Sanctuaries

[Sam Ubl]

After a second season on the land I originally mentioned way back when this thread first spawned, a whole new approach was taken. I acquired permission for my brother inlaw to share the property with me, but in only his second year of bowhunting, he still hasn't picked up on some of the finer points of the art of bowhunting; married to his stand and entry/exits to and from stand site. With many lessons learned after leaving nearly 90 acres of the 125 acre parcel to rest in 2010, I took much of the discussion from this thread to mind and changed up my approaches this season. I set nine different bow stands on the property, including the stand we call the "Funnel" stand that my brother inlaw became married to from the get-go. These stands were spanned across much of the property on pinch points between bedding and food, as well as transition areas from marsh and dogwood to hardwoods, and close to core bedding areas. Still, we left certain areas undisturbed after the intial spring scouting. We used trail cameras in 6 different locations to get some inventory intel and never left a camera after checking it - we always moved it to eliminate return traffic to the area. When the season arrived, we were ready. We review bedding areas and specific buck beds highlighted on the aerials. We discussed wind directions and when to and not to sit specific sets with relation to bedding areas and travel routes. We also studied various entry/exit routes based on wind direction relative to bedding and feeding areas before we actually set out to hunt.

While the season showed us what my brother inlaw coined "TV deer" on the property, getting close wasn't as easy as all the pre-season scouting and set-up work should have allowed for and I truly believe it's because we lost the edge on the patterns we scouted and now had to hunt on the defense. I shot two bucks out of a stand that is more of a lookout stand during the rut by calling both bucks in from nearly 300 yards out of one particular area we left alone as a "Do Not Enter" sanctuary..

The PROBLEM
Due to overhunting a specific stand with no regard for wind direction, deer sightings became meager as the season wore on. Come gun season, while we saw 6 different bucks on opening weekend, four of which were shooters and one of which we shot, the closest shot we had was over 100 yards away - WAY different than last year when the deer felt safe nearly anywhere within the borders of the property. My conclusion? Even if one particular stand hadn't been married by my brother inlaw and we had hunted smart and only stepped into certain areas once or twice during the season, we still would have made our presence known as it is "only" 125 acres - seems like a lot of land, but when you have two guys for an entire season, what are you supposed to do? Luckily I had another spot with a halo on it and sat that property for much of September and October with plans of going in shoulders deep to target the sanctuary property in and around the rut, but when that time came the damage had already been done. The deer were more nocturnal than ever and kept to cover like you wouldn't believe. I knew the deer were still using the land and even sleeping there, but if I pressed them anymore this late in the game with setting up new stand sites based on how they re-arranged their patterns since my brother inlaw had been hunting there, we would have really pushed them off..

So, fast forward to last weekend when we had a touch of snow on the ground. I used this opportunity to go in and peek around in an effort to gain some intel before going into the late season bowhunt and Holiday gun hunt that starts on the 24th - 9th, and found my hunches were right. I found their core bedding areas from the summer had been abandoned and within one of the two santuary areas I had left alone all this time, which is about a 20 acre chunk of marsh grass, cattails, dogwood and tag alders, was literally almost unsanitary with all the fecies from the deer that had meshed bedroom with bathroom. I made a couple of last minute stand changes and on Monday morning and evening, both stands will be sat by me and hopefully I'll have a story to tell.

[BackWoodsHunter]

Good luck Sam! I am finding on some private pieces I hunt that pre-sets are killing my productivity. Its a pain to set a stand and tear it down each time a guy hunts especially if you are hunting close to home and want to sneak out after work but it seems to be most effective for me. Maybe the pre-sets were "too close" to the safe zones of these deer? I'm no bed hunting expert but it seems like the mentality behind Dan's approach, Dan correct me if I'm wrong, is that he sets up on a deer and kills it that night so they never know he is onto them. When I sit in a pre-set the deer usually check the stand before passing by it. On very few occasions I spot them first and catch them checking me out...good luck here in the late season sounds like there is still hope!

[rudy78]

After a second season on the land I originally mentioned way back when this thread first spawned, a whole new approach was taken. I acquired permission for my brother inlaw to share the property with me, but in only his second year of bowhunting, he still hasn't picked up on some of the finer points of the art of bowhunting; married to his stand and entry/exits to and from stand site. With many lessons learned after leaving nearly 90 acres of the 125 acre parcel to rest in 2010, I took much of the discussion from this thread to mind and changed up my approaches this season. I set nine different bow stands on the property, including the stand we call the "Funnel" stand that my brother inlaw became married to from the get-go. These stands were spanned across much of the property on pinch points between bedding and food, as well as transition areas from marsh and dogwood to hardwoods, and close to core bedding areas. Still, we left certain areas undisturbed after the intial spring scouting. We used trail cameras in 6 different locations to get some inventory intel and never left a camera after checking it - we always moved it to eliminate return traffic to the area. When the season arrived, we were ready. We review bedding areas and specific buck beds highlighted on the aerials. We discussed wind directions and when to and not to sit specific sets with relation to bedding areas and travel routes. We also studied various entry/exit routes based on wind direction relative to bedding and feeding areas before we actually set out to hunt.

