What Kills Most Whitetail and Elk Hunters?

Bill Thompson says not understanding thermals is what kills most hunters, especially whitetail and elk hunters. On a cold early morning the wind runs down the mountain, so animals below a descending hunter smell the hunter immediately. Once the ground heats up, the wind turns and runs up the mountain, and a hunter still below the animals has to get above them quickly or the animals blow out.

He has seen animals smell him from a hundred yards away. A friend who died in 2017 photographed whitetails and kept a deer pen in New York. A mountain stood three quarter mile from the property. When the does came into heat, bucks gathered at the base of the fence to smell wind off the mountain from does three quarter mile away.

The thermal feature is built for use at home. Enter a temperature and a wind speed, and the engine maps how scent will move on the mountainside. Joe Rogan asked whether an east slope makes thermals rise quicker than a west slope. Bill Thompson says yes, because of the sun. The engine uses a high-resolution topographic layer plus canopy cover, so thermals change between elk in the open and elk in aspens.