Deer Hunting for Beginners

If you're interested in beginning to hunt deer, start with this introduction to the basics, from tips on choosing a place to hunt to illustrated steps for dressing your kill.

article image
by Flickr/Wade Tregaskis

There’s something addictive about deer hunting. The sport may not appeal to everyone, but those of us who are susceptible to its lure can feel the hooks pulling from deep within. Perhaps no other form of outdoor activity is as inextricably entangled in our history, myth, and language. Consider that the term venison, for the meat of the deer, is derived from the name of Venus, the Roman goddess of love. Other English terms sharing the same derivation are venerate (“to regard with reverential respect or with admiring deference”), venery (which means both “the art of hunting” and “the pursuit of sexual pleasure”), and venial (“meriting no particular censure”). Not to mention good old venereal, which, I suppose, needs no introduction. (Sounds like the stuff of a graduate-school thesis, “Buck Fever; Venereal Disease?”)

At any rate, many men and women, after some degree or another of exposure to rural life, decide that the time has come for them to take a crack at deer hunting. Perhaps the motivating factor is a dinner of venison chops at a neighbor’s house; maybe it has a more negative genesis that follows watching Bambi and family mow their way through the vegetable garden. Regardless of the reason for the urge, the novice nimrod is likely to find that game-meat gurus are hard to come by. Thus the reasoning behind our presenting this brief guide to deer hunting for beginners.

I can’t teach you everything you’ll need to know when hunting deer, though a few readers will most likely absorb the following pages and go out to score a good buck on opening day (those doing so will earn my envy and, probably, that of their closest friends, but drop me a line anyway should you be the one to strike it rich). Most beginners, though, will go on to look for an experienced friend, relative, neighbor, or coworker to augment (and undoubtedly at times contradict) the information presented here. What I hope to do is cover enough essentials to keep you from sounding like a bozo when you ask for that advice, to spell out enough parameters to allow you to judge whether the advisor in question is someone you really want to hunt with, and maybe even to ask you to look at your own motivation for deer hunting, and decide whether you really should be out in the woods.

In fact, let’s start right there.

Deer Meat: A Cheap Eat?

Comments (0) Join others in the discussion!
    Online Store Logo
    Need Help? Call 1-800-234-3368