Bill Winke certainly has a well-deserved outstanding reputation in the whitetail world. For that reason, many deer hunters look to him for advice on how to kill more and bigger whitetails, which is why I found the 15-minute YouTube video below especially interesting.
The video answers this question: “What is the best deer hunting advice Bill Winke has ever received?”
Confession: Because I’ve known and worked with Winke for at least 30 years, I knew his answer to this question. In fact, long ago when I was the editor of another hunting magazine, Winke wrote an article for me on this exact topic.
Spoiler: The best deer hunting tip Winke ever received is you have to go to extremes to not alert whitetails to your presence, on the way to and from your stand, and while sitting on stand.
He’s 100 percent correct. Whitetails are much easier to kill when they don’t know they’re being hunted. Or stated another way — at least for bowhunters — mature bucks can be close to impossible to kill when they DO know they’re being hunted.
Careful entry and exit of stands is crucial, as is playing the wind while you’re in the stand. The goal is to avoid being seen, heard or smelled by whitetails. Period.
Yes, this is tremendously difficult. And as Winke explains in the video, sometimes areas that are littered with deer sign must be left alone simply because you can’t avoid alerting whitetails.
Think back on your 2024 deer season — did you go to extremes to avoid alerting whitetails? Did they know they were being hunted?
