Between the Ears: Hunting success often depends more on what you Think than what you Do.

LET ME TELL YOU a tale of two deer hunts, one hunter, and a cosmic force known as the human mind. The hunts were both white-tail safaris on the same Wisconsin farm. The hunter was me. And the mind? Well, on one hunt it was a cool, well-oiled, reasoning machine that I'm happy to claim. On the other hunt it was an illogical mess that got waylaid by a wagonload of demons. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Hunt Number One occurred on a cool, sunny afternoon in late October. I was tucked 18 feet up a spreading birch tree that grew 30 steps from the corner of a still-lush alfalfa field. With a half hour left of shooting light, I was watching six does and three fawns trying to fill their bellies with hay, but their dinner was interrupted regularly by a yearling 6-point buck that blundered among them, looking like a teenager trying to impress a roomful of college women. Then, when a mature 12-point jumped the fence to join the party, the yearling scampered off to avoid a rumpful of antlers. As the big buck took over courting duties, the mood of the does went from irritated to nervous. As they scattered from the field, two does gathered 10 yards from my treestand, and when the monster jumped the fence to follow them, I drew my bow and put my sight pin on his ribcage. Thirty minutes later I was standing over my first record-class animal.

Hunt Number Two occurred four years later, in the wake of a Halloween blizzard that Midwesterners will remember for a long time. When the ice and snow stopped blowing two days later, I shimmied up my frozen oak at 1 p.m., and the minute my boots hit the stand I began seeing deer. The does, hungry from lying up for three days, were feeding everywhere. The bucks were on their feet, feeling November in their loins. I saw eight bucks that evening, but only one mattered, the high-racked 10-point that sauntered in just at sunset. His rack was wide enough that it hung up in the brush just before he walked into my shooting lane and paused broadside at 25 steps. With the buck relaxed, distracted, and within easy range, this shot was a cinch.

But instead of drawing my bow, I listened to a crazy, faraway voice in my head saying, Maybe he'll come closer. Amazingly, he did, turning and walking straight under my stand. Realizing in a gut-wrenching panic that I'd have no other shot than the one he was giving me right now, I drew, bent at the waist, and sent an arrow at the buck's spine. An oak limb as thick as my finger reached out and grabbed my broad-head. The buck jumped at the noise, then sauntered away, unaware that he'd just passed through the airspace of an idiot.

I offer these examples as evidence that bowhunting success often takes place between our ears. In the first hunt, I was able to manage the excitement of seeing a tremendous deer coming my way and pull off a clean, killing shot. In the second hunt I was seized by a subtle, insidious form of buck fever, one in which you don't shake or cry softly but in which you make moronic decisions that -- years later -- you still have a hard time confessing.

It's easy, of course, to dismiss the importance of the mind in hunting. Like other outdoor pursuits, bowhunting requires tremendous physical effort and dedication, and that's why I love it. The simple act of drawing a bow and sending an arrow right where I look is one of the most satisfying elements to me. But that's just the start. Scouting, hunting for shed antlers, hanging treestands, trimming shooting lanes, getting in shape, dragging out deer -- all are purely physical activities that make bowhunting my most passionate pursuit.

But a person doesn't have to bowhunt long to realize that our sport involves mind games, too. Buck fever may be the most obvious example, but there are other, more subtle stumbling blocks to success that start in the mind, such as loss of optimism and setting unrealistic goals. Not every bowhunter faces these mental hurdles, of course. But if my personal experience, and my many conversations with other veteran bowhunters, are any indication, the toughest stumbling blocks for many of us are in our heads. Following are three of the most common mental hurdles faced by bowhunters -- and some possible solutions.

Buck Fever

One reason we hunt is the knee shaking buzz we feel when we encounter wildlife in a natural setting. But when that excitement explodes and prevents our making clear decisions and effective shots, it can spoil the fun. As one friend, a good deer hunter making the transition to trophy whitetails, told me after botching his third opportunity at a nice buck, "If I don't quit messing up and kill one of these things, I'm gonna do something else in the fall." Obviously, buck fever can progress beyond the humorous camp story into a debilitating disease.

Interestingly, my friend had already taken the first step to curing his ague: He confessed it. Many hunters, after botching an excellent opportunity, find numerous excuses to avoid the truth. Since the margin for error is slight in bowhunting, some excuses are legitimate. But when a deer presents a perfect shot -- and still doesn't ride home in your truck -- the only place to look for blame is in the mirror.

How do you cure buck fever? Hanging around big deer has helped me. My wife and I like to take our kids to a local deer park, where the city keeps several does and one monster buck. While the family feeds the does, I watch the big boy intently, admiring his antlers and his tremendous size. This isn't identical to glimpsing a wild trophy, but it helps lessen the mystique of really big antlers. It's a conditioning process that preps my mind for big-deer encounters.

Time permitting, I imagine that buck as a wild deer as I'm in my treestand holding my bow. I study his body; note the vital areas; look for great shot angles; even run through an imaginary sequence of drawing my bow, anchoring, taking a deep breath, centering the pin, and sending an arrow on its way. I even imagine the thunk of a good hit.

