EXTREMELY EXPERIENCED....that's the words for me. Having logged 10,000 hours in a deer stand with a bow in my lap or a finger on the safety of a rifle (5000 hrs bow / 5000 rifle), is an asset to your whitetail hunt that consistently puts a lot of matures in front of hunters.

There is no substitute for actual extreme experience that will create an outfitter's hunt plan that will deliver consistent results at the desired goal of putting mature whitetails in front of you. I am not talking about a few hundred hours or even a couple thousand stand hours of experience. Logging 10,000 stand hours at mature deer hunting here in Snipe Creek's Kentucky Lake river bottoms in 3 decades is the most important aspect of all the information that you have seen throughout this website -----the extreme and rare experience level that I have logged in a deer stand in the Ky River bottoms is the reason for such detailed and exact information that you will find in my site.

Extreme stand hours equates to an advanced experience knowledge about deer hunting matures that is the foundation of Snipe Creek's hunt culture and hunt plan that favors the hunter with increased odds at seeing and killing a big Kentucky buck. Much is described in my site about the details of our mature buck hunts.

The driving force behind many outfitter hunts seems to be marketing. I say this by the fact that so many(all) outfitters are offering so many bow hunts at times that your chances to kill a big mature are just about zero. Many times, I believe it's lack of hunt knowledge by the outfitter that offers such useless and damaging hunts. Whatever the motivation, money or lack of hunt savvy, the result is a devastating hunt for the bad hunt dates and extreme damage to the good hunt dates that arrive later..

Interesting to note is the week by week bow hunts throughout October and early November that are documented and conducted at so many outfitters in Kentucky as well as other states. If you want to see how many deer are not killed in this period of time, the facts of lack of big buck kills are clearly demonstated through the Kentucky hunt forums. Find the Ky hunt forum and go to the thread where Ky boys post their deer kills. You will not find very many quality bucks being taken during the October bow hunts or even the early November bow hunts.

Another interesting fact concerning repeat bow hunts year after year on properties is the long term damage to a quality hunt. What happens is that you are bow hunting the same deer herds on the same properties. Yes, the short term pressure is problem enough, but the real issue is the conditioning of the entire herd to a hunt plan that insidiously turns your herd into hunting the hunter instead of the hunter hunting the deer. Hunt programs that bow hunt and bow hunt and bow hunt, week after week, and year after year, WILL CREATE A VERY HUNTER-SAVVY DEER HERD. This very syndrome is what has happened in Illinois over the years. You can hear much feedback about how many of the Illinois deer will be hunting the hunter.

Additionally interesting are the outfitters that offer bow-only hunts. Call it like it is: bow-only operations by natural hunt protocol are a disaster in a very few short years. Bow hunts and outfitting hunts are simply two entities that do not match...that is if you wish to have a herd of deer that is hunt-able short term and long term.

The only viable bow hunt that a hunt plan should offer is the early September velvet hunt....which offers high odds at truly pattern-able mature bucks, and with no adverse pressure on the November rut hunt. Also the September velvet hunt doesn't seem to imprint the deer to long term hunting pressure and conditioning.

At Snipe Creek we enjoy your time at the skinning shed and much is considered to give you high odds at being there..

Oppositely, it's easy to find many other hunting programs that offer wrong hunt plans that vastly decrease your odds at seeing Ky matures.