

Copyright 2010, 2015 by Lamar Underwood and Nate Matthews

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Underwood, Lamar.

250 amazing hunting tips : the best tactics and techniques to get your game this season : deer,. bear,. waterfowl,. small game, and more! / Lamar Underwood and Nate Matthews ; illustrations by John Rice.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-63220-303-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-63220-950-4 (ebook) 1. HuntingHandbooks, manuals, etc. I. Matthews, Nate. II. Title. III. Title: Two hundred and fifty amazing hunting tips.

SK33.U527 2015

639'.1dc23

2015021854

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Introduction

T he other evening, after I had spent the day going over material for this book, my wife made a remark that brought doubt and fear crashing into my thoughts like lightning bolts. She simply said, The newspaper had a section today called 101 Grilling Tips. I looked at them all and didnt find a single one to be useful.

Suddenly, I felt almost ill. I thought about picking up the phone and calling Nate Matthews, my co-editor and writer on this book. Was a fate similar to 101 Grilling Tips in store for our bookmultiplied two and a half times? Were our tips destined to be ignored, cast aside with shrugs and expressions of disappointment? It didnt seem possible, yet there it was: the possibility that we would not connect with our audience.

Instead of allowing my anguish to continue unabated, I decided to look at 101 Grilling Tips myself. I only liked a couple of the tips. The others were bland, without any juice to make me want to whip the cover off the Weber. My confidence in the work Nate and I were finishing began to rise again. Later, over the next few days as I gave our tips a final reading, that confidence level peaked out again. Today, ready to commit our tips to print, I guarantee our readers that they are going to find many, many useful tips. And I shall go even further by saying that many of the tips are so important that they mean the difference between success and failure on your hunt.

Yes, a single tip on hunting can carry that kind of importance behind it. If followed, it can mean youre literally bringing home the bacon. Ignored or forgotten, it can mean youre coming home only with that tired old expression, Sure was nice being in the woods today. Yea... sure... it was nice. Theres no disputing that. But you have nothing new to put into the freezer.

Allow me, if you will, to try to press my point about tips home with an example.

My personal deer hunting education was slow in evolving. Im an Army brat, who grew up mostly in the south where my hunting was focused on smoothbore opportunities. Using dogs to drive deer to standers was still in vogue back then and never appealed to me, especially with the great hunting we had for quail, doves, ducks, squirrels, and rabbits.

There came a long-awaited morning, however, when as a young man I became a serious player in the great game known as whitetail deer hunting. I was settled against the trunk of an enormous white oak in the heart of classic whitetail country among the folded hills and ridges of Pennsylvania. Under a flashlights glow, with my friend Larrys direction, I had swept aside leaves and sticks to make my nest as quiet as possible. I had a pack with a thermos and sandwiches, and in my hands rested a Winchester lever-action .30-30 with iron sights. The rifle triggered memories of the Daisy Red Ryder I had grown up using. When I was all set, Larry moved away to work another part of the ridge.

At first light, the horizon was cut from steelblack lumps of white pines, the knife-like rim of a distant ridge looming above the forest. Without wind, the stillness seemed almost electric as I shivered in the cold, nervous to the raw edge at the thought of a buck coming my way.

When the crows began to patrol, their raucous cries announcing that it was time for things to get moving, I detected the rustle of squirrels in the branches overhead. As the light came on, I began to hear occasional gunshots, echoing from the distant ridge.

The gunfire made me nervous. For some time, I had been hearing about reckless deer hunters, shooting at anything that moved. Oh, I had a couple of brush shots. That often-repeated comment wasnt funny to me.

Suddenly, the sound of a limb breaking jerked my attention toward the trees to my left. I strained to see. Nothing! The sound came again, louder still, and followed this time by the dry rustle of leaves beings shuffled. I could only think of one thing that could make that much noise in the deer woods: another hunter! I was suddenly very, very afraid. I stood up, waving and shouting, Hi there!

There was a moment of total silence. Then, in an explosion of crashing brush, the buck of my dreams bounced into the full light in a clearing between the pines, white tail flagging, then was instantly gone before I could even think of raising my rifle.

I stood there, stunned, hurt to the core. I was thinking terrible thoughts about myself. About being stupid, fumbling the ball, blowing my big chance. I was sure I would never have such an opportunity again.

I felt like heading for our car, going home. But I sat back down instead, trying to get a grip on myself. I had no faith that another chance would come my way, but I knew the game would not be over until sundown. I would play it out, give Lady Luck a chance to shine on me again.

Gradually, the forest worked its therapy on my beleaguered spirit. Bird activity was plentiful crows, blue jays, chickadees, woodpeckers, juncos were on the move and calling. As always when Im on a stand, they furnished a interesting sideshow during the hours of waiting for game to show. Then, about noontime, I noticed that the squirrels were moving as industriously as they had been at dawn. Strange, I thought, there must be some dirty weather around. I cant see it coming, but they can feel it coming.