While the season showed us what my brother inlaw coined "TV deer" on the property, getting close wasn't as easy as all the pre-season scouting and set-up work should have allowed for and I truly believe it's because we lost the edge on the patterns we scouted and now had to hunt on the defense. I shot two bucks out of a stand that is more of a lookout stand during the rut by calling both bucks in from nearly 300 yards out of one particular area we left alone as a "Do Not Enter" sanctuary..

The PROBLEM
Due to overhunting a specific stand with no regard for wind direction, deer sightings became meager as the season wore on. Come gun season, while we saw 6 different bucks on opening weekend, four of which were shooters and one of which we shot, the closest shot we had was over 100 yards away - WAY different than last year when the deer felt safe nearly anywhere within the borders of the property. My conclusion? Even if one particular stand hadn't been married by my brother inlaw and we had hunted smart and only stepped into certain areas once or twice during the season, we still would have made our presence known as it is "only" 125 acres - seems like a lot of land, but when you have two guys for an entire season, what are you supposed to do? Luckily I had another spot with a halo on it and sat that property for much of September and October with plans of going in shoulders deep to target the sanctuary property in and around the rut, but when that time came the damage had already been done. The deer were more nocturnal than ever and kept to cover like you wouldn't believe. I knew the deer were still using the land and even sleeping there, but if I pressed them anymore this late in the game with setting up new stand sites based on how they re-arranged their patterns since my brother inlaw had been hunting there, we would have really pushed them off..

So, fast forward to last weekend when we had a touch of snow on the ground. I used this opportunity to go in and peek around in an effort to gain some intel before going into the late season bowhunt and Holiday gun hunt that starts on the 24th - 9th, and found my hunches were right. I found their core bedding areas from the summer had been abandoned and within one of the two santuary areas I had left alone all this time, which is about a 20 acre chunk of marsh grass, cattails, dogwood and tag alders, was literally almost unsanitary with all the fecies from the deer that had meshed bedroom with bathroom. I made a couple of last minute stand changes and on Monday morning and evening, both stands will be sat by me and hopefully I'll have a story to tell.

Yea as was said before if you are going to hunt this way it needs to be done smartly & with lots of care, not hunting a specific stand regardless of wind of stuff all the time. Again the goal is to kill big bucks with regularity not just simply give them a home on your land, in hopes that someday maybe one will leave that area before it's dark out.
Maybe the best option would be to do a hybrid of both, if you want to hunt a lot, start off just doing it on the fringes & have a few stands set in the right areas that at the right time you can slip into them. This way your core will be a 'sanctuary' till the right time, the problem is as you found out hunting it the wrong times/over-hunting sensitive areas will ruin a piece.

An example:
I hunt a piece of ground with my dad in MI and he is a lot like your BIL he likes to hunt all the time (which is fine) but unlike your BIL he doesn't just hunt the same stand all the time only doing 'damage' there, he goes all over the property so the deer 'can't pick up on him' then after the middle of Oct he isn't seeing hardly any deer and always thinks it's because every reason other then that he has been in there hunting all the time. Whatever I can't change his mind of this & have given up trying, so now if i do hunt that place I hunt as far away from his stuff as i can. I have a piece of ground just down the road that is half the size and I'm the only one who can hunt it. I only have a few stands in it & only hunt them when conditions are pretty good, guess what in the 3 years of hunting this piece there is only 1 time where I didn't have deer close enough to shoot it. This property isn't a 'sanctuary' it's only 40 acres and I have stands spread all over it, but when I hunt it I do it with caution. It makes a HUGE difference. So in some ways the way you guys were hunting was like my dad & every time you hunt you are educating deer that they are being hunted and this year they realized it was all over the property so yep less deer were going to be using it. The goal of hunting all of your land is not to educate they deer they are being hunted, but to kill them when you do go in & hunt. On smaller pieces of ground it is really hard to keep pressure down if you want to be hunting all the time, so maybe then you need to really confine yourself during the 'not-so-good' times to kill, so then the time is right they are still on the property, but you also have stands in places where you can slip in and kill them, not just sit on the outside & occasionally catch glimpses of them.

