By Joe Mosby

So you haven’t gotten a deer this season? Disappointed? First of all, an enjoyable deer hunt doesn’t absolutely require you to kill a deer.

Then, consider what may have fallen short for you. Some hunting remains this year, and there are always deer seasons to come, ample time to learn and to correct mistakes you may have made.

We’ll touch on three frequent problem areas, with the understanding that not everyone will agree. After all, this is Arkansas deer hunting we’re looking at.

One is lack of shooting practice. A second is smell. A third is movement.

Smell means you and not the deer. Movement also means you and not the deer although many a veteran hunter looks for movement while sitting rock still.

Yeah, they tell us we need to do some rifle practice, but we regard ourselves as marksmen. Didn’t the Army give us shooting medals back in — wow, that long ago?

Shooting takes practice even if some hunters are more skilled at it than others. Anyone — repeat, anyone — can become a competent shooter with experience. This starts at a range, whether a formal one or just a target somewhere in the back country. Shooting practice gives you that necessary skill in raising, aiming and firing the weapon. It also lets you make any needed adjustments to the rifle and its sights.

This shooting should be plentiful. Forget the old adage of three shots and you’re done. There is no proscribed amount of shoots needed to become competent, but it should be plenty, not a few.

Nearly all veteran hunters advise a shooter to practice with the same ammunition that will be used on the deer hunt. A rule of thumb might be to buy two boxes, 20 cartridges each, of the ammo you like.

Use one box in practice and take the other box on the hunt.

Do you think you’ll need more than 20 rounds on a hunt? Please let us move somewhere away from your neck of the woods.

The “same ammunition” means same bullet weights. A .30-06 loaded with 150-grain bullets will perform a little differently from a .30-06 with 180-grain bullets. Both are good for Arkansas deer work.

Sometimes we come across ammo bargains, especially with the cartridges used in military firearms. Go ahead and buy a supply of surplus FMJ loads, if you want.

These are full military jacket, used by armies but illegal for hunting as they tend to pass through a deer without expanding. Killing power is greatly reduced.

But they shoot, and they can give you practice in aiming and firing a rifle even if they don’t fill the role of “same ammunition.”

Smell is often overlooked in deer hunting.

A deer’s sense of smell is many times more acute than ours. A deer instinctively shies away from human odor, and this doesn’t just mean an unwashed hunter.

Forget using after-shave lotion and cologne, then go to something to disguise your smell. Consider something like a room deodorizer in pine or cedar aroma styles. Put a ripe apple or two in your pocket. Old-time hunters believed in this.

This smell work is in addition to things you can buy at sporting goods outlets to imitate a buck or doe odor.

Using an elevated stand perhaps reduces the spread of your smell, but it doesn’t eliminate it.

Sit still on your stand, whether high or ground level. Learn to use peripheral vision and to make head movements very slowly.

Learn to suppress coughs. Yes, you can. Have to cough? Do it head down and into your shirt.

Working on these three elements of deer hunting will not guarantee a prize buck or even an average doe. But it will improve the odds for you.

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Joe Mosby is the retired news editor of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and Arkansas’ best known outdoor writer. His work is distributed by the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. He can be reached by e-mail at jhmosby@cyberback.com.