By all accounts, the whitetail deer is the wiliest big game animal in North America, if not the world. To achieve trophy status, a buck has to make it through an adolescence fraught with dangers. He learns to survive any way he can: by becoming a noctural creature during hunting seasons, by bedding in areas where he can detect approaching predators and avoid them, by feeding on browse or fruits that give him the most nutrition for maximum growth, and by using all of his senses -- in particular, his keen senses of smell and eyesight. Today, there are more than 25 million whitetails in the United States alone. They have proven to be an incredibly adaptable creature, learning how to live quite well in proximity to mankind. Just because there are so many deer doesn't mean it is easy to hunt them, however. In fact, statistics generally show that only one in ten hunters is successful each year -- despite light-gathering optics, rifles with more power and more punch, camouflage clothing that lets a hunter truly blend in with his surrounding -- everything that technology has to offer. To take a whitetail deer, and especially a good-sized whitetail buck, a hunter must be woods smart. He has to know his quarry, know its habits, know the terrain it lives in, plus know how to use his weapon of choice efficiently and effectively. This book is aimed at the hunter who wants to succeed consistently. Loaded with an incredible array of tips, tactics, woods craft, and lore, the ALMANAC will make you a better woodsman, and a better hunter. It will enable you to hunt areas where you have a good chance of seeing deer, where you won't, as legendary deer hunter Larry Koller observes, be a watcher ofbarren ground. For the past 23 years, John Weiss has been one of the country's most prolific outdoor writers. Although he specializes in whitetail deer hunting, more than 1,500 of his feature magazine articles on all fish and game species have appeared in print. He has also written 13 books, including one, The Advanced Deer Hunter's Bible, which was recently ranked as the eight most popular hunting book ever published. Weiss holds a Master's Degree from Ohio University, and a good deal of his wildlife research is conducted on his farm and lease lands in southern Ohio, where he maintains numerous experimental food plots and cover plantings. Each year he also criss-crosses the country in order to hunt in numerous states and provinces, and to maintain close contact with the nation's foremost deer biologists and manufacturers of deer hunting equipment. Weiss and his wife, Marianne, currently reside in Chesterhill, Ohio.