[rudy78]

Good luck Sam! I am finding on some private pieces I hunt that pre-sets are killing my productivity. Its a pain to set a stand and tear it down each time a guy hunts especially if you are hunting close to home and want to sneak out after work but it seems to be most effective for me. Maybe the pre-sets were "too close" to the safe zones of these deer? I'm no bed hunting expert but it seems like the mentality behind Dan's approach, Dan correct me if I'm wrong, is that he sets up on a deer and kills it that night so they never know he is onto them. When I sit in a pre-set the deer usually check the stand before passing by it. On very few occasions I spot them first and catch them checking me out...good luck here in the late season sounds like there is still hope!

I have a hard time believing that all the deer know and care where your preset stands are hung and they are just 'waiting to find you in them'. If you are using a hang on stand with a decent amount of trimming (not cutting the woods down) and if you are 20 feet or higher or have decent cover to break up your stand/body, it is no different then hanging it the night before. The surprise factor isn't if the stand is there or not, it is if the buck knows he's being hunted there or not. Which has to do with entry to the stand and the conditions you are hunting, not if the stand in there in the spring/summer or if you just hung it.
Just about all the deer i kill are out of pre-hung sets & never once has a deer walked in staring at my tree, unless he caught me moving and when I'm up there it's not just me, but there is also a camera man on another stand that wasn't there, so now there are 2 stands with 2 people in and they don't pick me off.

[Sam Ubl]

Rudy, I hear ya on what your saying. The thing with my BIL is that he's very stubborn in the sense that despite all the discussions and planning we had ahead of time and the little helpful hints I drop very cautiously so as to not make him feel like I'm telling him that he's doing something wrong, he's very stubborn and says outloud that he's married to this particular stand and that if he's going to kill a deer, it will be out of this stand because of all the time he already put in it - he still doesn't get it. The last couple years I've been mentoring him in the way of hunting, but because I know how he is personally and how he takes things, I have to tread lightly - hope you catch my drift. Now, because I knew how he was choosing to hunt this land, I stuck to my other property about 10 miles away until the early part of November when I finally went in and killed two good bucks a few days apart from one another, and then again over gun season. The real issue for me is feeling like I'm no longer able to manage the way my property is hunted because I don't want to make him feel bad or cause him to lose interest in hunting any longer. I may seek out another property over the off season for the two of us and perhaps have him hunt one or the other. Like many of the Beasts here, I hunt very specificly to many details and have now found myself in a predicimant - even if I did kill a couple good bucks there this season. Still the same, I'm on your page, I hear what your saying. I guess I still believe that much of what it takes to become a more thorough hunter depends on personal experiences and trial & error, thus I choose to let him do just that. It's important for me that he is on good grounds to get experienced and learn some things and this property is just that type of place, however, there are those stubborn personal traits that are affecting the learning curve for him I'm afraid.

I kind of hear what BWH is saying.. I've got a hunch that some deer have a sixth sense about them. I've been in very well concealed stands where I barely have big enough holes to shoot through and with the wind perfect and me completely motionless and melted into the tree enough to avoid a silohuette, I've had on more than one occasion a wise old doe lift her head and stare up in my direction. In these instances that I'm thinking about now, I don't believe I was ever picked out, just surprised they had the hunch to look up and in my direction because of how well I was concealed and the wind being in my favor. A sixth sense I tell ya..

[rudy78]

Rudy, I hear ya on what your saying. The thing with my BIL is that he's very stubborn in the sense that despite all the discussions and planning we had ahead of time and the little helpful hints I drop very cautiously so as to not make him feel like I'm telling him that he's doing something wrong, he's very stubborn and says outloud that he's married to this particular stand and that if he's going to kill a deer, it will be out of this stand because of all the time he already put in it - he still doesn't get it. The last couple years I've been mentoring him in the way of hunting, but because I know how he is personally and how he takes things, I have to tread lightly - hope you catch my drift. Now, because I knew how he was choosing to hunt this land, I stuck to my other property about 10 miles away until the early part of November when I finally went in and killed two good bucks a few days apart from one another, and then again over gun season. The real issue for me is feeling like I'm no longer able to manage the way my property is hunted because I don't want to make him feel bad or cause him to lose interest in hunting any longer. I may seek out another property over the off season for the two of us and perhaps have him hunt one or the other. Like many of the Beasts here, I hunt very specificly to many details and have now found myself in a predicimant - even if I did kill a couple good bucks there this season. Still the same, I'm on your page, I hear what your saying. I guess I still believe that much of what it takes to become a more thorough hunter depends on personal experiences and trial & error, thus I choose to let him do just that. It's important for me that he is on good grounds to get experienced and learn some things and this property is just that type of place, however, there are those stubborn personal traits that are affecting the learning curve for him I'm afraid.

