I agree that you are right on the money with your thoughts. People seem to be looking for that magic gadget or tactic that will fill there walls with big bucks. Funny thing about this topic is that just today I finished up a new article for North American Whitetail on what I believe sets apart those successful hunters from the rest of the pack. I wont get into the details of that article and cant tell you for sure which issue it will be in but probably not before September and maybe much later. Anyway, that one magic ingredient in my mind anyway is DESIRE. Hunters with a burning desire to tag monster bucks don't make excuses, they take action.

As for favorite excuses, mine is that a buck is "nocturnal". That is the excuse that a lot of hunters use for not being able to lay eyes on a big buck that they know is there. The fact is the buck probably is nocturnal in the places they are hunting; that is, if he is using those areas he is likely doing it after dark. Sure there are bucks that move very little during the daylight and they move even less in daylight around most hunters stands but if you get a stand on the edge of his bedding area and hunt it smart you have a chance to kill most mature bucks. It just blows my mind that guys spend so much time and effort hunting feeding areas and planting foodplots to hunt over. Think about it, lets say there are 12 hours of daylight in a single day. How many of those 12 hours is a buck going to be in that feeding area? Probably less than 15 minutes. How many of those 12 hours is he going to be in his bedding area? More than 11! So why are guys hunting field edges and foodplots and feeding areas???? Because they see does and little bucks and havent accepted the fact that a mature buck is a different animal. Sure they have heard it a hundred times and may even say that they realize it but yet they still try to kill them by hunting him as if he acted like a doe.

As for the hunting industry, I agree with your thoughts on that as well. That is why I try to represent real world deer hunters hunting real world deer with my writing. THAT is how I try to set myself apart from the other writers. And for the record, there are some other writers out there that are excellent hunters and get it done in "the real world".