Successful bowhunters aren’t necessarily doing something radically different from everyone else. More often, they pay closer attention to the decisions and details that determine whether a hunt ever gets to the shot.
Part of Hook & Barrel’s Bow Season Blueprint series, the bowhunting advice that follows comes from accomplished hunters and archery experts whose experience spans competitive shooting, land management and countless hours pursuing mature whitetails. Their approaches are different, but there’s a common thread: They work to eliminate the little things that can ruin an opportunity before it happens.
From getting into a stand undetected to practicing for real hunting conditions, setting up a bow for cold-weather clothing, knowing when not to hunt and learning how to read an entire property, here’s what they do differently—and what the rest of us can learn from them.
5 Bowhunting Tips from the Pros
- Tyler Jordan — Wait for the right conditions: Don’t force a hunt when the wind or access is wrong.
- Dan Perez — Read the whole property: Look beyond deer sign to security cover, terrain, wind and huntability.
- Chris Bee — Protect your access: Plan routes that minimize noise, scent and disturbance.
- David Houser — Set up for hunting conditions: Make sure clothing and cold-weather gear don’t interfere with your shot.
- Dan McCarthy — Practice for real shots: Shoot without obvious aiming points and test your setup in low light.
Know When Not to Hunt — Tyler Jordan
Tyler Jordan is a lifelong Georgia deer hunter and one of the most recognizable faces at Realtree. Jordan has spent countless hours pursuing mature whitetails, and he knows that sometimes the most important decision a bowhunter can make is deciding not to hunt.
Nothing illustrates that point better than a giant buck Tyler shot in Georgia in 2021. Despite his cameras showing the buck near his stand in daylight four evenings in a row, Tyler refused to go in and hunt him. Why? Because the wind wasn’t right.
That kind of restraint can be difficult when a mature buck is showing a predictable pattern, but Tyler knew one bad decision could end the opportunity.
“It’s hard!” Tyler said. “You’re getting pictures of him in daylight every day, and you’re sitting there thinking, ‘Man, I need to be in there.’ But the wind just wasn’t right. I knew if I went in there and messed it up, those pictures weren’t going to mean anything. So as hard as it was, I just had to stay out and wait for the right conditions.”
Often, the challenge is balancing the urge to capitalize on predictable behavior against waiting for conditions that allow you to hunt without alerting the deer—a particularly important consideration when hunting predictable early-season whitetails. In Tyler’s case, the decision came down to the wind.
“The wind finally got right,” he said. “The buck had been doing the same thing for four days, so I felt pretty good about where he was going to be. I didn’t want to get too cute with it. Once I had a wind where I felt like I could get in there without him knowing, I knew it was time.”
On the fifth day, Tyler went in and killed the buck.
Asked how he developed the resolve to wait out situations like that, Tyler said it came from learning lessons the hard way.
“Oh yeah, I’ve been burned. I’ve gone to a stand before when I knew better. You start talking yourself into it: ‘The wind’s not that bad,’ or ‘Maybe I can get away with it.’ And most of the time, you don’t. You get burned a few times doing that and eventually learn to wait until everything is in your favor. I’m probably a lot more patient now than I was years ago.”
Read the Property, Not Just the Sign — Dan Perez
Dan Perez, a founding principal of Whitetail Properties, has spent decades looking at deer ground through both a hunter’s and land manager’s eyes.
Understanding what late-summer deer sign can reveal about fall hunting is valuable, but Perez says evaluating a property for hunting means looking beyond rubs, scrapes and well-used trails. At least as important are access, terrain, bedding cover, prevailing winds and whether you can actually get into position without alerting the deer you’re trying to hunt.
“Before I ever walk a property, I look at it from above,” he said. “A property can have plenty of sign on it and still sit in a poor area for mature bucks. I’d rather start with a great location and average sign than the other way around.”
That runs counter to how many hunters evaluate deer ground. Heavy sign can be hard to ignore, but Perez says the amount of sign matters less than what that sign reveals about how a mature buck is using the property.
“The sign I care about most is whatever tells me where a mature buck feels safe in daylight. Big old bucks have almost zero tolerance for people, so they live where there’s the least human intrusion. When I find heavy sign in thick cover that nobody’s been walking through, I know I’m looking at the kind of spot that can become a sanctuary.”
For Perez, identifying—or sometimes creating—those secure areas is a major part of consistently hunting mature bucks. A property needs places where deer can feel safe from human intrusion, but understanding how hunting pressure affects deer behavior is only part of the equation.
“For me, it’s all about wind and access,” Perez said. “My sanctuaries have to make sense wind-wise, and every stand has to let me get in and out without the deer ever hearing, seeing or smelling me. A spot with great sign that I can’t get into cleanly isn’t a good spot. It’s a good way to push a buck over to the neighbor.”
Protect Your Access — Chris Bee
Chris Bee is an avid Michigan bowhunter who creates hunting and target archery videos for his large YouTube following. In addition to all the scouting, planting and gear-tuning Bee does every year, one aspect of his hunting routine that he stresses is treestand access.
“There’s a 200-acre farm that five of us hunt, and we try to make sure everyone is doing the same things with access, so everyone’s not just going wherever they want through the property,” Bee said.
