In this article, I will cover why it is essential to evaluate your whitetail hunting property at the end of each season in order to maximize hunting success.

Since the hunting season has ended here in my home state of Minnesota, I wanted to write about an important step that many hunters/land owners disregard. I highly encourage you all to critically evaluate the previous season at the end of every hunting season. Rather than being stuck in the same continuous cycle year after year after year, I encourage you to learn from what has worked, and what has not. As Henry Ford once said, “If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.” It’s pretty self-explanatory, but continuing practices that haven’t led you to success is only a recipe for disaster. So, what should you all evaluate? Here are some questions to get you started.

First off, were you successful in the hunt? Did you harvest your target buck or meet your harvest goal? Or did you find yourself seeing nothing but squirrels? If you did accomplish your harvest goals, why? What made it happen? If you didn't, what caused you to fail? Did your neighbors shoot the deer you were after? Did your neighbors see anything at all? These are all great questions to evaluate your hunting season. At the end of the day, the hunt is the determining factor. It is most likely why you own the property in the first place – to enjoy the hunt with your family and friends.

What about your habitat?

How did your food plots turn out? Were they eaten down to the dirt by the end of September? Were they untouched? Did you even get anything to grow? Did you plant the right seeds? Did the deer consistently use your plots at the same time every single evening all throughout the season? Or was it all at night? How well did you hunt the food plots? Were they pressured out? With food plots being critical to your success, it is important to be honest with yourself in such regards.

What about your herd numbers? Did you have the buck age structure you anticipated? How about your doe and fawn numbers? How about the ratio of bucks:does? Did your trail cameras show mostly daytime photos? Or did they reveal that the deer used your property at night? Did you have an abundance of deer in the summer and early fall? Or did your property peak in attraction when it is supposed to?

These are just a couple of the many questions you ought to ask yourself and your hunting party after each season. Failure to evaluate will lead you back to the same results you have always had. If you are like us at WSS, you are obsessed with the never-ending relentless pursuit of improvement, chasing success, and achieving greatness. To achieve success, it starts by critically and honestly evaluating your property.

After you have noted some areas in need of improvement, I recommend you address exactly how you plan to combat the issue - how, when, where, etc. The sooner you evaluate your previous season, the sooner you can get started on improving your habitat! There is always a lot to do, so I recommend you get going as soon as you can. Fall will be here before you know it, and you don’t want to be scrambling trying to wrap up your improvements/implementations.

Conclusion:

If you are looking to become a more successful hunter this fall, I recommend you critically evaluate your previous hunting season. Discover why you did not get the results you anticipated, make the change, then find success this fall.