Haag always hunts these bedding areas in the morning. His experience has shown it is too risky to try to get close to the bedding area in the evenings. The majority of Haag’s P&Y bucks have been taken between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m., and there has usually been a light drizzle falling.

“If it is overcast with a light drizzle, it seems to result in the normal deer movement being extended throughout the late morning and early afternoon,” he said.

Haag, like most serious bowhunters, is a firm believer in scent control. When you are pushing in tight next to a bedding area, you must be as scent-free as possible, according to Haag. He uses a double Scent-Lok suit, and sprays himself down with a scent eliminator and covers his head with a Scent-Lok head cover. He has found that the older bucks are typically bedded not only where they can see in all directions, but also where the wind has a tendency to swirl. By being as scent-free as possible, you just may get by with the occasional swirl of wind from the wrong direction.

Haag has been bowhunting for 30 years. Like most of us, what he learned when it comes to hunting whitetails has been due to trial and error, with the emphasis on “error.” Much of what he does now should be common practice for all of us bowhunters. But depending on your goals concerning buck hunting, you may want to pay attention to someone who now focuses on older bucks.

“Older bucks just don’t act like the rest of the deer herd,” Haag said. “You need to take it a notch higher if killing older, smarter bucks is your goal.”

If there is one common factor in Haag’s approach to taking giant bucks, it seems to be that these types of deer will always seek out the thickest cover around -- a place where you cannot approach them without them seeing, hearing or smelling you.

“Find out where they spend the majority of their time during the daylight hours,” Haag said.

He then puts together a plan to push in as close as possible without bumping the bucks, fully knowing that if he sets up that close, they may briefly move into his small shooting lane during the daylight. It works, because the average distance at which Haag has taken all of his bucks is 15 yards.

“You need to get away from the shotgun mentality,” he said. “You don’t need to be able to see for a half-mile in every direction. You just need to have that opening at 20 yards or less.”

Is Tom Haag an “expert” on whitetails? His record speaks for itself. However, according to Haag, being an expert means adapting to whatever type of habitat you hunt, while taking the time to figure out how the biggest bucks use that habitat. You then position yourself to take advantage of even the smallest opportunity, which usually appears for only a brief moment. On the surface, you would think bowhunters must be crazy to ever attempt to hunt old, smart bucks, with the odds very definitely stacked in the favor of the deer. But Haag said an expert whitetail hunter’s goal of “consistently taking big bucks is secondary to total bowhunting experience. Every day in the woods is a great day.”

On an additional note, Haag wants to encourage all hunters to wear some type of safety device in their tree stands. Like many of us who have bowhunted for 30 or more years, we went for years not wearing any type of safety belt. But in July 2005, Haag was working on a tree stand when the stand broke. He was 25 feet up when it gave way. With no safety belt and no way to catch himself, he plunged 25 feet and landed on the lower part of his back. He broke several vertebrae and spent many months in rehab, and is now learning how to shoot his bow again. He was extremely lucky to not have any permanent spinal injuries.

“You always think you will have time to grab a limb or somehow catch yourself if you should happen to fall, but I now know it just doesn’t work that way,” Haag said. “I was trying every way possible to adjust my body to reduce the damage as I fell, and there is just no way to do that when you don’t have anything to push against. It only takes one second and you are beyond the point of no return. You always think it will never happen to you.”

Haag no longer takes safety for granted and tells everyone he meets to wear some type of safety harness while deer hunting.

That is expert advice from a “whitetail expert.”