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Whitetail Sixth Sense

I believe in a 6th sense. I think we all have it. I wasn't going to tell this story!
I had been hunting this one piece of public. Been their dozens of times. I park in the same place. Walk back on a ruff trail, about 300 yards I always stop on high ground to double check the wind. From their i can go in 4 different dirctions. This one morning, for some reason, I only went back about 100 yards from the truck. I stopped for no reason, I turned off my flashlight. About 6 seconds later a tree fell on the trail 20 yards in front of me. If I would have not stopped??
Was this a 6th sense or blind luck.
I would rather be lucky then good.
 
John 35 said:
I’ve got the good brain waves dude.
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I believe it. GBW's are good thing. Positive thoughts in the woods has helped me many times. Negative thoughts have hurt me. About 15 yrs ago I was having a bad season. A lot of crap was going wrong. Season was almost over. I was gonna eat my tag. I wanted a nice buck BAD! I was in predatory mode. It was all I thought of. I got in a tree one afternoon and here comes a good 8pt. Not quite a shooter but close enough after the season I was having. I said to myself if he comes in close and offers a good shot he's dead. He comes in unalert 15yds broadside. I came to full draw, and I said to myself. "Your dead". I let out a soft quiet grunt to stop him. He came unglued, bolted out of there and went to the next county! It wasn't a loud grunt. I've done this at least 30 or 40 times over the years. I've never had one do that. It was like he was on full alert which he wasn't. I believe he "knew" there was danger. From the second I saw him I was thinking "kill him, kill him". Negative thoughts! Anyway, I literally started beating my head against the tree. Cussing myself for screwing it up again. I then looked up and asked the Lord for for some help. I calmed down and starting thinking positive thoughts. 5 minutes later a 5x6 came in chasing a doe. I killed him at 23 yds. True story.
 
I have learned a lot from hunting a variety of different animals in a lot of different of ways. While each species is different, all of those experiences have helped to make me a better overall hunter. Each animal has areas they are really strong in, and areas where they are not. They are all mostly predictable in their behaviors, use of terrain, and how they use the wind to their advantage. Learning these elements is key to giving you the advantage.
 
In October, I had a mature buck at 45yds. He started to walk straight away from me in the direction a doe had gone earlier in the hunt. He stopped, turned 180 and came directly to me without a care in the world. He is now on my wall.

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk
 
In our human arrogance, we have the false impression that we pretty much have everything figured out and there's little or nothing that we don't understand or have discovered.
There's probably more about our world and universe that we DON'T understand than what we actually do understand.
Example...why is it that yawns are contagious? You can have someone out of your site (backseat of the car in the dark for instance) that starts to yawn. Pretty soon, everyone in the car starts to yawn.
Explain cattle mutilations...it's not a myth.
Hypnosis.
Prayer.
There's a lot of stuff we just don't know or cannot measure.
And then throw in the countless variables with each situation. Who is to say?
6th sense is an interesting concept and I don't doubt that it could be a thing but it certainly isn't something that will dictate how I hunt. I have enough to worry about with wind, odor, weather, and individual personalities of individual deer on individual days to concern myself with deer telepathy.
 
Allegheny Tom said:
In our human arrogance, we have the false impression that we pretty much have everything figured out and there's little or nothing that we don't understand or have discovered.
There's probably more about our world and universe that we DON'T understand than what we actually do understand.
Example...why is it that yawns are contagious? You can have someone out of your site (backseat of the car in the dark for instance) that starts to yawn. Pretty soon, everyone in the car starts to yawn.
Explain cattle mutilations...it's not a myth.
Hypnosis.
Prayer.
There's a lot of stuff we just don't know or cannot measure.
And then throw in the countless variables with each situation. Who is to say?
6th sense is an interesting concept and I don't doubt that it could be a thing but it certainly isn't something that will dictate how I hunt. I have enough to worry about with wind, odor, weather, and individual personalities of individual deer on individual days to concern myself with deer telepathy.
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Good points. But let’s keep it easy. As @Nutterbuster says, keep in mind bucks have been known to hump plastic decoys on occasion.
 
1simplemann said:
I believe it. GBW's are good thing. Positive thoughts in the woods has helped me many times. Negative thoughts have hurt me. About 15 yrs ago I was having a bad season. A lot of crap was going wrong. Season was almost over. I was gonna eat my tag. I wanted a nice buck BAD! I was in predatory mode. It was all I thought of. I got in a tree one afternoon and here comes a good 8pt. Not quite a shooter but close enough after the season I was having. I said to myself if he comes in close and offers a good shot he's dead. He comes in unalert 15yds broadside. I came to full draw, and I said to myself. "Your dead". I let out a soft quiet grunt to stop him. He came unglued, bolted out of there and went to the next county! It wasn't a loud grunt. I've done this at least 30 or 40 times over the years. I've never had one do that. It was like he was on full alert which he wasn't. I believe he "knew" there was danger. From the second I saw him I was thinking "kill him, kill him". Negative thoughts! Anyway, I literally started beating my head against the tree. Cussing myself for screwing it up again. I then looked up and asked the Lord for for some help. I calmed down and starting thinking positive thoughts. 5 minutes later a 5x6 came in chasing a doe. I killed him at 23 yds. True story.
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Did answered prayer ever enter your mind?
 
I don't know about deer having a sixth sense, although it is fun to think about!