I kind of hear what BWH is saying.. I've got a hunch that some deer have a sixth sense about them. I've been in very well concealed stands where I barely have big enough holes to shoot through and with the wind perfect and me completely motionless and melted into the tree enough to avoid a silohuette, I've had on more than one occasion a wise old doe lift her head and stare up in my direction. In these instances that I'm thinking about now, I don't believe I was ever picked out, just surprised they had the hunch to look up and in my direction because of how well I was concealed and the wind being in my favor. A sixth sense I tell ya..

What you have with your BIL sounds very similar to what I have with my dad, I pretty much just gave up because it's my dad & I don't own the land we just have permission that we gained together to hunt it. If I owned the land or if he comes to land I'm leasing or so, then he has to play by my rules there or he won't get to come back to that spot with me, not saying I wont' hunt with him anymore or anything like that (not worth that) but I'm not going to let all my spots be ruined, that is why I gave up on that 1 piece of property we hunt together. There are lot of great things about hunting & ways to do, which I love so I don't want that to divide my relationship with my dad, but I also want to places to hunt where I can hunt like I like to hunt, like he has places he can do the same.

A big bucks 6th sense is different. I also think we tend to think they are looking at us sometimes more then they actually are. Example: I had a big buck come out into my food plot one night when I was hunting it, we (me & camera man) were sitting a 15ft double ladder stand that had been there 2 months or so, we had burlap on the bottom so it was decently hidden, but still it's a bid stand. He came out at 50 yards following a couple of does & ended up spending over 8 minutes out there looking around & stuff, then started to come straight at us from 100 yards out, he stopped several times and was looking all over (like he was the entire time). I felt like each time he did this he was looking straight at me, he came into about 40 yards and stopped again, I felt like he stared at me for a while, then turned and kind of trotted off. Well that is what I thought happened he 'saw' me. After looking back at the footage he didn't look or stare at me hardly at all, only really 1 time and he was doing that a lot all over not just at me. My perception was that he saw me that is why he got out of there, in reality the wind was swirling a little bit and I think he caught a tiny whiff of us and just decided he better head back into the cover more. Granted this example was in a food plot (where they are ultra cautious, although a well laid out 1 in cover) but still my perception of what happened and how much he was looking at me or saw me is actually different then what actually happened. I think we are hyper sensitive about this & think we always caused it by something we did wrong. I'm not saying big bucks don't have a '6th' sense of sorts, they do have that, but that won't change if the tree stand has been there for 5 minutes or 5 years, IMO.

[dan]

So, fast forward to last weekend when we had a touch of snow on the ground. I used this opportunity to go in and peek around in an effort to gain some intel before going into the late season bowhunt and Holiday gun hunt that starts on the 24th - 9th, and found my hunches were right. I found their core bedding areas from the summer had been abandoned and within one of the two santuary areas I had left alone all this time, which is about a 20 acre chunk of marsh grass, cattails, dogwood and tag alders, was literally almost unsanitary with all the fecies from the deer that had meshed bedroom with bathroom. I made a couple of last minute stand changes and on Monday morning and evening, both stands will be sat by me and hopefully I'll have a story to tell.

I agree with Backwoodshunter and had the same thoughts as him when I read the above quote... Going in a few days before the gun hunt begins in an area where deer know there being hunted and scouting and hanging stands is a good way NOT to shoot a mature buck... They are going to smell you were there, and may have been pushed out when you were scouting. If I had a hunch they were bedding there I would of slipped in close the day I was going to hunt. And I can tell you this, day two, and day three almost always result in less and smaller sightings. Why? cause the bridge has been burned, they smell you have been there... I do agree in some spots on private land a pre-hung stand is a great idea. But I would hang it months before I hunted it.

[BackWoodsHunter]

Good luck Sam! I am finding on some private pieces I hunt that pre-sets are killing my productivity. Its a pain to set a stand and tear it down each time a guy hunts especially if you are hunting close to home and want to sneak out after work but it seems to be most effective for me. Maybe the pre-sets were "too close" to the safe zones of these deer? I'm no bed hunting expert but it seems like the mentality behind Dan's approach, Dan correct me if I'm wrong, is that he sets up on a deer and kills it that night so they never know he is onto them. When I sit in a pre-set the deer usually check the stand before passing by it. On very few occasions I spot them first and catch them checking me out...good luck here in the late season sounds like there is still hope!

