Bowhunters tend to overlook realistic practice in favor of convenience. Take time to work on realistic shots you will face when hunting. If you hunt from a treestand, practice from a treestand. This will improve basics skills and boost your confidence.

When you only practice under ideal conditions, it's easy to be lulled into thinking you are very proficient with a bow. The conditions you'll face when hunting will certainly be different than the conditions at the shooting range. Your accuracy and maximum range will both be adversely affected by weather, excitement and other factors. Before the season starts, you need to assess your ability and your limits in real hunting situations.

Be honest with yourself. Do you really practice the shots you will be called upon to make this season? Probably not. So, try to get away from easy practice sessions and work on realistic shots. Not only will this improve your basic skills, it will boost your confidence.

Get Off The Ground
If you hunt from a treestand, there are shots you will see again and again. You need to practice these shots and set up your stands to reproduce the same type of shot. The better you become at setting up your stands, the narrower the range of shots you will face. You can all but eliminate tough shots from your stands if you set them up the right way. ...

Whitetail bucks act differently during the rut. The pace of action can be fast and the shots very unpredictable. This presents a unique set of shooting challenges, and you must be prepared for any imaginable shot to capitalize on fleeting opportunities. Field Editor Randy Ulmer took this monster Coues whitetail during the rut.

The whitetail rut brings its own set of shooting challenges. The pace of the action can be fast and the shots very unpredictable. Most of the deer follow trails early and late in the season, but during the rut, a buck can pass your stand in any direction, at any distance, at any time and at any speed. You have to prepare for every imaginable shot.

The Short Ones Are Trouble
It's easy to get sloppy on a short shot. To combat this tendency, be patient on the trigger. Put just as much concentration into the short shots as you do the long ones. To be certain you do this, pick out a single tuft of hair on the deer's side and focus on that spot until the arrow hits. This will keep you from simply shooting at the whole deer.

Short shots are also tough because the angle from your stand to the vitals is often severe, especially if you are higher than 15 feet. A deer's vital area is almost as wide as it is tall, but that doesn't mean it is just as accessible from above as it is from the side. From a treestand, you have to penetrate a thick mass of bone a...

Aerial photos and topo maps will help you determine where you are likely to find ditches in new areas and will confirm entry and exit strategies for hunting these locations effectively.

Setting the Perfect Ambush Walk the length of each ditch in your hunting area. You should find sections where the banks are steep and sections where they're gradual. Focus most of your attention on the ditches that are steepest and deepest. Note the places where deer cross them. Ideally, there won't be very many crossings. Each one is a potential stand site.

Now, you have to decide which crossings to hunt. First, examine the landscape to figure out how the wind will flow. Typically, it will swirl anytime it blows past a protected area or dead pocket of air. For example, when the wind blows over a ravine, it will swirl because the air in the ravine isn't moving as fast as the air above it. Anytime you hunt an area with swirling winds, you are taking a big chance of burning out your hunting area. You may get lucky and tag a nice buck when the wind is just right (I've gotten away with it a few times). But more likely you will get busted by everything in the area because your scent is being washed in every direction.

If you plan to hunt an area more than once, you have to avoid situations where you can't control your scent. And taking it one step farther, you need to avoid hunting in areas that are protected from the direct flow of the wind. That doesn't leave a lot....