This may sound like nothing more than idle daydreaming, but it is far more. When I coached high school and collegiate distance runners, we trained their bodies with hard work and their minds with visualization. Visualization is simply a mental dress rehearsal of an important upcoming race or game, and it's used by coaches to ease the tension in their athletes prior to high-pressure, no-second-chances events. (Sound like having a big critter within bow range?) We had our athletes visualize by lying on the floor with their eyes closed. Then we'd describe the upcoming meet: the stadium, the crowd, the weather, the other runners. We'd talk the athletes through an entire race, having them imagine (and manage) their excitement, fear, exhaustion. Many of our runners made big leaps in performance as they practiced their visualization.

It's easy to dismiss this as so much psycho babble, but if I had a dollar for every time I've seen superior athletes lose to lesser runners who simply have more guts (coaching terminology for mental toughness), I'd have enough money for a guided moose hunt to Alaska. Similarly, how many excellent target shooters do you know who never seem to tag a deer? I know several, and they're a frustrated bunch. Visualization may not cure all your bowhunting ills, but this is for sure: if you can consistently zap the 10-ring on a 3-D course, and you can't kill a white-tail, your problems are not physical.

Fate and Luck

Last fall, during a particularly deerless stretch of hunts near my Minnesota home, I announced to my wife, "I just don't think this is my year." That statement has few words but big meaning. Basically it suggests that luck or fate -- not hunting skill and effort -- control success. Having experienced both ends of the horseshoe, I won't insist that luck doesn't matter. But I also know that successful hunters create their own luck -- as does my wife, whose only reply to my moan was, "Well, what are you going to do about it?"

It was a good question, because a hunter who starts believing the its-not-my-year scenario is in the first stages of quitting. He has professed he can't control his success. Taken far enough, such an attitude becomes cancerous, affecting a hunter's attitude until he mentally surrenders and quits trying.

Once you identify this problem, the cure is simple. You take a hard look at what you're doing (which has proven futile) and look for ways to improve on it. Taking Shari's words to heart, I did what's always worked for me in the past -- put on my boots and started scouting. Big whitetails are evasive, but they don't live in a vacuum. They leave sign, so I walked until I found abundant, fresh sign, which only demonstrated that my habitual areas had gone stale. I also read my hunting journal and realized I'd been hunting evenings almost exclusively. So I switched to morning hunts. Taking these two steps of renewal, I was soon into deer again.

I'm convinced that most hunters lose confidence and give into fate because, in their guts, they know they haven't prepared. It's like walking into a weight room and believing you can bench-press 300 pounds if you haven't been training. Without exception, the best seasons I've enjoyed were the ones before which I'd scouted like mad in the spring and watched deer all summer. I've gone into those seasons with confidence and a game plan and have rarely been disappointed. A can-do attitude pays. As my friend Jerome says, "Every day I don't kill a buck, I'm just one step closer to the day I do." Not surprisingly, Jerome kills a lot of deer.

Unrealistic Expectations

More bowhunters kill more trophy deer now than ever before. That's good and bad. On the good side, it proves that whitetail populations are in great shape and hunters have a lot of hunting knowledge. On the down side, it sets up aspiring trophy hunters for frustration. These folks read articles profiling successful buck killers (written by guys like me), and they expect immediately to emulate them. Most will fail, and a large percentage of them will take their lack of success personally. I'm meeting more such people every year, and the trend concerns me.

To kill big whitetails consistently, you have to a) hunt where they live, b) be a reasonably skilled hunter, and c) have lots of time. I know many topnotch whitetailers, and to a man (or woman) they meet all three of these requirements. If you don't -- and most hunters won't -- you shouldn't expect to kill big bucks every fall. If you ignore that reality, you'll be disappointed.

It is better to go into each season with a clear picture of reality. Did your spring scouting (assuming you did some) reveal sign and setups that indicate a potential for big deer this fall? Based on hard evidence -- such as shed antlers and actual summer sightings -- what caliber of bucks (and how many of them) can you expect to see in your hunting areas this fall? Finally, how much time and effort can you realistically expend during the season?

Answer these questions as honestly as possible, then set your goals. For example, last year I had almost zero time for spring scouting, thanks to a looming book deadline. And the fall was guaranteed to be crazy because we were building a house. So while I normally set my sights on a mature buck, I lowered my expectations. This fall I'm turning my hopes up a notch. I put in loads of spring scouting time and found several good sheds and many excellent stand setups. Also, I'll have more time to hunt this season. Thus, my goal is to kill one of the four mature whitetails I'm confident are walking around in my hunting areas.

So I'll enjoy the conquest, filled tag or no. I've got a game plan and my enthusiasm is cranked up a notch. The stands are hung and my arrows are flying true. I've been visualizing like a hypnotist and have my friend Jerome's "Every day..." motto burned into my memory. With such preparation, I expect my brain to function as it did in Hunt One. Years of bowhunting have reinforced that old ditty from a TV commercial on the benefits of college: "The mind. It's a terrible thing to waste."

Freelance writer Scott Bestul hunts big bucks in his home state of Minnesota and neighboring Wisconsin.