If you are a whitetail hunter, you know what’s on my mind. Last November, I made a page-long list of things I need to do before our next deer hunting season begins. At the top of the list is a number of jobs that definitely can’t wait until the last minute. Scouting four new stand hunting areas 20 or more acres in size in my hunting area is one. None have been hunted in 10–30 years. If I find deer signs in these areas made by mature bucks, which is almost certain, my next job will be to select two or more mature-buck-effective stand sites and approach trails (deer trails) in each area for different wind directions. This kind of work will take 2–3 trips north and must be finished at least three weeks before opening day. I’m really looking forward to getting started because well-chosen, never-used stand sites are by far the most productive for hunting mature, stand-smart bucks. Another task I have been intending to do for two years is use fabric paint to make my teepee-shaped portable blind to look like a small spruce tree. After finished, it will take weeks of weathering in my back yard to get rid of fabric & paint odors. I also need to rig up a two-piece metal support pole with adjustable straps for my deer camp woodstove chimney and order two 4-foot chimney sections and one elbow, Yes, I’m thinking with a grin, it’s definitely time to begin getting jobs like these crossed off my latest deer hunting to-do list.

How about you? Do you have a list? If you do, perhaps you have added several new items to your list after reading my many books, magazine articles and blogs and/or after viewing my recent, very popular buck and black bear hunting seminars on YouTube (well more than a million minutes of hunters watching them thus far). If you have, by now you should be thinking it’s finally time to do whatever is necessary to become a hunter skilled and knowledgeable enough to regularly see and take mature bucks, beginning this fall. To fulfill this goal, you’ve probably also been thinking you should order an autographed copy of my new Whitetail Hunters Almanac, 10th Edition soon. There’s a lot to learn from this unique and enormous book in the time remaining before your next hunting season begins, including how to use the six new fair chase stand hunting methods that enabled my three sons and I to take 101 mature bucks since 1990 on public land—evolved from hunting-related, scientifically-based, year-round field research with wild deer beginning in the early 1960s, like no one else has ever done before. If you order this book from my website, drnordbergondeerhunting.com (click on “store”), you will receive a FREE autographed copy of your choice of a previously published, yet available Whitetail hunters Almanac (while they last), each covering different subjects. I strongly urge you to select the 4th Edition, a guide to the many different visual signs made by white-tailed deer. To become a regularly successful buck hunter, one of your necessary prerequisites is learning how to recognize hunting values and information provided by a considerable number of deer signs.