Follow the advice of these local hunters, and you’ll soon be paying a taxidermist’s bill.
If Robin Hood only had known what Mississippi’s Will Primos, Preston Pittman and Ronnie Strickland know, he could have fed fresh venison to all the peasants of Nottingham.
For many years, these professional hunters’ livelihoods have depended on their woodsmanship and accuracy with bows and arrows.
Although the life of a professional hunter seems glamorous, they actually work harder and spend more hours even today trying to learn about bowhunting and whitetails than most other hunters.
Seven tips from Will Primos
Will Primos, a bowhunter for 45 years and founder of Primos Game Calls in Flora, has produced the “Truth” series of videos and TV productions for numerous years. Primos has earned a major portion of his living pinpointing and taking deer with a bow.
If you think the pressure’s heavy when your buck of a lifetime comes in, consider that when big bucks get within bow range of Primos, he has millions of eyes watching him draw and shoot.
“When I was just a little fellow, I liked to slip-up on squirrels and birds and shoot at them with my bow,” he said. “My first bow was a Wilson longbow, and I sometimes built my own arrows. I shot that bow off the side of my hand, because there were no rests in those days.
To become a better bowhunter, Primos suggests the following:
1) Respect the whitetail.
“When you start hunting deer at the first of bow season, they’ve had plenty of food, water and cover, and no one has harassed them all summer,” he said. “As soon as they smell your human odor, the whole world changes for them. Never hunt a whitetail where he is, but rather, hunt him where he wants to be. If you get lucky, you may be able to spot and stalk a deer, but more than likely, especially here in Mississippi, you’ve got to anticipate where that whitetail will be and hunt him there.
“Or you’ll have to call to that whitetail and make him come to you.
“Don’t get too close to the area where you think the deer is when you start setting up your tree stand, and always respect the wind’s direction. Our company makes some fantastic scent-elimination products, but you can’t use hunting aids and ignore good hunting practices.”
Read the rest of this story, which first appeared in the October 2008 issue of Mississippi Sportsman, for more tips.
Don’t forget to subscribe to ensure you don’t miss a single information-packed issue!
Be the first to comment