Our 50 all-time top tips & tactics for Canadian hunters

#11 Whenever you have the advantage of height, hunt more with your eyes than with your feet. Glassing from a stationary position makes it easier to locate game, and more difficult for the animals to detect you. It’s hunting smarter, not harder.

#12 To improve your odds of gaining ongoing access to private land, don’t seek permission on opening day while dressed in camo and packing your rifle. Instead, meet and spend time with landowners before the season begins.

#13 Clean up your big-game animals before taking photos. A little glass cleaner and some paper towel will remove blood from the hair of deer, elk and other game. Also stuff a bit of paper towel in the nostrils to stop annoying drips of blood. (Also see tip #41.)

#14 When hunting big game in open habitat, wear one dark and one light camouflage pattern. That helps break up your human profile by cutting it in half, which is especially important for still-hunters.

#15 Attach a short length of parachute cord to the zipper tabs on your outerwear, packs, boots and gaiters, then wrap the tabs with duct tape. That stops them from rattling, and makes them easier to unzip while wearing gloves or mittens.

#16 Covering the gap between your jacket and gloves helps preserve body heat. To do this, lop the toes off a pair of wool socks, cut out a thumbhole, and pull them over your forearms on the outside of your jacket sleeve before putting on your gloves (shown above).

#17 When hunting experienced late-season geese, place your blind along a wing of your decoy spread so that you’ll be shooting birds as they cross. A more typical set-up with the birds landing straight towards your blind will often spook wary geese.

#18 Ducks and geese see colour, so regularly repaint your waterfowl decoys, Touching up the factory paint where it’s been worn off returns realism to your spread—and that translates to more birds in your bag.

#19 We can split hairs over which cartridge is best, but when it comes to relatively similar cartridges, it’s the bullet construction, design and impact velocity that will have the greatest influence on downrange performance. So, choose your bullets wisely.

#20 Wear disposable rubber gloves when cleaning game of any type to help avoid transmissible parasites and disease. Your hands will also stay clean—no more getting blood on everything you touch afterwards.