(Morgantown) -- Although many hunters head out to the woods every fall with visions of killing that massive racked buck, for most it rarely happens.  

There are many reasons why only a small percentage of hunters kill the highest percentage of big bucks.  The biggest may simply be a lack of understanding and knowledge.    Smart hunters will admit they don't know it all when it comes to deer behavior. The remedy is absorbing as much knowledge as you can.   Retired WVU Wildlife Professor Dave Samuel has just increased the potential knowledge exponentially with his latest book, "Whitetail Advantage."

"The way I put this book together is every year for the last 20-years or so I go to a meeting called the Southeast Deer Study group.  About 300 biologists, college professors, and their graduate students get together and present papers on their whitetail deer research,” explained Samuel during a recent appearance on West Virginia Outdoors.

Samuel would report on the latest scientific data for Bowhunter Magazine, where he's been a columnist since 1971.    Over the years, he's accumulated quite an array of proven facts about the nature and behavior of whitetail deer.  He decided to compile the information in book form, which many tout as one of the foremost works on whitetail deer hunting ever written.

"I'd put all this new information into a PowerPoint presentation and use it at talks I would give at game dinners all over the eastern United States,” said Samuel. "People would come up afterward and ask, 'Where can I get that information?' and there was nowhere to get it."  

The information contained in the book is of high value to hunters.  One study debunks the myth that deer see the world in black and white.   Research has proven that deer vision doesn't have near the acuity of the human eye, but is still able to see certain hues.    Samuel says scientists conclude color has less to do with your being detected in a deer stand than your movement.  

Furthermore, most hunters are well aware of the advantage of being downwind from a deer.   "Whitetail Advantage," presents research from university studies across the country that finds a deer's nose may be an even bigger factor than most had ever believed. 

Samuel says the book includes great insight into behavior that can help hunters understand why they're not finding deer in their hunting area, despite spying a big buck there all summer.

"A really neat study done in Missouri shows that bucks 2 and a half years and older, 42-percent leave their home range in early September and go as far as 1,000 yards to five-miles away and stay there the whole fall,” said Samuel.

"You scout a buck all summer.  You peg his movements all the way into September and he's gone. That's the bad news,” Samuel explained, "The good news is there are bucks from somewhere else that are coming to your place that you've never seen before."

Samuel points to the record buck killed by Mike Beatty in neighboring Ohio several years ago as an example.  Samuel says Beatty killed the buck on the first day of the season, and neither he nor the landowner or anyone else familiar with the property had ever seen the big buck.    Samuel is convinced he wandered in from the home range he had harbored all summer to the farm where Beatty was hunting. 

Samuel's book is available for purchase on his website.