I’ve been reading The Wilderness Hunter by Theodore Roosevelt, trying to recapture an image of hunting across the Western Frontier in the late 1800s. Roosevelt describes the American West as a vast, unforgiving, and deeply atmospheric landscape. He cherishes the immense, solitary spaces of untouched wilderness across dense pine forests, sweeping prairies, and high alpine meadows.
It becomes clear to the reader that hunting in the late 19th century required immense physical stamina, sharp woodsmanship and bushcraft skills, and mental resilience. Game populations were sparse and highly alert, requiring long, tedious stalks across open ground without any cover.
The book paints a much different picture than the American landscape we hunt today. Technological advancements and hunting regulations set in place nearly a decade ago have led to a food and wildlife abundance for large parts of the country.
For most of us, our hunting tradition doesn't come from the pioneers across the Western Frontier and the market hunting era, but from the hunting industry’s boom into the modern sports world in the 1980s.
When I was much younger, I spent a lot of time watching bow hunting whitetails on Outdoor and Sportsman’s channels in the 2000s. I rummaged through all of my grandpa’s whitetail magazines, anything I could get my hands on. I was dying to know what the pros were doing to find these huge whitetails and what gear they were using.
I still have this image branded in my head: A huge mature buck standing over a corn field in November, with light snowfall.
That was what peak bow hunting was supposed to look like: carrying all of the best gear, going out after a giant buck, with a wall full of trophies back home. That was what it meant to be a sportsman. And I tried to emulate that.
I went through a five- or six-year stretch where I was convinced that if I just put out more trail cameras, I’d eventually find that mythical 180-inch buck living on my farm. The problem was, he didn’t exist.
At one point, I even passed a seven-year-old buck, one that would go on to live another four years, simply because he was “only” 130 inches.
The more research I’ve done, however, the more I have tried to distance myself from this industry-oriented mindset. Through thousands of hours of watching deer, it’s become clear to me that much of what we see on the internet generally does not reflect the natural reality of deer hunting. And how little gear it actually takes to be a very successful hunter.
Our forests and hills are full of wild game, there is more information available than ever, and we have very advanced equipment to help us with our harvests.
And yet, I’ve realized that some of the hunting styles I see on TV just aren’t really for me. When I’ve tried sitting in towers over food plots or chasing trail camera photos around, I usually don’t enjoy the process as much, and I often don’t hunt as well that way either.
I’d like to argue that the modern whitetail hunter’s greatest obstacle is not the need for immense physical resilience or survival skills like it once was, but his own expectations and self-imposed limits.
If you go into a hunt with the expectation that you’re going to have an epic encounter with a buck, and it doesn’t happen, then you will automatically consider the hunt a failure.
And without naming them here, I would say that there are several mainstream hunting strategies that actively prevent people from becoming better hunters.
I think that this is all by design.
If you will allow me to go down the rabbit hole for a moment…
To efficiently market a product in the hunting industry, advertisers need to psychologically link a hunter’s expectations and enjoyment to his wall full of trophies, or lack thereof.
Success has been defined by the people selling you products. And the standard they set is purposefully unreachable.
The lie is that everyone else is harvesting huge deer every year. But you’re the one guy that’s missing out…. and there’s probably some new piece of gear that you need in order to catch up.
Hunter wants success → Hunter buys gear → Hunter underachieves → repeat
When hunting doesn’t improve, and we enter into the cycle of underachieving and consumption, hunting begins to lose its joy.
But. When an aspiring hunter begins to understand this, they stop trying to bandage flaws in their hunting strategy by buying more trail cams, faster bows, hunting blinds, you name it.
Every hunter striving to improve should look to address their own underdeveloped woodsmanship skills instead of spending more money on gear. You can do this by pushing yourself further into the woods with the intention to learn.
For some hunters, that may mean giving up trail cameras and hunting blinds for a time, so you are forced to spend more time scouting on the ground and hunting in new places.
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Andy Doss
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