Successfully hunting a deer can be difficult. If you have done it already, I’m sure you already know the many different skills needed to hunt a deer. If you haven’t, here are 30 Deer Hunting Tips — whether you’re a beginner, or a veteran, I can guarantee you will learn something new.
- Keep the Noise Down
- Bring The Right Gear
- Use a Deer Call
- Pick Your Location Wisely
- Get Your Stand Ready Early in The Hunting Season
- Have a Clear Shot
- Check The Wind Direction
- Be Careful Where You Place Your Stand
- Deer Stay in a Few Places
- Scent Elimination Isn’t Enough
- How You Walk Makes A Big Difference
- Clear Trails To Your Stands
- You Don’t Need The Most Expensive Equipment
- Wear a Safety Harness For Tree Stands
- Learn Field Dressing
Keep the Noise Down
Deer can hear a lot better than humans can. And when I say a lot, I mean it.
A study done by The Wildlife Society found that white-tailed deer can hear within the frequencies of 0.25–30 kilohertz, with the best sensitivity between 4–8 kHz.
Okay, what does this actually mean? Well, let’s give you some perspective. A healthy human, with no hearing damage, can hear a maximum of 20 kilohertz. This compared to deers maximum of 30, means that they can hear roughly x1.5 better than us. Pretty good, huh?
So, how do you apply this to your next hunting trip? Well, a few ways:
Try parking yourself in a single spot, and don’t move. If you have to, make sure to not sound too much like a human. Change the rhythm and pace of your footsteps. If you accidentally stepped on a twig (or made any other loud noise), freeze! Don’t move for the next few minutes, this gives the deer enough time to relax, and lower its guard once again.

Bring The Right Gear
This is where our hunting checklist comes in handy. We found that there are just so many different items you have to bring with you while hunting, that it’s pretty easy to forget. It happens to me all the time.
Especially when you’re hunting deer, you’ll need all these things:
- Deer Drag
- Scents
- Calls
- Camo and Orange Safety Vest
- Weapon
- Food, Water and a Bathroom
- Cell Phone
Trust me, you’re not going to want to be out hunting and forget these items.
Use a Deer Call
Just like humans, deers use verbal communication (such as making different sounds) to interact with each other. And luckily for us, we can use this to our advantage.
Use deer calls to attract deer to your location, making them come to you. Seriously, I don’t know what I would do without my trusty deer call.
Interested in learning more? We’ve found this video to come in real handy.
Pick Your Location Wisely
Picking your hunting location can sometimes be difficult. Unfortunately, it can require planning. But, we’ve found some terrains to be better for deer hunting than others. Let’s take a look:
- Ridges: Stops your scent from spreading around you, and provides you with a good view to shoot from.
- Corner of Fields: Deer typically feed in fields, and they enter them through the corners.
Alternatively, bowhunters will need to run by a different set of rules. If you are planning on hunting with a how, make sure it’s downwind from where the deer will come. Thus stopping them from catching your scent.

Get Your Stand Ready Early in The Hunting Season
Deer have a special ability; they notice changes to their environment. If you choose to set up your stand right before your hunt, they will notice. If you’re planning on having a particularly successful experience set up your stand earlier. Preferably, just when the season starts.
Having your stand already there will make the deer not think twice about it, when you decide to hunt later in the season.
Have a Clear Shot
When hunting deer, the most fundamental aspect is actually shooting the game. Failing to hit your target, that’s a missed opportunity. This is where ridges come in handy. Ridges provide you with many different benefits and perks while hunting. One being, having the perfect place to shoot from.
If you have to, bring a small folding saw, so you can make sure your location is 100% optimized. Being comfortable while hunting is the aim, you don’t want to get distracted.
Check The Wind Direction
The direction of the wind really affects how you hunt. If you’re a good hunter, you will always make sure to check the wind direction first thing in the morning, and last thing at night.
Why? Well, it has everything to do with thermals. If you aren’t familiar with thermals, they affect how you scent is spread. According to The Meat Eater, when the “sun dips behind the trees, the higher air starts to cool and sink. During both events, the thermal carries your scent.”.
What does this mean? You will want to factor in the wind direction in your next hunt, especially when the sun isn’t out.
Be Careful Where You Place Your Stand
Deer have fairly predictable patterns of movement. If you have been studying or observing deer for a long time, you should have a good idea of how they move. Make sure not to place your stand in the way of any deer. This should be fairly obvious, but you will be surprised. If I had a dollar each time a newbie has placed their stand in the way of the deer, I would be rich.
Luckily for us hunters, we already know what a deer’s movement patterns look like. A study done by The Journal of Wildlife Managment collected 6,867 locations, calculated 130 home ranges, and documented 149 seasonal movements, and this is what they found:
- Mean distance between summer and winter home range was 10.1 km
- Temperature and snow depth had the greatest influence on initiation of seasonal migration
All in all, this means that deer have a predictable radius in which they move, that being 10km. Factor this in, in your next hunt.

