By the time I was eight years old, there were very few places in the town I grew up in that I didn't know. My very first weapon was a flipper and a pocket full of the best round rocks time could buy. I knew where the best barns were for pigeons, where to stand, and where to get that one good shot. I had my favorite trees all over town for different kinds of birds. I even knew the very limbs they would land on and where I needed to be to place a rock up through everything. I learned early that a good, clear shot is a must. By the time I was 10, I knew hundreds of birds. I knew where each kind liked to be and its degree of intelligence. If I ever got a magpie or a starling with a flipper, I knew I had done my best hunting.

My flipper had to be put together just right. It had to have a lilac shank and good leather for the sling. The rubber had to be red or tan, and it had to be put together in just the right way or it would not shoot the way I liked it to. I remember my cousin throwing a pop can in the air, and I hit it 10 times in a row. In short, I didn't know it at the time, but I was becoming a true hunter. Most of my time, money and thoughts had something to do with hunting. When I was 12, I got my first .22 and the flipper and rocks were semi-retired. However, at 50, I still have a flipper and enjoy shooting it. As you can see, by the time I was 12, I had learned 90 percent of all the basics needed to be a good hunter.

One thing that has allowed me to be a successful mule deer hunter in my later life is the art of tracking. Of all the things one must know and do, the one thing that has given me the greatest success, is being able to read tracks. Here again, in my younger life I used to track Jackrabbits to their holes and bushes. In deep snow, I would track them until I caught many with my bare hands.

Some of you may ask, "What can you see in a deer track?" Let's stop and take a close look at the track like the Indian scouts do in the movies:

1. It tells me which way the deer is going. This helps me walk in the right direction (where one is).

2. It tells me, to a certain degree, how long ago the deer was there.

3. It tells me how fast the deer is moving. Whether it is running, walking, feeding, or lying down.

4. It tells me how many there are.

5. It tells me how big a buck is.

6. It tells me this is the kind of buck dreams are made of and I need to spend the time to get this one if I can.

Here is a question for you. How many "big" bucks could you have taken in the last 35 years if every day, hour, minute that you spent hunting deer, you were only on the track of one of those big bucks and not just deer hunting? (Did I just answer why I have killed a lot of big bucks or what?) A big buck track in the sand-it doesn't get any better than that.

Now I know that a lot of you like to hunt high, you don't like to hunt low. Maybe where you hunt or live there isn't any low ground or good sand or dirt to track in. So, if you can't follow or see a deer track in the sand, what do you do?