Check out the deer sign

Reading deer sign properly allowed this hunter to score.

Reading deer sign is something that has always made sense to me. It gives me more knowledge of the animals, where they feed, where they travel, and in the end, it's this knowledge that makes hunters more successful while allowing them to accurately determine where best to set up their stands.

I'm so mindful of a big buck from several years ago. I'd seen him on three occasions but didn't know where he lived. It took me a week of reading October deer sign to pin down his whereabouts.

The area was in fairly heavy cover. I knew the buck had an exceptional 10-point spread, and reasoned he would be working over some big trees to strengthen his neck muscles before the rut began.

I'd moved slowly through the heavy cover without seeing much buck sign except for a few small rubs on some tag alders. I came out the other side of the tag alders, and entered a 25-yard by 25-yard stand of cedars and pines. That is when I worked out this whitetail puzzle.

One of those cedars was scarred by a pre-rutting buck. Lower limbs were broken off, and the trunk was scrubbed hard from a foot above ground to five feet off the ground. Mind you, I couldn't circle my arms around the tree trunk. This gigantic rub was truly huge.

Checking around let me find a faint trail that ran toward another cedar, and it too was rubbed by the same buck. Three trees within 25 yards formed a minor rub line, and the trail had exited the cover I had just walked through. This buck was leaving the tag alder to rub the cedar and pine trees, and most likely, the deer was moving out just before dark.

A nearby tree was perfect for a stand. There would be no clattering and banging required to erect a tree stand here. I'd attach a rope to my bow and my belt loop, lay the bow down flat, climbed 10 feet up the tree on limbs and stand on two thick parallel limbs that grew close together. Another limb came out at waist level, and I could stand on two limbs and lean back against the other one.

Two nights later as the sun was sinking into the western sky I caught the glint of sunlight shining off brownish-white antlers. The buck went to the first tree, thrashed it hard for several minutes, looked around, and went to the second tree and repeated the process. Fifteen minutes later it arrived at the tree just 15 yards upwind of me.

It took a minute for the buck to rake the tree to a pile of fuzzy bark curls at the base. He nosed his handiwork, lifted his head, moved around the tree to work on the opposite side. The deer was quartering-away at 15 yards, and it was an easy shot.

Properly reading the sign paid off handsomely.

It's not my policy to advise anyone to stand on cedar or pine boughs and lean against another one, and I don't suggest you follow my lead. However, I knew the limbs would support me for one evening of hunting. I was certain it would lead to a shot at the big buck on the first night, and it did.

That buck was a creature of habit, and such habits can put a deer in trouble. Once the buck stopped rubbing and visiting the nearby scrape, this idea wouldn't have worked. My adventure with that big buck was timed perfectly, and that is where knowing something about the rutting activity comes in handy. From the end of October through mid-November, that tree might not have paid off as the buck hazed does through open fields and thick cover.

Hunting one buck is an adventure, a matter of going after them one on one. It means knowing as much about the area as is possible, and being able to translate that knowledge into an action plan.

There are countless other ways of reading deer sign that will pay off in a big way, and we'll cover some other examples in the future. The important thing to realize is that studying deer sign is as much a part of deer hunting as carrying a bow into the woods.

Be alert to deer sign, read what it says, and you'll be on your way to becoming a much better deer hunter.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors

Forget the deer: let’s find some bunny habitat

Two or three snowshoe hares used to be common but no longer.

It's almost Christmas, and my back deck has already been shoveled a dozen times. That's right, that often so far this weekand it’s coming down hard as this is being written.

Folks, if you want snow to slide off your metal roof and save you a laborious back-breaking job, get a day of 35 degree temperatures and combine that with 20+ inches of wet snow on the roof, and shoveling becomes more than an ordeal; it can become an adventure in knowing when to duck your head and body under the eaves.

Ice sometimes forms under the snow pack, and as everything begins to warm and wet snow falls on the present load, things begin to happen. Gravity exerts its inevitable force on the snow, and it slowly begins to move.

Snow always moves downhill slowly, and then builds quickly into an avalanche.

Snow doesn't move up-hill. It comes down, and quite rapidly at times and with very little warning.

There is little time to think about falling snow coming off the roof, but know this: the one place you do not want to be is under the snow and ice once it begins plummeting toward the deck. The force of the impact literally shakes the house.

The avalanche begins with a faint creak or two as the metal roof flexes a bit under the strain, and next is a barely audible hiss. If you hear the hiss, you best be ducking for cover fast because the snow will come crashing down in one or two seconds. That's all the warning you get, trust me.

There is very little warning with snow on a metal roof. Creak, creak, hiss and here it comes. If you snooze, you lose this one-sided race. If you get hit by a 50-pound jagged piece of ice on the old noggin, your shoveling days may be over.

Seriously, this year's early snowfall has put a snuffer on my local deer hunting. I shovel every day that it snows, and since my measuring device is attached to my house, I can tell how much snow we get.

We are at between 45 and 50 inches of snow so far.

Mind you, it may not be exactly accurate because some of it may be drifted snow, but I use my back deck railing as a guide. Each morning I look at the railing, and if there is a noticeable amount of white stuff, I measure it before starting to shovel it off.

Since mid- to late-November, we have got 46 inches of snow. I don't care if it all falls straight down out of the sky or blows in sideways, what is on the railing is counted daily in inches. I usually keep close track until we exceed 100 inches of snow and to continue counting is a waste of my time.

One hundred inches of snow is too much of a good thing. By the way we are going, unless the snow slows down, we may be close to that rediculous number before we usher in Christmas.

It's almost too much now right now to easily get around. Me and deep snow, make for a major problem for someone with poor vision.

It has a tendency to cover fallen logs, brushpiles, stumps and other things that continually jump out in front of me, and I manage to entangle my feet in them before falling to the ground in a might splash of snow.

That’s why I love to hunt snowshoe hares. I let hounds circle bunnies to me.

It's one reason why I used to hunt snowshoe hares as often as possible. You'd walk in the cedars, find a single track, sic the beagles on the track, and wait around for the short-legged hounds to circle the hare within shotgun range.

Well, I don't know about you, but the last 10 years has been tough on snowies. They seem to be disappearing rapidly, and finding a spot where it sometimes is possible to shoot one of the ghost hares, has become almost as difficult as walking easily in 30 inches of snow.

All of my old hare hotspots have cooled off, and we're lucky to find one or two hares each winter. In some cases, we head into the cedar swamps without a firearm. We'll let the dogs run the occasional bunny, but shooting the hare is almost a criminal act.

And that, my friends, is a rather sobering thought as hare numbers continue to spiral downwards.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors