Whew...... I just read all of the posts.

This is my take on it. Everyone is different therefore everyone will take (and learn) from their time hunting in the woods differently. Some will excel while others will just plod along never really learning too much more than what they needed to learn to get started.

You see everybody learns at a different pace therefore you cannot say that the guy who shoots 5 deer a yearAND spends all of his time scouting, shed hunting, etc... will learn more or gain more experience than say some one who onlyhas one tag touse and tags out early every year, if that guy/gal has the ability to absorb whathe/she has learned and apply it better than the first person...savy?

I know deer hunters (old timers now)who have hunted their entire lives and will swear to this day that deer never look up! Yet they are as proficient a hunter as you will ever come across and have much "experience".

To be honest my biggestconcern with this thread was why this question was posed in the first place?What could possibly belearned from it?I knowit was just "ramblings" and I can totally understand thatbut Jeff you must know that thereis NO SET WAY for someone to gain experience. It comes to everybody differently and at adifferent pace no matterhow much or little time is spent in the woods hunting.This will also differ depending on the region that you hunt. Someone who has a lot of experience hunting Midwest Whitetails may not now squat hunting them in the mountains and visa versa. This does not mean that either one is not an experienced hunter it's just that they know how to hunt their region better than someplace else.

While I agree that you must spend time in the woods hunting (this includes killing)in order to gain the experience, how much time and how many animals need to be killed will differ from one person to the next.