How Wind Affects Buck Deer with Dr. Robert Sheppard
Day 2: Be Aware of the Wind While You’re Hunting Deer with Dr. Robert Sheppard
Editor’s Note: Dr. Robert Sheppard (www.bobsheppard.com) of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, is a longtime avid deer hunter who approaches his deer hunting with the same intensity, quest for knowledge and scientific application of what he’s observed and learned, as he does the patients in his medical practice.
 Once I decide which stand I’ll hunt out of because of the prevailing wind, I don't turn my brain off. When I get into my car and head for the woods, I observe every chimney I pass. I have my compass on the front seat of the car and check the direction the wind is blowing the smoke out of the chimneys. If every chimney I see has its smoke blowing in a different direction during the 15-mile drive I have to make from my house to the woods, then I begin to wonder if I'm not hunting on a day when the wind will be variable and unpredictable, and/or if there are thermals affecting the air current differently from what the weatherman has reported.  By the time I reach the woods, if I’ve determined that the wind is variable and won’t be blowing consistently from one direction during the time I plan to hunt, I’ll spend my day scouting instead of hunting. Although many hunters will continue with their hunt plans and disregard the wind, I know to be successful I must hunt as the wind dictates. Since 80 percent of my time in the woods is spent in scouting, selecting stand sites and cutting shooting lanes, and only 20- percent of my time actually is spent in a tree, I never view the days with variable winds as wasted hunting time.
 After I listen to the weather radio and check my compass on my way to my stand to see which way the chimney smoke is being blown, I next stop my car in a region that has a wide-open field on both sides of the road, just before I reach the area I plan to hunt. I don't want any trees or obstructions around to create turbulence in the wind. I get out of the car and take one of my broadheads that has a piece of string tied to it, hold it out and see in which direction the wind pushes the string. Then I check the wind with my compass to make sure the wind is still blowing in the same direction that I’ve heard on the weather radio and have seen blowing from the chimneys. If the wind direction is still constant, then I go ahead and walk through the woods to the stand I’ve planned to hunt from that day. As I approach the tree stand, I also am conscious to walk into the wind and not with the wind at my back. Once I arrive at my stand and get into the tree, I still check the wind with the string tied to the end of my broadhead or my gun barrel and my compass.  Then any time the wind changes direction or the air movement varies, I can tell which way my scent is being blown from that string.
To learn more about successfully hunting deer, purchase John E. Phillips’ books, “The Masters’ Secrets of Hunting Deer,” “The Science of Deer Hunting,” “How to Take Monster Bucks,” and “Masters’ Secrets of Bowhunting Deer” at www.nighthawkpublications.com/hunting/hunting.htm.
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