RE: What's more important in the whitetail hunter's arsenal?
 

Intelligence is a bigger factor to me. If you can retain information that most discard, you will always be gaining ground on them in relationship to their "experiece". I have seen some god awful hunters who claim they have hunted for 30 years and I have seen some good hunters who have only been hunting for 2-3 years. Those young intelligent hunters seem to really listen to people that give them advice and take it to heart. It is like any other "sport"......A guy could be a really experienced in something like being a teacher, meaning that he has been involved in teaching for years, but it doesnt mean he is any good at it.

RE: What's more important in the whitetail hunter's arsenal?
 

A huge aspect of hunting success is perceptiveness,and using it to put all of the pieces together.Is being perceptive and being intelligent the same? There are a lot of different ways to define intelligence.The old book smarts versus common sense discussion.There are many others.
How a hunter processes what they see and relates it to the ground they are hunting is what is going to get it done.Your SAT scores are not going to help you in the deer woods,nor are they lilkely to be an indicator of hunting success.

RE: What's more important in the whitetail hunter's arsenal?
 

I am a firm believer that experience (i.e. longevity) does not increase your level of competence. If you are making the same mistakes nowyou were making five years ago, what have you improved? Now if you draw on your experience and adapt to your current hunting situations, then you are improving your "hunting intelligence".

RE: What's more important in the whitetail hunter's arsenal?
 

I've seen guys with 1 year of experience, 20 times over....

I've seen guys with 20 years of experience and were smart enough to use it...

It works both ways...

I've also seen "city boys" for lack of a better expression that weren't observant enough of their surroundings to have a clue as to what was going on...For example, didn't know a white oak from a red oak, or how to tell if the shells under it were eaten by a deer or a squirrel...Or weren't observant enough to realize that the wind direction had changed, or clouds were moving in so a cold front was coming...Maybe the squirrels started chattering, alerting them to a deer, or even a neighbors dog started barking because he smelled a deer...These things take experience in the outdoors to notice...

Many years ago, I had a covy of quail flush about 75 yards in front of me, down an old logging trail that went through the woods...This area of woods had an edge line of pines that ran through a white oak grove...I knew that I didn't flush the quail...The next morning, I was there and killed a nine point buck, just because he had flushed those quail...I've since killed several more there, because I started to learn more about edges and how deer use them...

RE: What's more important in the whitetail hunter's arsenal?
 

While both can have thier merit at times, I would say intelligence. You can have 50 years of experience, but if it is 50 years of doing something wrong, you are no where.

RE: What's more important in the whitetail hunter's arsenal?
 

Experience, is what i think (too bad i dont have much[:o])

RE: What's more important in the whitetail hunter's arsenal?
 

This is called "Special.........Ed".:D

RE: What's more important in the whitetail hunter's arsenal?
 

Tony I started this thread because of something magicman said in another thread. There....he stated the whitetail hunter's brain was his biggest asset.


Good stuff here, GR8

RE: What's more important in the whitetail hunter's arsenal?
 

How does one aquire instinct? Are you just born with this in you? To be able to go out and hunt down an animal for food?

Serious question.

LT

RE: What's more important in the whitetail hunter's arsenal?
 

Agree. I SHOULD have said that experience in a certain "field" gets you intelligence in that particular field.

Good call!