Plain and simple it requires both luck and skill

You know the old saying; I'd rather be Lucky than Good. Well I'd rather be Both!
I firmly believe you create alot of your own luck. Doing the right things to give yourself a better chance at being lucky. Like planting crops to attract and hold deer,keeping the feeder going year round with fresh water there. Every time I go check my game cards and fill the feeder, I corn the road around that area, the deer associaate my truck with food not as a preadator (thanks Captain Jack for that one), not shooting does until after the rut. Yes Luck plays a big part of it no matter how well you prepare, I like my odds of getting lucky alot better when I have prepared for it!

Where is spell check when you need it, and why is it so much easier to find your errors after you post?

The old adage.... "The harder I work the luckier I get." It applies.

An old friend of mine told me that "luck is the place where skill and opportunity come together". Chance favors the prepared mind for sure.

Both

Skill over luck. If you have sufficient skill, it will place you in more situations for success, where as luck usually gets you one or two.

Luck is getting the opportunity for a shot....Skill is not missing!

More and more these days it is niether skill or luck. It's the thickness of your pocketbook!

Luck, the more time spent on your stand the better luck you will have. I have some great pics of some real good bucks, but my camera is there 24 / 7

Luck, good or bad, plays significant part in anything we do. Granted you have to have a certain amount of skill to put yourself in a position and make the kill shot. But aside from that it's all luck as you can't control/predict that a certain deer will be at the same place as you on a given day. You may see lots of deer on an outing but they may all be does or small bucks when you were hoping to encounter a Booner; that'll be a bad luck. Or you may see just 1 deer and that's exactly the one you were hoping to see; that's good luck.

I'm very grateful when I'm able to bag any kind of deer. One's having big racks is just a bonus. All I know is that they all taste good and my family loves to eat them.

IMO, pure luck is what matters most when it comes to the opportunity to bag a trophy. But once the opportunity presents itself, it takes some measure of skill to take advantage of it.

I'm thinking patience outweighs luck. If you have a lot of shootable deer running around, the statistics are in your favor.

Luck. Right place right time.
Spot and stalk is probably more of both.