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Knimrod
10-30-2005, 08:41 AM
Bowhunter's non-traditional strategy pays off with quality bucks
Sunday, October 30, 2005
By Bob Gwizdz

WEIDMAN -- The reason most Michigan bowhunters don't kill quality bucks is because they don't employ the strategies and techniques that would enable them to kill quality bucks.

"I like to generalize that 95 to 98 percent of bowhunters hunt generically," says John Eberhart. "And if you hunt generically, you're going to kill generic deer."

Eberhart has credentials to make such a statement. He has 21 whitetails listed in the Commemorative Bucks record book, including several taken on public land.

A 54-year-old manufacturers representative and passionate bowhunter, Eberhart has been chasing whitetails since he was 12. Because his father didn't hunt deer, he was self-taught. And he credits that factor for much of his success -- he didn't learn a bunch of bad habits from other hunters.

Eberhart says he does the majority of his hunting pre-rut, before the bulk of does come into estrus. It's while the bucks are fired up and ready to get after it -- but before the does are ready for them -- that bucks establish patterns of behavior that hunters can exploit.

"During the pre-rut, they have a routine they follow," Eberhart said. "They bed down before daylight, then they get up after all the deer traffic has moved through the area -- 10 or 11 o'clock."

And though he prefers to be in his stand two hours before daylight and stay all day, if time is a limiting factor, he'd rather be out there during the middle of the day than the dawn-and-dusk routine that most hunters follow.

"Hunters who are not out during mid-day are missing the boat," he says.

Eberhart says it takes heavy cover to hold experienced, pre-rut bucks. Hunters can kill deer on field edges, he says, but generally not the good bucks. But most hunters cling to the dawn-and-dusk, field-edge tradition, he says, because that's when and where they see deer moving.

"People can spend 60 mornings and evenings on the stand and not kill a big buck, but if they spend two days out there mid-day and don't see deer, they think it's not going to work," Eberhart said.

Link to full story (http://www.mlive.com/sports/statewide/index.ssf?/base/sports-0/11302764026060.xml&coll=1)

Jerry
10-30-2005, 03:37 PM
So has anyone read any of his books? and are they any good?

JR

RSF
10-30-2005, 03:49 PM
I know john personally, he is a ok guy books arent bad some good info but nothing ground breaking