While whiling away your deer hunting time in the woods this fall, here’s some things to think about:

Though you have tried using every buck hunting gadget, potion, article of clothing, lure, bait, mineral block, portable tree stand and ground level blind now available in your favorite sporting goods store that is supposed to improve your odds of taking a big buck, why are those mature bucks you recently photographed with your trail cameras as elusive as ever? Could mature bucks be that smart?

Is your problem actually a low buck-to-doe ratio or is it simply bad luck, not being in the right place at the right time? If like you, 98% of other whitetail hunters seldom see trophy bucks (worthy of taxidermy) during a hunting season, much less take one, which is true, how in the world could there be a shortage of trophy class bucks?

Not being able to recognize a mature-buck-effective stand site or not knowing how long a stand site can remain mature-buck-effective might be your problem.

What about being unable to recognize a current favorite whitetail feeding area (the most productive of stand sites if properly hunted) in forest habitat, except of course, any food plot you created yourself? Is your food plot out in front of you right now a favorite whitetail feeding area today?  Why did your trail camera prove one or more mature bucks and other deer regularly visited your food plot before the hunting season began, but except for fawns and yearlings, not much now, at least not during daylight hours, if at all?

What about ensuring you are hunting within easy shooting range of a trail or site favored by a mature buck right now, today, every day you hunt? Yes, this can actually be done.

Maybe you’re goofing up somehow with airborne and trail scents. Can whitetails actually smell hunters high in tree stands? Did you know K-9 dogs can find a human using any scent killing product available for deer hunters today as quickly as a human not using them?

Do you hunt on the way to a stand site, sneaking and often halting (to scan ahead), believing this enables you to fool big bucks and other whitetails ahead into thinking you are a harmlessly feeding deer? This is a big one.

Do you believe breeding is in progress when bucks are most actively making ground scrapes and antler rubs? This is a big one too.

Your answers to such questions and their validity (whether they are long believed myths or not) has everything to do with how many mature bucks you see, if any, while hunting.

Today, there are cures for rarely successful buck hunting—provided by a yet avid 84-year-old deer hunter and long-time MidWest Outdoors Magazine writer, Dr. Ken Nordberg, who happens to be well educated for doing hunting-related whitetail research. He’s been at it since the early 1960s, scientifically since 1970, full time since 1980. In the process he has discovered major differences in habits and behavior between bucks and does and whitetails of six age classes, discovered annually recurring activities of antlered bucks related to the whitetail rut between September 1st and the end of first week in January (knowledge vital to successful buck hunting) and created six new fair chase hunting methods, made productive by thirty-some precautions, that make it possible to be regularly successful at hunting mature bucks.

A visit to Doc’s website, www.drnordbergondeerhunting.com, and clicking on “store” for a review of his latest, biggest and most comprehensive book on buck hunting, Whitetail Hunters Almanac, 10th Edition, will get you started on the right track to great buck hunting. If you are a beginner or you became a whitetail hunter during the past two decades and therefore do not yet know as much about Dr. Nordberg like hundreds of thousands of serious North American whitetail hunters got to know him at nationwide hunting seminars before the year 2000, take time to click on “YouTube” at the top of his home page and prepare to be amazed.