Good hunters make good anglers

What do deer hunting and competitive fishing have in common?

The hunting season has come and gone here in Michigan as we head into winter’s deep freeze.

But hunting remains on my mind for a couple of reasons: 1) My sons and I recently had a successful hunting trip to Kansas and 2) the trip really got me thinking about the forthcoming Bassmaster Elite season.

What do deer hunting and competitive fishing have in common?

Plenty. There are many similarities in how we prepare and stalk game and fish competitively. For example, we only had three days of hunting this trip, so we battled the clock just as I do in a Bassmaster Elite Series event. Maximizing our time was critical.

It’s no accident that a lot of the top bass anglers also are successful hunters. Regardless of what they are stalking, they have the ability to notice subtle changes in the environment, weather conditions and fish or game activity, all of which impacts success.

This trip brought many those similarities to light. It was the boys’ first major hunt outside of Michigan, so it was an opportunity for them to learn how to prepare and hunt a new area effectively.

Mentoring them re-emphasized in my mind just how important all of those “little things” are – things that have become second nature in my fishing strategy.

We prepped the same way I would for a bass tournament. We gathered satellite imagery of areas we wanted to hunt and focused on weather patterns leading up to the trip.

We noted subtle environmental conditions, from weather (wind, rain, sun/cloudy conditions) and habitat locations and density. We monitored seasonal patterns of Kansas deer.

Once we arrived in Kansas, we focused on even more detailed weather forecasts and built game plans around how to position our stands based upon weather and wind direction. These are similar steps I take when fishing tournaments.

We also had to examine food sources, terrain and seasonal patterns (post rut) that were quite different from Michigan. We had to get up to speed quickly.

See the similarities? During an Elite Series event, I have to break down a lake and recognize even the slightest conditional changes and adapt quickly. That is a huge challenge facing Nation and Open anglers moving up to the Elites. Most are accustomed to fishing one- or two-day events yet the four-day competition provides additional challenges and little margin for error.

We’ve seen it on tour; you can fish a potential area and not get a bite, yet a school of bass could be sitting 5 feet shallower or deeper and only 15 feet away!

Our attention to details paid off during our Kansas trip. I killed a unique non-typical buck – one of the coolest deer I’ve ever taken, and the boys got the biggest bucks of their lives. (Now we know why Elite pro Brent Chapman lives in Kansas!)

Those teaching moments with my boys helped remind me of the subtleties that are easily overlooked in fishing or hunting. This Bassmaster season, I will reaffirm a more open-minded approach when reading environmental and lake conditions throughout each day. Those little things often lead to a solid game plan and faster on-the-water adjustments.

Because, after all, it’s all about the attitude!

Kevin VanDam’s column appears weekly on Bassmaster.com. You can also find him on Facebook and Twitter.