The hunters all agree to use the same primary access paths to stand locations on the property, and those paths are regularly maintained with weed eaters and leaf blowers. The goal is to get the paths down to bare dirt.
“I go out at midnight, once in October and once in November, with a backpack leaf blower and clean off all the trails,” Bee said. “Working at night doesn’t seem to bother the deer, and then we have nice quiet paths to walk on.”
Paths to field-edge stands are concealed by annual plantings of sorghum and Egyptian wheat. Hunters walk on the field side of the cover to get to stands for afternoon hunts and on the woods side for morning hunts.
“Either way, the deer can’t see us,” Bee said.
Treestands that sit at the end of trails running close to bedding areas are designated as all-day stands only because the chances are high that a hunter leaving midmorning or arriving early afternoon would bump deer from their beds.
“Everyone knows that if you go to one of those stands, you have to stay all day,” Bee said.
Stands are placed throughout the property, and wind direction dictates which ones can be hunted on a given day. Paths to those stands are created with an eye toward minimal impact.
“If we have a stand on the south end of the property, we don’t want someone walking in from the north through the whole farm,” Bee said. “We try to disturb as little as possible on our way in.”
Set Up Your Bow for Hunting Clothes — David Houser
David Houser is a hardcore Pennsylvania deer hunter, accomplished target archer and co-owner of Beast Broadheads. Houser understands the importance of having a bow set to the correct draw length for maximum accuracy, but he also knows bowhunting often involves bulky clothing.
So he sets the draw length on his hunting bow about a half inch shorter than his normal draw length, and he shortens the D loop from his target rig.
“If I can have a little bit of bend in my bow arm, that’s going to give me extra clearance for my clothes,” Houser said. “I don’t want anything in the path of the string when I take a shot.”
When it comes to hunting, Houser also refuses to wear a facemask or gloves while shooting.
“You just can’t get the same feel for the bow and the string when you have on gloves and a facemask,” he said.
Gloves can prevent a bowhunter from getting the proper grip, and a facemask can prevent the bowhunter from feeling the string position on his face when he comes to anchor—not to mention that either can interfere with the shot.
Houser uses a hand muff instead of gloves to keep his hands warm when he’s on stand, and he chooses face paint for camouflage instead of a facemask. If the Pennsylvania winds are blowing and spitting snow and it’s simply too cold for Houser to sit without a mask, he makes sure to pull it down before a shot.
“I have to know where that string is on my face to get everything lined up properly to make a good shot,” he said.
Practice for the Shot You’ll Actually Take — Dan McCarthy
Dan McCarthy is one of the best 3-D archers in the world, having won the coveted 2019 Archery Shooters Association Shooter of the Year title in the Men’s Open Pro division. He’s also a diehard whitetail hunter who lives and hunts in Wisconsin.
Even with his high skill level, McCarthy always makes sure he checks where his bow is hitting. But he’s not just making sure he’s sighted in properly. His bowhunting practice is designed around real-world conditions, including two specific shooting scenarios he could encounter in the woods.
After sighting in his bow like any other bowhunter, McCarthy shoots at a bland cardboard cutout of a deer with no visible markings on it.
“You hear a lot of bowhunters say they hit deer high, and I think it might be because they only check their sights when they’re aiming at dots they can see,” he said. “What I see is bowhunters tend to hold their pins under a dot when they’re aiming at one. So their arrow is actually hitting high of their pin. Then, when they have no aiming point, like when they’re triangulating behind a deer’s front shoulder, they put their pin on where they want to hit and they hit high of that spot.”
McCarthy aims at the blank cardboard cutout to understand exactly where a broadhead-tipped arrow hits in relation to his sight pin. He takes mental note of that so he knows where to hold on a deer.
Misjudging an aiming point is just one of several mistakes that can ruin an otherwise promising opportunity. Understanding the common reasons why bowhunters miss deer can help hunters identify preventable problems before taking a shot.
McCarthy also tests his aiming abilities at first and last light.
“Your hunting peep is way bigger than a target peep,” he said. “That leaves a lot of room to move around within that peep. I think bowhunters in low light can’t orient their peep with their sight housing, because they can’t see it, so they anchor based on what feels comfortable.
“That might not be exactly in the middle of the peep.”
McCarthy has noticed he sometimes hits as far as 6 inches off his intended aiming spot in low light because he changes his anchor when he can’t see as well.
MORE FROM THE HOOK & BARREL BOW SEASON BLUEPRINT:
- Hot-Weather Bowhunting: How to Beat the Early-Season Heat
- The Top-Pin Shot: 8 Ways to Get Whitetails Closer
The Difference Is in the Details
There’s no secret tactic connecting all of this advice. In fact, much of what these hunters do differently comes down to eliminating variables they can control.
They plan access before walking to a stand. They practice for the shots hunting actually presents. They set up equipment for field conditions rather than the range. They resist hunting when the wind tells them to stay home. And they look beyond obvious deer sign to determine whether a property can actually be hunted without educating the deer that live there.
None of those things guarantees a filled tag. But each one reduces the chances of beating yourself before a mature buck ever gives you an opportunity.
Do enough of that, and you’ll start hunting a little more like a pro—whether anyone is paying you to do it or not.