I think that it is sometimes easier for us to blame our hunting shortcomings on some sort of magical ability of the deer, rather than something we did or just plain ol' bad luck. We fret and worry over all of these variables to see success, and the deer ends up just going wherever for no good reason (at least, not good to our perception of what drives deer movement). It doesn't help that there are dozens of hunting personalities on podcasts and social media reinforcing the idea that you should be successful if you follow this tactic, buy this product, etc. "well, I did all this; where is my P/Y buck? Must be the deer's fault..."

I only say this because I did this for years and am now trying to approach hunting from a different angle.
 
IMHO the deers 6th sense is a combination of a photographic memory and the ability to distinguish how old scent is. If u dont stick out like a 3rd nipple and make sure you aren't leaving any scent, then shooting straight is the last thing before the real work begins.
 
I'm just gonna say, I don't think it exists. Some folks claim a 6th sense for themselves, and I think it is either not true/random or it is things that happened quickly and your subconscious picked it up before your conscious mind.

It also kinda speaks to human ego to think "I set up and hunted so perfectly that only a 6th sense could have thwarted me."

A deer's nose, ears, and peripheral vision are so much better than that of humans that I don't think we can relate. It isn't just our experience but more, it is probably a categorical shift in how the world is experienced. Also, I don't think a deer gets as distracted usually thinking about an old movie or a fight at work, so they are laser focused on survival a lot more of the time...maybe to a level humans can't relate to (but probably similar to us when something occurs and we are in "the zone").

It reminds me of the quote I can't attribute now but will paraphrase as "science and technology greatly more advanced than our own would be viewed as witchcraft."
 
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Slabzilla73 said:
IMHO the deers 6th sense is a combination of a photographic memory and the ability to distinguish how old scent is. If u dont stick out like a 3rd nipple and make sure you aren't leaving any scent, then shooting straight is the last thing before the real work begins.
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It makes me rethink how we view animal intelligence when I am behind a tree 20 feet up with just my backpack exposed to the side and a doe is looking up like "that brown thing wasn't hanging in that tree yesterday". Similar to my post upstream, maybe I moved or did something wrong though.

But I've had many examples where deer do seem to have their typical home range committed to memory in a way that blows my mind. There's no way I could know that much about the mundane details of that large an area.
 
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Slabzilla73 said:
IMHO the deers 6th sense is a combination of a photographic memory and the ability to distinguish how old scent is. If u dont stick out like a 3rd nipple and make sure you aren't leaving any scent, then shooting straight is the last thing before the real work begins.
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Exactly right! The buck I killed this year couldn't possible cross my scent trail, couldn't possible scent me and I was only about 14 feet up but I was tucked right into a couple of Hemlocks with great cover so he never saw me either. I was also 20 yards or so to the side of his line of travel and that helps keep you from getting picked. He never new what hit him. I did see some of that red sixth sense pouring out of him when he ran off though :tearsofjoy: :tearsofjoy:
 
I think everybody should be familiar with the work of James Randi, a magician whose estate is still offering a $1,000,000 prize to any person who can demonstrate psychic power in front of a panel of scientists and magicians. Over the course of his career Randi illustrated how a myriad of psychic performances could be performed using simple suggestion, manipulation, and sleight-of-hand.

I think everybody should also read Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World. His example of the dragon he keeps in his garage is relevant to this conversation, as is his "baloney detection kit" and list of logical fallacies. It's a short read that does a really good job of setting up the basis for scientific skepticism as a tool for evaluating claims.

I have found no research indicating that deer possess anything other than keen hearing, excellent peripheral vision attuned to movement, and a sense of smell orders of magnitude higher than ours. That doesn't mean that some additional sense doesn't exist, but I also don't think we need a 6th sense to explain any accounts I've seen of a deer detecting a hunter. It's a simpler, cleaner theory to assume that a deer smelled/saw/heard a hunter with senses that are widely documented, than it is to invoke a magical additional one that we have no evidence of.

I'll paraphrase a quote from Randi that sums up my position on the 6th-sense:

"I've said it before: there are two sorts of 6th-sense deniers. One sort claims that there is no 6th-sense, the other claims that there is no evidence that proves the existence of a 6th-sense; I belong to the latter group, because if I were to claim that no 6th-sense exists, I would have to produce evidence to establish that claim, and I cannot. 6th-sense believers have by far the easier position; they say they believe in a 6th-sense because that's their preference, and they've heard other hunters talk about it. That's their right."
 
Fitzy said:
Ever get that feeling someone is looking at you ? Maybe that is what they get sometimes.
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I have an idea about that, having been on the receiving end of someone thinking I was staring.

Someone in a crowd gets a little self conscious or something and feels like they are being looked at, they then fidget and look behind them, which draws people’s attention. They then think that what they felt was that person looking at them.
 
raisins said:
I have an idea about that, having been on the receiving end of someone thinking I was staring.

Someone in a crowd gets a little self conscious or something and feels like they are being looked at, they then fidget and look behind them, which draws people’s attention. They then think that what they felt was that person looking at them.
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Raisins, Yes I have had that too. Deer are amazing animals.
 
raisins said:
I have an idea about that, having been on the receiving end of someone thinking I was staring.

Someone in a crowd gets a little self conscious or something and feels like they are being looked at, they then fidget and look behind them, which draws people’s attention. They then think that what they felt was that person looking at them.
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You mean to tell me that social animals occasionally look at other social animals, and in a room full of social animals some of them will make eye contact given enough time?
 
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