Dumb mistakes that deer hunters make

Richey with a nice buck taken with a Thompson-Center Contender.

 

Over the years, I've seen people do some of the dumbest things while sitting in an elevated coop or a tree stand or while hunting from a ground blind. Mfost are funny but some could have been deadly.

The reason I write about some of these is there are always lessons that can be learned. Benefit now from these mistakes of other hunters.

One time I had a new hunter sitting in a ground blind. It had a sliding Plexiglas window in that coop, and when I dropped him off, I suggested he keep the window closed until a deer got close enough for a shot, and then silently slide it open, draw, aim and shoot.

It pays to remember and pay attention to advice.

 

He did some of it right and failed on other parts. He saw a small 8-point walking toward him, and he waited until the deer stopped, quartering-away at 12 yards, and he drew back and shot.

C-r-a-c-k! He'd forgotten to slide the Plexiglas window open, and shattered it. The buck obviously disappeared, and probably never walked past that blind again.

Another time, another guy was sitting in a ground blind with a sliding wooden window. He saw a buck and doe coming, and when the doe walked past the window, he waited for the buck to pass, and he shot. His arrow struck the sliding portion of the wood window frame, glanced off it, missed the buck entirely but the ricochet nailed the doe in the heart. It was a great trick shot, and a killing hit on the wrong deer.

Then there was a time when another hunter drew down on a doe, studied the animal as it walked in front of him and stopped. He held his draw until she started to turn, and he aimed for the heart and lung area. He made a great hit, but again, on the wrong deer.

A doe fawn, standing out of sight, darted in next to its mother, and saved her life. This mistake has often happened to several hunter friends, and it is the result of tunnel vision on the target animal and not watching to see what other nearby deer were doing. The venison was really tender, I heard.

Once, during the December bow season, a bow hunter was sitting in a pine tree near an alder run. He'd shot several bucks over the years from that tree, and sat out in hopes of seeing another one. The air temperature was about 10 above, and a strong north wind was blowing.

Toughing out a cold day with low wind-chill figures isn't fun.

 

He toughed it out until shooting time ended. He lowered his bow to the ground, shrugged his shoulders several times to restore circulation, and rubbed his hands together. He'd lost most of the feeling in his hands and feet, and tried to get warm and limbered up before starting down.

He took the first two steps, and then one of his feet slipped on a snow-covered ladder step. He had three contact points -- two hands and one foot  -- but all were too cold to respond when his foot slipped. He knew he was going down, and pushed himself away from the tree and tumbled eight feet off tree limbs and into the snow. He wasn't hurt from the fall but was a bit disoriented for a moment until he figured out what had happened.
Anytime a hunter can walk away from a tree stand fall is indeed lucky.

Then there was the gent who felt nature calling. He looked around, didn't see anyone, so he gave the tree trunk a good shower below him. That had been one of my best tree stands, and after he told me about his aerial spray job, I enjoyed it so much I let him hunt the same stand the next day. He never saw a deer but I doubt if the object lesson resonated with him.

Another time a hunter was in that same tree, and it was a cold day, and suddenly a nice buck appeared. He normally had a 60-pound draw weight, but had forgotten to crank it down a bit to compensate for the cold, still muscles and bulky clothing.

A buck came walking slowly by. Our hero started his draw, and the arrow fell off the rest. He was shooting with fingers at the time, and the extra effort to draw the weight when cold and over-dressed, caused him to roll the bow string. It flipped the arrow off the rest and it fell, tinkling, to the ground as the buck looked up at the sound.

The buck stared upward, and the hunter didn't move, and eventually it went back to its business of checking an old scrape. He nocked another arrow, tried drawing on the buck again, and again the arrow rolled off the rest and tumbled off branches to the ground.

The tinkling arrows bouncing off tree limbs scared off this buck.

 

The hunter, sat and stared at the curious buck, but finally common sense apparently set in and the deer raced off through the snow as the hunter looked down at the red nocks standing upright in the snow.

