First and foremost would be "
Whitetail" by George Mattis published in 1969.
It's value is that it is oriented to Deer and deals with hunting as
dictated by deer behavior as opposed to the all-too-common simple regurgitation of hearsay or Madison Avenue salesmanship. It is for the
advanced hunter as opposed to the "hunter" who has his own parking space at Cabela's.
Second best (IMHO) is the classic volume "
Shots at Whitetails" by Larry Koller published in 1948.
It is a fascinating and detailed description of yesteryear deer hunting and is fairly narrowly focused - chiefly in the old time deer hunting clubs of the Adirondacks. But within that "narrow focus" is a huge amount of deer hunting saavy, deer country saavy, and saavy about the mechanics of things surrounding the hunt (eg. camping, cleaning deer etc., etc.) as well as some very subtle and astute observatons of deer behavior under hunting pressure.
Both of these were written by deer
hunters who operated as
hunters - guys who could, and did, go deer hunting with nothing but a gun, ammo, knife, and drag rope with complete confidence and complete success - because
they knew deer and
they knew hunting (as opposed to knowing the Cabella's catalog and Shooters' Bible by rote).
