"Unconventional Wisdom"

We hunters, by and large, accept certain items of conventional wisdom as the gospel. Without a shred of skepticism, and with nary an intention of testing the conclusive pronouncements made by our camp compatriots about woods, weather and wood ducks, we routinely receive and pass along groupthink and consensus like an ancient tribe’s oral history passed down through the generations.

Conventional wisdom, of course, is that unscientific body of generally accepted beliefs and explanations which is based on little more than the collective experiences of a large and diverse group of individuals. Hunting camps are quintessential founts of this sort of insight and there are almost as many items of conventional wisdom passed around among hunters as there are pine needles in the woods. It is there to tell us the typical whats, whys, whens and wheres of given situations. For a lot of us conventional wisdom is all we got to go on, comprising the bulk of our hunting knowledge.

For years I accepted as true certain nuggets of conventional wisdom because I hung around skinning posts and fire pits with far wiser and more experienced folks than I, who freely imparted the stuff, often without invitation or hesitation. The more I heard the same things repeated over and over again, the more concrete they became.

For instance, conventional wisdom holds that deer will feed all night any time there is a full moon, so you may as well sleep late the next morning and try to intercept them on their way back to bed down. Turkeys like to gather in green fields and pastures during a thunderstorm. Typically they won’t gobble in the afternoon. Nor will they fly across creeks or sloughs. They won’t jump over fences, either. Feral hogs can’t see and aren’t very bright.

Deer will get used to a new shooting house or ladder stand after a month or so. Hardwoods provide better habitat for deer and turkeys. Wounded deer will seek out low spots that hold water. Kids get bored unless they’re seeing deer or catching fish.

Nothing happens in an east wind. In fact it’s been said (much more colorfully than this) that even ladies of ill repute refuse to work in an east wind.

Deer can sense subtle changes in barometric pressure and will be up and moving immediately before and immediately after cold fronts and thunderstorms. When a deer gets downwind of your stand, your hunt is over. Deer and turkeys, like us, prefer to take the path of least resistance through the woods. If on the way to your stand you walk past a mature buck that is bedded down, it will lie motionless until long after you’ve passed.

If there is snow or frost on the ground, don’t bother hunting until it all melts away because the deer can’t get to the browse and will stay bedded down until it’s gone. A lone deer spotted late in the season is probably a spike or a button buck, so don’t shoot it.

Those are just some of the more oft-repeated bits of outdoor profundity that hunters believe almost universally. I have learned over the years, however, that conventional wisdom doesn’t always hold true. They say there is no substitute for experience and I would have to agree with them (whoever the hell “they” are), for much of my hunting experience flies directly in the face of all the conventional wisdom I have heard so many times around gambrels, fireplaces and truck beds. I am either snakebit, a slow learner or both, but the woods and the wildlife have given me my own sense of experiential knowledge, which thus far has proven far more accurate than anything else I’ve been told.

Case in point, conventional wisdom holds that while wild turkeys hear very well and see even better, their sense of smell is not very keen. A wild turkey can smell me, however, from a mile away.

When hunting deer, it is commonly accepted that the better practice is to hunt the woods in the mornings and green fields in the afternoons. I have learned, on the other hand, that deer will not come into a field in the afternoon if I am hunting over it. No matter how many times you tell me you’ve seen a particular buck in a particular field, it will go nocturnal promptly upon my arrival.

Precisely five minutes after I settle into my climber, the wind will shift and begin blowing briskly from the worst possible direction. Wind speed will be directly proportional to the amount of time I have spent scouting.

Fresh sign such as tracks, rubs and scrapes indicate the past presence of a buck which is now two ridges over and enjoying a good chuckle at the sight of me trying to pattern it. Turkeys have vacation time, too, and are sure to cash it in right about the time I lace up my snake boots on a morning in which I have taken some of mine.

It is commonly accepted that, absent some injury or genetic mutation, a buck’s antlers grow larger every year of its life. It is equally true, however, that they get smaller with every step I take toward one on the ground. Nothing will turn a whitetail off of acorns and on to planted clover faster than my climbing high up a hardwood over a recent and abundant drop of acorns.

A gobbler will frequent its favorite strut zones many days in a row until I set up over one of them. He will return again the first day I do not.

Sadly, I could go on for days about how my experiences have disproved much of the conventional wisdom I have heard over the years. I call it unconventional wisdom, and while it is unarguably more reliable than its counterpart, I doubt too many folks would be eager for me to impart it all.

That is, unless they need a good laugh.



(c) Roger Guilian 2008