Wednesday, September 10, 2008
How I Got My Nickname
People constantly ask me the origins of my nickname “The Whitetail Wizard.” It’s a pretty easy story to explain.
The name came about in the fall of 1980 when outdoor writer Dave Richey < http://www.daverichey.com > had a story published in Outdoor Life magazine. The magazine needed a title, and they named it and me “The Whitetail Wizard.”
It’s as simple as that, but who would have guessed that 28 years later the nickname would have become so well known among deer hunters. Or that I would write a book about my life and the origins of The Whitetail Wizard.
This area, in those days, was wrapped up in whitetail deer. No one hunted from trees, and everyone hunted from the ground.
Bow hunting was always more interesting than hunting with a rifle, but the nickname stuck after Outdoor Life pinned that monicker on me. A few people started calling me that, and the name became more popular.
It got another growth spurt when I purchased the old Oneida bow company, and its name was changed to C.P. Oneida Eagle Bow Company. The Whitetail Wizard became a small part of our promotional efforts.
It was a nickname that seemed to resonate with bow hunters. I’ve gained a bit of a reputation for solving whitetail hunting problems, and people with questions about deer and deer hunting were always told to go see “The Whitetail Wizard” in Marion, Michigan.
Those problems are often solved because of the time spent in the fields and woods of my deer ranch. I have countless chances to study deer, and I’ve learned that the more study that goes into whitetail behavior, the more successful the hunter will be.
It’s difficult to be a highly successful archery deer hunter unless a great deal of time is spent studying whitetail deer, their habits and preferred habitat.
The basis for deer hunting success revolves around several areas of whitetail knowledge. It’s important to know how to locate game, how to play the wind, where to put up ground blind or tree stand locations, how to hunt rutting bucks and how to accurately shoot a deer.
I have a personal concept of what leads to deer-hunting success. The more we learn, the more we realize there is so much more to learn, and as our knowledge grows, so too does our success rate.
Many people spend two or three days scouting before the season opens, and then go hunting. My scouting is done all 12 months of the year. It is rather amazing how much can be learned by watching deer during the off-season.
Some of my thoughts on deer hunting may fly in the face of conventional thinking, but that is what makes deer hunting so great. My methods work for me and those who hunt with me, and they can work for everyone else. Accurate bow shooting is easy to learn, and it has been covered in the past.
Careful attention to detail is what makes a bow hunter deadly. There is just so much to learn about deer hunting, and all of it is important.
Hunters must learn how to figure out deer problems, how to choose a stand location during various wind conditions, and why the typical deer hunt can become the hunt of a lifetime during certain times and conditions.
Hunting success means a bit of luck and doing everything else right, time after time. If a person wants to learn, they must spend a great amount of time in the field.
There are no shortcuts to bow hunting success. It takes time to learn how to do everything right, and just about the time we figure we have this whole deer-hunting scenario worked out, the whitetail will throw us a curve ball we’ve never seen before.
That’s when we learn there is no end to learning about deer hunting. And for me, if I’m to help others solve hunting problems, I must spend more time afield studying whitetails.—The Whitetail Wizard