Resources to learn about whitetail hunting

[westsloper]

It's my first season living in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and I have a rifle tag for an antlerless deer. This will be my first time hunting deer. Can anyone point me to some good resources to learn about whitetail hunting? I've hunted elk before in Colorado, but I'm sure there are differences.

 

[Jdhunttrapfish]

The best would be if you could find someone who's been hunting awhile and ask the questions you have to them, if they have any kind of hunting experience they will have answers for you, another thing you can do is use the search functions on here and other fourms, bowsite, archery talk etc. You will find most the answers you need if you do some reading on all the fourms, good luck

 

[brettdunn7]

I’d try and find a hunting forum for South Dakota. What may work in one area may not work at all in another area with whitetail hunting. I’ve grown up whitetail hunting in Louisiana. Also hunted in Kentucky and Maryland. Grunting, rattling and all that didn’t hardly do squat for me in Louisiana. In Kentucky different story. Kind of worked some in Maryland. Buck to doe ratio can play an effect on that as well.

Find bedding areas and hunt near them. If you can find an area to slip into between bedding areas and food source then you can increase your odds. Play the wind. Scent control can’t hurt also.

Watch The Hunting Public on YouTube if you haven’t heard of them. I learned some really nice and useful tactics that I used last year and was successful for my first bow kill my second year bow hunting. And I was on the ground. You will learn a lot from them about hunting food sources, bedding areas, transitions, using terrain to your advantage, etc.

I’m sure there is a lot more I can go into but as others have said look at archerytalk also. Tons of good info on there but mostly geared towards bow hunting.


If I can think of other useful info then I’ll post. If you have any questions hit me up.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Huckleberry Hound]

Like the post above says, getting info from people in south dakota could be beneficial, as whitetail hunting in different areas can vary a lot. If you have specific questions in mind, here are a couple email contacts that you might find helpful. Worth a shot. https://www.qdma.com/south-dakota/

 

[Keith Knudsen]

Lots of good people in the Black Hills. Like others said you should be able to find someone that’ll show you around a bit. That being said I’ve hunted in the Hills several times mostly for elk and lions and used to trap Lions for the state. Lots people are going to be driving the 100,000 roads that are in the Hills and shoot them from the road (also a game wardens advice) if you’re used to hunting elk, white tail will be easy for you. Message me and I can send you some areas to check out. But you can get off just about any road and glass for an any Antlerless deer and shouldn’t have a problem killing one. If you live in the Hills I would wait until after opening weekend. It’ll look like a pumpkin patch out there.

 

[Wiscohunter]

I've never hunted whitetails west of the Midwest, so as others have noted, local people are your best resource for how deer behave in the black Hills.

However, there is likely more whitetail info than any other species of game, your goal is to filter out the information that doesn't apply to your region, which is most of it. Most whitetail info is geared towards eastern hunters sitting treestands on small private land parcels.

James Kroll offers a lot of information about whitetail biology as does the Qdma website... Just skip to the biology and behavioral info as food plots and hinge cutting are meaningless to you. Also, field and stream has some good tactics in their Total Deer Hunting manual and online magazine outside the usual treestand stuff.