Photo by R.E. Ilg

I live in deer country near low-elevation forest, a short distance from the foothills, canyons and river valleys that feed out of a major mountain range. I spend considerable time each year hunting, fishing and scouting new areas in these woods. As a result, I have a bird's-eye view of the different ways hunters approach the upcoming deer hunting season. I witness a wide range of strategies, but the methods I see at the opposite ends of hunting preparation continuum are illustrative.

I begin to see one hunter every year in mid-summer, several months before the opening of the season. He parks his truck in a turnout on a road, which climbs a low foothill pass, which provides an expansive view of the higher slopes above. He glasses the open, logged ridges above the road with a spotting scope. He is in his late 30s or early 40s and appears to be in good shape.

The country he inspects is good, with sunny, east-facing logged over slopes covered with berries and young conifers, and pocked with shady ravines that host perennial creeks. It is the kind of country that draws mature, heavy-antlered bucks.

From mid-summer until early autumn, I see the hunter regularly; he is doubtlessly there even more than I know of because I don't travel the road that much. When we pass him, I always say to my wife, "There's a serious hunter."

I encounter the hunters at the other end of the continuum much later, usually not until a week or 10 days before opening day of deer season. Their scouting forays consist of driving along logging roads on Forest Service land and private timberlands. These hunters seem to be clumped at the extremes of the age range, either teen-agers to 20-somethings or old guys who even from a distance are not in good shape. Because of the large and increasing incidence of gated roads, these hunters now tend to be concentrated in fairly heavily traveled forest and foothills roads -- mainlines, in logging company parlance. While does and juvenile deer may be seen relatively regularly in these areas, mature bucks tend to avoid them completely.

There is a saying among fishermen that 10 percent of the anglers catch 90 percent of the fish. I haven't seen comparable figures for deer hunters, but from my own observations and experience, I would guess that the ratio may even be more skewed than 9-to-1. In most West Coast states, for example, somewhere around 20 percent of hunters tag a buck every year. But if you could see the figures of hunters who take deer four out of five years, I expect they would account for less than 10 percent of hunters, and probably considerably less. Casual hunters, the ones who scout late in the season from heated pickups, may literally stumble onto a legal deer every few years, and these deer add percentage points to the overall harvest figures. But it takes a lot more of them to contribute a proportionally much smaller number of deer.

Any way you look at it, serious, committed deer hunters regularly take more deer than their less-dedicated counterparts. By the very nature of their commitment to the sport, it is safe to assume that they also account for the vast majority of deer listed in record books.

So how do you become one of the small percentage of hunters who regularly take deer, and who tag trophies much more frequently than casual hunters? The answers are surprisingly simple to pinpoint.