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Hello I am Keith McDonald, nick name Killer Keith and hunting my whole life, 45-50 years,
deer hunting, bear hunting, moose hunting, turkey hunting, you name it, I have hunted
it. I am a licensed Maine guide. I've hunted in Alaska. I've hunted in Canada. I've hunted
in Newfoundland. I've been everywhere, everywhere I've hunted. Hunt smarter, not harder. And
what I mean by that is, if you let the conditions dictate how you hunt. Because some people,
they get hunting mixed up with taking a walk in the woods with a gun in your hand. And
it's not the same thing. So, what I mean by conditions, if you go out to hunt, and it's
been really dry for a long time. And the leaves are all falling off the trees, and they're
laying there on the ground. And every time you take a step, it makes a loud, crunching
sound, you better not be moving around much. So you're gonna hunt smart. You're gonna move
around just enough to find some sign, and then sit there. 'Cause all you're gonna do
by moving around in that area is spook the deer. And you probably won't even know you
spooked them, and they just leave. So now, you find this fresh sign, and you think, this
is great. So you sit there for 3 days, and the sign gets older, and older, and older.
That's not smart hunting...that's dumb hunting. Now take a day that, it's been a light drizzle,
or it poured rain all night, and flattened everything down flat. You get up the next
morning, it's a little cloudy and overcast. A little foggy, with a very light drizzle.
You can walk without making a sound. Okay, I'm gonna walk, then. I'm gonna start poking
around. Looking around where that deer sign was, looking for the deer. So now I can move...I
can cover some ground. Then the next ideal situation, of course, is snow. If you find
a fresh track, and guess what? You follow it long enough, there's gonna be deer in it.
And so that's what you do. You track the deer until you see it, shoot it. That's my feeling
is that's the most rewarding way to harvest deer is to track it in the snow, and get it.
And a big buck, he can take you through some places you didn't wanna go. But it can be
very easy. I've done it when it's very easy, and it can be very tough. So, you've gotta
have some grit in order to do that. You can't be afraid of the woods. You can't be afraid
of getting lost. You've gotta chase that deer until you get it. And, with practice, you'll
learn when to move fast, and when to move slow. You slow down when you get close to
where he's gonna bend, and you speed up when you know he's on the move. And if you don't,
if you go real slow, you may never catch it. And you can stack the deck in your favor by
hunting smarter, and using some of the technology. Of course, there's a lot of technology out
there. I do a lot of deer calling. I use rattling horns, I use grunt calls. When I'm tracking
deer, I'm constantly stopping, blowing a grunt call. Thinking that maybe if he hears me grunting,
coming on his track, it may hold him just a little bit longer. I rattle horns. I've
called deer, and was rattling deer horns many times. I used doe in estrus scent. There's
a lot of scents out there you can, uh, different scents, I mean. Doe in estrus is one, apple
scent's another once. Acorn scent's another one. Hemlock scent, earth scent, skunk scent.
You can name a lot of scents...lot of different scents you can buy out there. And people all
the time ask me, oh, you really think these work? I say, no, I don't know if they work
that good, but it doesn't hurt.