I've had a ground blind with a low door-way. A sign tells people to watch their heads, but one person managed to smack his head going into the blind. And, to add insult to past injury, banged his head when he left. He no longer  sits in that stand.

Deer hunting is mighty serious business for most of us, but some of these things are a bit too funny to ignore. And it's a wise and good-natured hunter who can laugh and benefit from his mistakes.

And to prove that I'm not immune to doing dumb things, it was me that banged his head twice on the door-way. It still makes my head hurt to think about it.

Move often to avoid being patterned

This nice buck is checking his surroundings for danger before moving.

Why do people climb mountains? The answer is obvious. Because they are there.

The same analogy applies to deer hunters. Why do people switch stands methodically. The answer is because they can and should.

A lady bowhunter I know loves to sit in just one stand. She will hunt in it every day of the season if possible. She loves her stand, its location and she knew where the deer would come from to pass within her shooting range.

What's more: she shoots good bucks from that stand. It works for her but this method of hunting is not for me.

I want to know when and where bucks travel. Finding such areas is hard work.

I always want to know what lies ahead and around the next bend in the trail. Each day of deer hunting is a day of discovery for me, and that means moving around from one area to another.

It's not my nature to hunt the same stand two days in a row unless I feel a big buck will show. I watch deer on a daily basis, and know where the bigger bucks travel.

Some bucks get into lockstep with moving along the same trail but many big-antlered deer vary their travel routes and schedules. Young bucks can be patterned, and it's possible to predict with 95 percent accuracy what time the little buck will arrive. Nine times out of 10 they will show up within five minutes of when they are expected.

Now, me, looking at the same scenery day after day takes its toll on my patience. It's much more fun, to my way of thinking, to sit in a different stand every day. It helps me avoid getting into a rut.

My hunting method allows me to move daily, play the wind and not get bored.

My preference is to mix up my hunting activities. One day a treestand will be picked, and the next day it may be a ground blind a mile away. The following day may be an elevated coop, and the next day I may choose a pit blind. This allows me to study different deer, try to pinpoint a big buck and his travel area, and it keeps me from getting bored.

A bored hunter is not an effective one. Move around, try different locations, and it keeps you hunting different areas. Switching hunting spots on a regular basis keeps hunters from being patterned by deer. I will seldom hunt the same spot twice in one week.

Each spot will feature bucks approaching from a new and different angle, and like other sportsmen, it's like learning a new stretch of river. Sometimes the new spots will not pay off, but other times they do.

It's impossible to know how good a hunting area can be if we don't hunt it. A great deal of thought goes into choosing locations for ground or tree stands, and that means someone must sit there and study deer patterns and travel routes under various wind directions.

I want to know everything there is to know about a certain location. There have been times where I've put in a stand, hunted it for a day or two, and pulled it out because something about it just didn't feel right.

Hunters, like many people, listen to gut feeling. They have hunches, and I'll look at it a few times, put a stand up, and know within 30 minutes of crawling into the stand that it isn't right. If it doesn't pass muster the first night, it won't be there the next.

It’s my intention to know  about every stand I hunt. It makes me effective.

I don't believe in moving stands just because it goes cold for a week or so. If it has a proven record, it stays in place for a season. I've seen a few stands be cold for most of a season, and then pick up toward the end as deer shift into their winter mode.

The December bow season is long gone, but these tips are meant to give hunters food for thought between now and when December rolls around again. If you are limited to 10 acres, there may only one or possibly two good spots to hunt. If so, switch back and forth. Twenty acres offers two or three spots, and 50 acres offers even more possible stand location choices.

My wife and I once leased 300 acres of deer habitat. It took us a year to learn how to hunt it. We studied travel routes for spring, summer, fall and winter, learned where deer bedded and where they fed.

Study deer movement during all four season, and sooner or later a hunter will put all the puzzle pieces together for one area. If he figures out one spot, it's then time to learn everything possible about another location.

