To answer the question is pretty easy. Look at your goals and make your plans. For example if your goal is to not come home without a deer then you are going to need all the help you can get. But, if your budget won’t allow you to be this demanding you might want to have the goal of having fun and getting away for a while.

 Deer hunting is a lot like playing poker. It is truly a game of skill. Therefore, if you are experienced at reading the habits of whitetail deer from where they bed down to where they feed and you can find the bottleneck in between and you have the time to do the scouting .. hey go it alone.

 Then you would have to have a truck load of equipment. Besides your gun or bow you would need bullets or arrows, tree stand or ground blind, something to sit on and time to brush in your secret spot. You need a pair of binoculars and something to eat. Proper hunting clothing is absolutely necessary whether a guided or unguided hunt.

 Now you have to have a place to hunt. If you want nice lodging with meals

Hunting Land

Hunting Land

served and you plan on an extended stay this will set you back a few thousand dollars. Lodges and meals cost money. If your budget won’t allow for this then you might have to settle for less features.  

 With all of this skill and equipment in your favor, like poker you still need some luck. Hunting can be quite frustrating at times. You take the time necessary in the woods and fields. You find the bedding areas. You even know where the acorns are that they are eating.

 Then the rut comes in and all the traffic patterns of the whitetail deer go into the twilight zone.  Nothing in your scouting efforts have panned out. The deer aren’t interested in eating and are not traveling the same trails they normally do.

 The good thing about this is while luck plays in the favor of the deer, dumb luck also plays in the favor of the hunter. While traveling into and out of the hunting land you may get lucky and stumble on the deer.

 But if your goal is to come home with a deer, but you don’t have an unlimited budget,  then you might want to consider finding someone who is familiar with the area you want to hunt. An experienced guide while up front may appear expensive,  can save you a considerable amount of money by doing the front end work for you.

 One thing we do when we go into an unfamiliar area fishing is we hire a guide for the first couple of days to get an idea where they are fishing, what they are using for bait at that time of the season. Then armed with the information provided by the guide, we go it alone. Our budget doesn’t get us in trouble and we increase our chances of catching fish. You can do the same thing hunting whitetail deer.

Read other articles like this on http://www.HuntingInVirginia.com

Tagged with: • • •

Filed under: Uncategorized • Whitetail Deer Hunting

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!