We've had a long discussion on hunting with feeders. My BinL was a Hunters Ed instructor in WI and commented that if it weren't for a sack of corn or a bushel of apples most people wouldn't know how to hunt deer.
He's mainly a trail watcher, occasionally if the woods is quiet he and his nephew do mini drives, pretty effective for them. One picks a strategic stand and the other still hunts around a patch of cover, they pretty much are equally successful with still hunter spotting and killing a deer and the stander catching one sneaking away. These aren't antler hunters they could care less they hunt to fill the freezer. BinL is a retired butcher and used to process 75 deer a year and makes great brats and polish sausage. All on public lands and they live in the heart of WI wolf country..
I'm more interested in tracking and still hunting and did do mini drives with my Ex and BinL when his nephew was little. I love tracking, spending the day learning what a deer is going to do to elude me. Sometimes they give you key early sometimes it is an all day affair.
One of the least impressive bucks was one of the smartest, a three year old spike. He knew all the tricks. I started the day in a heavy wet snow storm. I picked up his track along with a pair of smaller tracks, it didn't take long for him to abandon the does. He did it all, jumping a long way off the track so his tracks just ended and I'd have to cirle until I picked them up. Circling back and watching me go past, never saw him, but could see where the snow started to fill the tracks and then start again fresh as I neared. Some times he would travel a long ways and find a place to watch his back trail. finally he started going through black spruce thickets so tight I had to crawl and then find where he would watch till I was nearly through and he'd bail. I tried circling around and he'd know. Finally i saw him heading to another thicket and made a long loop around down wind and caught him staring back at the thicket , by then the snow was knee deep. The old Savage did it's job, the old savage is a story in it's self. It was night and still snowing by the time I had him dressed and I had no idea where I was except south of International Falls and West of Ely. There is odd light during a snow storm it maybe dark night but you can see brush and trees. When I hunt, I have a knife, rifle, matches and compass. I knew there was an abandoned railroad grade that ran N/S past my camp and I've hunted grouse and woodcock along it. So the drag began. I'd drag until I felt like I wasn't heading correctly and stop and light a match and check the compass and off I go again. I was younger then and could hump a voyagers 150 lb pack (no should straps just a trumpline} in competition. It took a few hours to make it to the railroad grade and the fellows from another camp helped me get it to my camp. It was a deer to remember.
This is the most impressive buck, it took four adults to drag him out, two in deer towing harnesses and a four foot length of limb lashed to his antlers and a guy on either side pulling and still we had to stop every hundred yards.
My Binl and nephew were watching a bowl a few hundred yards across deer would use the bottom of the bowl as a crossing. I'm not much for sitting a watching. I went two ridges north of them and still hunted into the wind I think this deer saw or felt my presence and tried to sneak around me, all I saw of him was part of an ear, an eye and the base of a antler in a hole in the brush so I knew it was a buck, I froze and waited, I could see him moving through the brush but too thick for a shot. I could see a small opening ahead of him and waited. I saw his body move into the opening and shot, he went forty yards dumping blood like someone was dumping out of a five gallon bucket. I still hadn't seen the whole deer and when a caught up with him was stunned. I gutted him and tried to drag him and could barely move him so wrapped a bandana around the tree and rounded up my BinL and nephews for the job of getting him to the truck.
Shot him behind the first group of pines in the bottom of the hill.
I number of folks have high houses over looking swamps and travel ways, some are pretty elaborate kind of like some ice fishing houses. This is private land hunting. You see them out in the fields while driving though the country much like you do Europe.
Out where I live now I could spend a month still hunting and might not see a deer and tracking would be really tough as some places you can see tracks months old. As Desert Ram said you might have a hundred deer /sq mile and we might have 100 sq. miles per deer. Spot and stalk is the thing, as I travel the back country coyote hunting you'll see hunters parked with their spotting scops set up along the road glassing the hillsides and then the work begins to get close enough to them for a shot.