That leased land is a case in point. We'd invite the occasional person  to hunt, and it was a big thrill for me to put a young bowhunter in a stand, and tell him: "A buck comes by here every day at 5:25 p.m., and he comes out of the far corner on the right."

I'd sit with him, and say: "Get ready. That buck will be here in five minutes."

Sure enough, the buck had been patterned so well that he would show up on time. It never ceased to amaze the adults or kids I worked with. People get that woods-savvy only be spending long hours in many locations. Do it right, and shooting a buck is pretty easy. Shooting a big buck is much more difficult, but that only increases the thrill of hunting a particular animal.

The key point here is not to get locked into hunting one spot day after day. Sooner or later the deer will pattern you, and that is not a good situation to find yourself in midway through a season ... unless you are my wife. It always seems to work for her.

Second-guessing bucks isn’t always right

Tonight wasn’t a big buck night for anyone I know.

I guessed that deer hunting should be good tonight after a day of cold weather and last night's snow and high winds. It was, but no deer were taken.

My gut instinct told me that with the air temperature at 20 degrees, and light snow falling, that the deer would move. Some did but not many came past me or my neighbors.

Gut reactions, instinct, call it what you will, but hunters have these thoughts or premonitions of what an evening hunt might deliver. Trying to second-guess the influence of weather causes all of us, including the weatherman, to incorrectly predict what will happen.

Another wrong guess on tonight’s deer movements.

Sadly, all of us miss the boat on occasion. I saw a couple deer right at the end of shooting time, but none close enough to shoot, and the deer movement wasn't nearly as intense as my instincts told me it would be.

One man saw a small buck tonight, and not a single doe or doe fawn, and he allowed it to walk on by. Another man and his son sat about 500 yards apart in different tree stands, and both saw deer but not in any numbers or size. It was as if most of the deer were waiting until long after full dark before moving from thick cover.

Another man, a guest, saw two does and fawns but none offered a broadside or quartering-away shot. He didn't shoot.

Tonight was one of those nights, like high-school graduation night, that seem to hold so much promise but then it fizzles out. There wasn't much activity, and everyone was in place by 3:30 p.m., long before the deer moved, but this evening seemed to be the night for few deer.

Some nights, I learned long ago, are best suited for small deer while other nights are key times for big-buck movements. The latter seems to come during the rut when a severe storm blows through, but that doesn't mean that a similar night can't or won't occur sometime during December.

There are big-buck nights and small-deer nights, Tonight was the latter.

I hunt more than most people, and that many people have daytime jobs that start early and end late, and prevent midweek hunting. For those people, it's difficult to see the logic of my next statement.

The more nights a bow hunter is afield, the more likely they are to be present when the big-buck travels take place. I have to be really sick to miss a night of hunting, but there are many nights when I think I'd been better off being inside.

Whitetail hunting is more than just something to do for me. It's a major part of my life, and if none of my friends don't hunt, it doesn't bother me to be out there alone. It gives me the choice of one of about 10 coops and tree stands to choose from, and I go hunting.

There is something about being afield, with bow in hand, that is very meaningful. I enjoy the weather, revel in seeing deer, love to spot a trophy buck I've never seen before, and get a kick out of watching the antics of fawns, and the aloof but hyper attitude of a wary old doe.

I like reading sign in the snow, see a track heading into an area where tracks have never gone before, and that instills within me a spirit of adventure. I want to know where that single track is going and why. Solving whitetail mysteries has become a defining role for me, and answering such questions becomes a meaningful experience.

Just seeing deer is an enjoyable. There’s not many around now.

Above all, the challenge of hunting a single buck to the exclusion of all other bucks is a magnificent thrill. Sometimes I take that buck, and quite often a particular buck will win this matching-wits experience.

Hunting means being afield with bow in hand. It means trying to outwit a deer that is at home in the woods and fields, and learning to solve these hunting puzzles can be a big thrill.

It happens just often enough to keep me coming back for more. Bow hunting for bucks is a challenge, make no mistake about it, and the bucks usually win. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors