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The Hunting Public Deer School?

I’ve had more success this year than ever by throwing out everything I know about map scouting, bedding areas, food sources and all that crap. Here’s the easiest way to get on a deer you want to kill

1. Go look at things until you see a deer.
2. Bring your bow next time you go there.
3. Shoot the deer.
 
In this day and age though, all of that stuff is online somewhere and for free.
You're right. But most of it is tertiary sources at best. The good info is watered down, spread out, and mixed in with the bad. There's a lot of "noise" on the internet. If you're getting 8.5 hours of video plus all the other stuff, and it's all right there in one spot and straight from the horse's mouth, that has value. You don't have to sift through the contradictory BS and fluff.

As somebody who has worked at 2 Universities, I thoroughly understand the reluctance to pay for information given the way higher education absolutely abuses people. There are lots of $4k courses ,that are 90% covered by the $200 textbook, that would be $20 if it wasn't published by Pearson and subsidized through Sallie Mae or FAFSA. But, there are college courses, books, podcasts, documentaries, journals, etc out there that are absolutely phenomenal deals.

I'm not really interested in what THP have to tell me about how to kill deer locally. Or about reading maps, or water access, or glassing fields, or ground hunting, or any of that other stuff. But I'm tempted to give them $80 just to hear their state-by-state breakdown since I'm into that kind of thing and they have experience in that area that probably 99% of hunters don't have.

It all depends on if you think you'll learn something. If you don't think you'll learn anything, it's not worth it. But if you do think they could tell you something you don't know, that would be useful information, and you won't pay for it because you can probably pick it up free somewhere else; ask yourself what will happen in a capitalist society when knowledge doesn't have a monetary value associated with it?
 
The way I look at it is supporting local business. To me they are the good ol boy's in the hunting world nowadays. They aren't sitting on a million dollar property, that they drove to in a $60,000 pickup, to sit in a $1500 blind over a food plot that had $50000 worth of equipment to make and just to show me how to shoot a high fence deer. They put out a ton of awesome content and knowledge for free to the public, and they need to make a living too so if they can get some sponsors here and there that's awesome! I have spent $80 on more dumb and useless stuff in the hunting world than I can count, I guarantee they would give more information to all these guys that say its good for noobs than the people saying that could write down in 8.5 hours.
 
I would recommend watching all their other content first, including listening to the podcasts that often breakdown the YouTube video in more detail. They have a way of explaining things that is simple and non-product reliant. But you have to be diligent and take it all in. If you've done all that, and still want more, then you're more likely to view the $80 as a subscription to exclusive content you couldn't have otherwise seen. They even admit that much of the "unseen" content is just cutting room floor stuff from hunts we have seen.
 
i went ahead and registered (i've watched most of their content already). they don't have anything Maryland specific (i wasn't expecting them to) but i think it'll be worth it still having spent only about 20 min poking around thus far.
 
I'm not advocating the expenditure one way or another. I just think of things like this as $80 is only one tank of gasoline in the truck. . If you think its something that will help you out . . .its the equivalent of a drive to scout some semi-distant property. If you think its not gonna help then why bother with the drive. Bottom line is its really not gonna break the bank one way or the other.
 
One of the places on the Tennessee River Delta that I hunt is like this:
Food everywhere. Thick cover everywhere. Deer sign everywhere. Creek, water, island crossing everywhere. What thin sliver of land or island will they be on today? No one knows! No clear rut for the whole duration of the hunting season. I am convinced you aren't patterning these bucks. Cameras all have them nocturnal (lots of pressure). Sure you can go out there and shoot a doe, spike and fork horn a day, but good luck figuring out what the nice bucks do. There isn't any of this preseason spotting for deer in fields, I have never seen one in a field in broad daylight. It's dang near luck to kill a decent one on this particular public land. YMMV and my views are subject to change once I finally become more successful.
I’ve found that with a bunch of scouting you can find spots like Dan infalt, Eberhart, THP etc hunt. I just can’t find as many as they have. Due to logging activity natural growth, development etc I seem to be losing them as fast as I find them. The fact that all your pictures of mature bucks doesn’t mean they are completely nocturnal. It just means you’re not even close to where you need to be.
 
I like those guys and have picked up small tips over the years but for the most part my hunting scenarios do not line up with theirs. I hunt super thick public flood plain land in Tennessee where deer can bed anywhere almost all season. I think it’s more important to find a local resource for where your at than a general one. I’ve learned more from @catman529 and his YouTube videos than anything else. Learning to identify the local oaks that our deer prefer has been priceless!
 
A lot of the free information out there is junk. Just look around SH and you'll see a lot of absolute nonsense. Deer don't act the same in every scenario. Folks who have hunted a while and have good success use their experience to make decisions. How close to push to a bed, where to find beds, thermals for different scenarios, the list goes on. I still say that a new hunter could spend 80 dollars on a lot worse things. It's a lot harder to pick the good info from the bad when you're a novice. I think OP will be happy paying to shorten that learning curve, even if it's marginal.
 
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