Whitetails: A Research Based Hunting Model

Biological research in recent years has brought to light much concerning the nutrition, biology, and habitat of the whitetail. But there has always been a paucity of hard data involved in the actual hunting of whitetails. This book brings to bear more than twenty years of didactic research concerning the weather conditions that drive the daytime movement activities of the whitetail. Dr. Sheppard has prospectively joined together data from Bent Creek Lodge, one of the South's largest commercial hunting operations and data from the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather database to study daytime whitetail movement patterns in ways never before considered. An intense statistical analysis of these unique data uncovers some of the most profound insights known to date concerning daytime whitetail activities. More than 35,000 hunter days of data have been accumulated and blended with daily weather data to provide practical information that can, and should, change the way you think about whitetails, and definitely the way you hunt them. Dr. Bob Sheppard grew up on a farm in Alabama, born in 1950, the son of tenant farmers. He descended from a long line of fishermen and hunters. He began a writing career in the outdoor field during his years of medical school and residency, and became a staff writer for an Alabama based magazine called the Alabama Sportsman (later to become one of Game & Fish Publication's periodicals, Alabama Game & Fish). Over the next fifteen years, he placed articles in Outdoor Life, Field & Stream, Sports Afield, Bowhunter Magazine, Harris Publication's books and annuals, Deer & Deer Hunting, Progressive Farmer, Southern Outdoors, Game & Fish Publications, and a host of others. In 1979 he began instructing in a series of bowhunting schools held at commercial hunting lodges across the South. These have become the nation's oldest continuous line of outdoor skills schools in existence.