2022 DEER SEASON REFLECTION

January 16, 2023 

By: Alex Comstock (@whitetail_dna)

Light was fading too fast for my liking as the velvet eight pointer made his way closer to me on September 4th this past fall in North Dakota. The buck finally made it into bow range, I drew back and settled the pin, let an arrow fly and just like that on the third day of the 2022 deer season I had a buck down. Little did I know in the moment it would be the only arrow I’d release at a deer all season, and I was in for the toughest and most humbling deer season of my life.

Overall Reflections

As I sit here and type this blog post on a cold winter day in January, just a couple weeks removed from deer season, there are numerous thoughts I have as I reflect on what transpired through the near 70 days of sitting in a tree. It’s tough to sum up the season in one word, but if I had to it would be humbling. Each deer season, I typically hunt in three to four states. My home state of Minnesota, North Dakota, Nebraska and sometimes Wisconsin. This year, I spent time in all of them other than Wisconsin. If you don’t reflect on your seasons and learn from them, whether you had “success” or not, you won’t improve that level of success as the years go on.

I challenge anyone reading this to come up with at least three “lessons” learned from the previous deer season and then come up with a plan to improve and learn from those lessons. As I sit back and look back at the previous four months of hunting, there are three major lessons I’m going to take from it.

Don’t Rely on Trail Cameras

In this day and age with trail cameras and especially cellular trail cameras it can be very easy to completely rely on them and use cameras as a crutch of sorts. Don’t get me wrong, I love trail cameras and they’re a valuable tool, but don’t let them make you a worse hunter. What I mean by this is for instance, this season there were countless occurrences where I went into a spot and instead of scouting it in depth, I’d throw up a cell cam over a mock scrape and if I wasn’t getting mature bucks in daylight, I wasn’t hunting there.

How I Improve

What I should have been doing is a couple things. First off, I should have spent more time in season scouting. The way in which I hunt is mainly public and by permission land and it’s constantly changing. I rarely hunt the same spots year after year so in season scouting is required and should have played a bigger part in my season.

The second thing I should have been doing is if my cell cams weren’t getting pictures of mature bucks in daylight, I should have then been going and shifting those cameras more often. Don’t forget, trail cameras are a small window into a way bigger picture. Just because you’re not getting pictures of a mature buck in spot, doesn’t mean he’s not there. Next season I want to (a) hunt more without camera intel first and (b) rely on my scouting and gut feeling more than simply cameras. In order to improve I need to make trail cameras more of a “tool in the toolbox” rather than the only tool in the toolbox. I have a feeling it will only help me.

Spend Every Minute You can in a Tree in November

This lesson hurts the worse because it’s one I’ve had to learn more than once. Going into the season I had the goal of spending as many days as possible in November sitting dark to dark. There are various circumstances that led me to pulling off exactly zero all day sits, but in the end, it cost me a November buck in Minnesota and Nebraska. More than once I’d sit until 10/11 in the morning, climb down and then get cell cam pics of a buck during the middle of the day.

It’s talked about often, but when it comes to hunting the rut, a mature buck can come through at literally any moment in the day. You may have long periods of slow hunting, but by being in a tree and being ready, you’ll put yourself in a better position.

How I improve

Next season I need to do a better job of clearing my schedule to afford me more time in a tree in November. I sat most days during the month of November this past season, but what I need to do next year is spend more hours in a tree. In order to improve in this facet of my season, I’ve got a goal of at least ten all day sits dark to dark and ideally more than that. If I had simply spent at least ten days dark to dark in a tree this year, I could almost guarantee I would have had another buck under my belt.

Don’t Spread Yourself Too Thin

This lesson is a tricky one, but one I find important. Going into this season in my home state of Minnesota, one of my goals was to get permission on a ton of different properties. I succeeded but went too far and had so many small parcels of ground I could hunt, I ended up spreading myself too thin and instead of learning a handful of properties, I probably learned less because I was bouncing around so much. It inevitably led to me having a tough time with decision making on where to hunt and was a contributing factor of not being able to catch up with a mature buck.

How I improve

Next year, I still want to have permission on numerous spots, but I need to get the number down a bit so it’s a little more manageable. Sometimes biting off more than you can chew puts you behind and next deer season, I’m going to aim to end up right in the sweet spots in terms of how many properties I can hunt.

Conclusion

When it comes down to it, in order to improve as a deer hunter, you need to understand whereyour faults are and how to correct them in some form. In the past, I’ve typically discovered that failing often leads to more growth, so I’m counting on that to make next deer season one of my best!