Deer Stay in a Few Places
Most deer spend 80%-90% of their time in the same spot. Now, if you want to successfully hunt deer, you are going to have to make sure to look for the area those deer tend to spend most of their time in. How do you do this?
Look for irregularities. If you’re in hardwoods, look for a pocket of softwoods. If you’re around dry terrain, look for that nice small wet area. That is where the deer are. That is where you are going to want to hunt.
Scent Elimination Isn’t Enough
When I first started hunting, I though that as long as I took a shower, and sprayed myself down with all the scent elimination products, i would be just fine. Well… no, there is more to it than that. Unfortunately.
Fundamentally, scent elimination products are supposed to help you while you hunt. BUT, they can only support you so much. DO NOT rely on them to trick a deer’s nose. Especially, if it’s downwind.
How You Walk Makes A Big Difference
How you walk—not all first time hunters care about it. But it makes a difference, more than they probably understand. If you’re a new hunter yourself, try to be aware that walking can make or break your hunt.
Try to pick up your feet when you walk, take longer strides! Noise is the name of the game and dragging your feet acts as an alarm alerting every deer in your radius.
Walk like this: Heel first, then roll your foot forward. We found this works best.
Clear Trails To Your Stands
Hunting on private property comes with various benefits, making hunting heaps easier. If you are, you’re in luck. You have the ability to create navigable trails for each one of your stands.
This comes with two main benefits:
- Makes you more quiet.
- Minimizes the scent you leave.
Just a little preparation will go a long way when hunting deer.
You Don’t Need The Most Expensive Equipment
Some hunters choose to spend thousands of dollars on their hunting gear. As as far as I’m concerned, more power to them. Heck, even I have burnt a hole in my pocket while buying the latest hunting equipment.
Is this really needed? No, you don’t need rifles that cost an arm and a leg. No, you don’t need to empty your saving for a new scope. Although these come in handy, our ancestors hunted just fine without them.
Even if you have expensive equipment, we suggest you try out hunting minimalistically—try using the least amount of equipment you can. Just once, to see if it fits your fancy.
Don’t get me wrong, having high-quality gear comes in handy, but you don’t absolutely need these things to hunt game.
Wear a Safety Harness For Tree Stands
There is no excuse for not putting your safety first. ‘Do Now, Think Later’ is an ultimately unsuccessful hunting philosophy.
Come on, the safety harnesses they’re making these days are so comfortable. There is really no reason not to.
No, it doesn’t make you cool not wearing a safety harness. It’s like wearing a helmet. Yea, you probably don’t need it right now, but when your gliding at 25km an hour and fall, you’ll wish you wore one.
Learn Field Dressing
It’s a race against time after you shoot your game. Meat spoils… and fast! The way deer physiology works is that it will spoil faster when the deer’s carcass still retains body heat. So get that meat out of there!
Removing the meat quickly will not give the bacteria a chance to settle (bacteria is something you really don’t want). If you’re hunting for longer periods of time, dress as soon as possible to preserve the quality of the meat.