20 Forgotten Deer Tracking Tricks You Can Actually Use This Season

In the winter of 1957, a Maine woodsman named Amos Perley cut the track of a single buck in fresh snow near the Allagash and followed it on foot for three days and nine miles before he ever laid eyes on the animal. He carried no compass, no bait, no blind — just his eyes, and one thing an old Penobscot guide had taught him back when he was a boy. That one thing is number one on this list. Most of what Amos knew has been traded away now for trail cameras and cell-phone alerts — a whole generation that can photograph a buck at midnight but couldn't tell you which way it walked. The very first skill he used that morning, reading how old a track is, is number twenty. Most people think tracking is just spotting a hoofprint in the mud and walking after it. The truth is deeper, and it's a skill, not a gadget. Number fourteen reads one chewed twig and tells you a buck fed there at first light. Number seven is the one that let Amos close nine miles down to forty yards — by reading not where the deer had been, but where it was going next. And number one is the reason he never needed a camera, a feeder, or a single thing you can buy in a store.