There is all manor of deer hunting for some more enjoyable than others.
He's mainly a trail watcher, occasionally if the woods is quiet he and his nephew do mini drives, pretty effective for them. One picks a strategic stand and the other still hunts around a patch of cover, they pretty much are equally successful with still hunter spotting and killing a deer and the stander catching one sneaking away. These aren't antler hunters they could care less they hunt to fill the freezer. BinL is a retired butcher and used to process 75 deer a year and makes great brats and polish sausage. All on public lands and they live in the heart of WI wolf country..
I'm more interested in tracking and still hunting and did do mini drives with my Ex and BinL when his nephew was little. I love tracking, spending the day learning what a deer is going to do to elude me. Sometimes they give you key early sometimes it is an all day affair.
One of the least impressive bucks was one of the smartest, a three year old spike. He knew all the tricks. I started the day in a heavy wet snow storm. I picked up his track along with a pair of smaller tracks, it didn't take long for him to abandon the does. He did it all, jumping a long way off the track so his tracks just ended and I'd have to cirle until I picked them up. Circling back and watching me go past, never saw him, but could see where the snow started to fill the tracks and then start again fresh as I neared. Some times he would travel a long ways and find a place to watch his back trail. finally he started going through black spruce thickets so tight I had to crawl and then find where he would watch till I was nearly through and he'd bail. I tried circling around and he'd know. Finally i saw him heading to another thicket and made a long loop around down wind and caught him staring back at the thicket , by then the snow was knee deep. The old Savage did it's job, the old savage is a story in it's self. It was night and still snowing by the time I had him dressed and I had no idea where I was except south of International Falls and West of Ely. There is odd light during a snow storm it maybe dark night but you can see brush and trees. When I hunt, I have a knife, rifle, matches and compass. I knew there was an abandoned railroad grade that ran N/S past my camp and I've hunted grouse and woodcock along it. So the drag began. I'd drag until I felt like I wasn't heading correctly and stop and light a match and check the compass and off I go again. I was younger then and could hump a voyagers 150 lb pack (no should straps just a trumpline} in competition. It took a few hours to make it to the railroad grade and the fellows from another camp helped me get it to my camp. It was a deer to remember.
This is the most impressive buck, it took four adults to drag him out, two in deer towing harnesses and a four foot length of limb lashed to his antlers and a guy on either side pulling and still we had to stop every hundred yards.
My Binl and nephew were watching a bowl a few hundred yards across deer would use the bottom of the bowl as a crossing. I'm not much for sitting a watching. I went two ridges north of them and still hunted into the wind I think this deer saw or felt my presence and tried to sneak around me, all I saw of him was part of an ear, an eye and the base of a antler in a hole in the brush so I knew it was a buck, I froze and waited, I could see him moving through the brush but too thick for a shot. I could see a small opening ahead of him and waited. I saw his body move into the opening and shot, he went forty yards dumping blood like someone was dumping out of a five gallon bucket. I still hadn't seen the whole deer and when a caught up with him was stunned. I gutted him and tried to drag him and could barely move him so wrapped a bandana around the tree and rounded up my BinL and nephews for the job of getting him to the truck.
Shot him behind the first group of pines in the bottom of the hill.
I number of folks have high houses over looking swamps and travel ways, some are pretty elaborate kind of like some ice fishing houses. This is private land hunting. You see them out in the fields while driving though the country much like you do Europe.
Out where I live now I could spend a month still hunting and might not see a deer and tracking would be really tough as some places you can see tracks months old. As Desert Ram said you might have a hundred deer /sq mile and we might have 100 sq. miles per deer. Spot and stalk is the thing, as I travel the back country coyote hunting you'll see hunters parked with their spotting scops set up along the road glassing the hillsides and then the work begins to get close enough to them for a shot.
There is all manor of deer hunting for some more enjoyable than others.
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