I have a hard time believing that all the deer know and care where your preset stands are hung and they are just 'waiting to find you in them'. If you are using a hang on stand with a decent amount of trimming (not cutting the woods down) and if you are 20 feet or higher or have decent cover to break up your stand/body, it is no different then hanging it the night before. The surprise factor isn't if the stand is there or not, it is if the buck knows he's being hunted there or not. Which has to do with entry to the stand and the conditions you are hunting, not if the stand in there in the spring/summer or if you just hung it.
Just about all the deer i kill are out of pre-hung sets & never once has a deer walked in staring at my tree, unless he caught me moving and when I'm up there it's not just me, but there is also a camera man on another stand that wasn't there, so now there are 2 stands with 2 people in and they don't pick me off.

All of my preset LADDER stands are known by the deer and they check them when they walk past. Most of my presets are over food plots, or access to areas where the deer browse and feed naturally. Before coming to feed they check the stands, I'm serious. Maybe they see me move, but they see me from a long ways away before I see them, so IMO they are onto something and they check me out. I have switched to a mobile set up in this area now. I usually hang the stand mid afternoon and climb in and hunt til dark, I slip out and come back the next day, I can tell you that EVERY SINGLE TIME we have snow, there are at least 2 sets of hoof prints that walk right the base of the tree and are so close the deer made contact with the lowest stick. They usually walk a circle around the tree as well. One time there was urine on the base of the tree even. The deer are constantly staying up to date on what is happening in their neighborhood. It is my opinion that this may result due to a lower deer density in my area than what some are used too. The deer I am hunting on 160acres tend to be the same core group of deer so they are always on alert to the changes in their area.

[BackWoodsHunter]

I should add the stands I get picked out in, I used to over hunt before I realized the key to seeing deer is moving around. The stands have been in these spots for a few years. I noticed the stands/blinds I set in July and never hunted out of til this year tend to be a lot more successful. They are a different form of mobile hunting I suppose.

[rudy78]

I should add the stands I get picked out in, I used to over hunt before I realized the key to seeing deer is moving around. The stands have been in these spots for a few years. I noticed the stands/blinds I set in July and never hunted out of til this year tend to be a lot more successful. They are a different form of mobile hunting I suppose.

That makes more sense if the stands you are talking about are lader stands on field edges that have been over-hunted for years. My pre-hung sets are all hung in late spring early summer, so I guess that's what I was assuming was meant by pre-hung stands.

[ Post made via Palm ]

[Brandon]

I should add the stands I get picked out in, I used to over hunt before I realized the key to seeing deer is moving around. The stands have been in these spots for a few years. I noticed the stands/blinds I set in July and never hunted out of til this year tend to be a lot more successful. They are a different form of mobile hunting I suppose.

That makes more sense if the stands you are talking about are lader stands on field edges that have been over-hunted for years. My pre-hung sets are all hung in late spring early summer, so I guess that's what I was assuming was meant by pre-hung stands.

[ Post made via Palm ]

Rudy, when speaking bedding Im sure you, me, or him would not kill a mature buck If we stomped around the bedding marsh with crap and beds everywhere... then hung stands? That pretty much goes against all basic beast tactics. Not saying it couldnt work, but saying the odds go waaaaaaaaaaaay down.

If you know where a buck is bedding... scount it off season, and dont go into it EVER until your ready for a kill and have PERFECT conditions.

EFF presets... they are expensive and a ton of work! I have a few for rut funnels... but not when hunting where I beleive a mature buck lives.

Im no expert, but I see all kinds of problems in Sams story.... but maybe Im the ones whose wrong.... good discusion non the less.

[BackWoodsHunter]

I should add the stands I get picked out in, I used to over hunt before I realized the key to seeing deer is moving around. The stands have been in these spots for a few years. I noticed the stands/blinds I set in July and never hunted out of til this year tend to be a lot more successful. They are a different form of mobile hunting I suppose.

That makes more sense if the stands you are talking about are lader stands on field edges that have been over-hunted for years. My pre-hung sets are all hung in late spring early summer, so I guess that's what I was assuming was meant by pre-hung stands.

[ Post made via Palm ]

Rudy, when speaking bedding Im sure you, me, or him would not kill a mature buck If we stomped around the bedding marsh with crap and beds everywhere... then hung stands? That pretty much goes against all basic beast tactics. Not saying it couldnt work, but saying the odds go waaaaaaaaaaaay down.

If you know where a buck is bedding... scount it off season, and dont go into it EVER until your ready for a kill and have PERFECT conditions.

EFF presets... they are expensive and a ton of work! I have a few for rut funnels... but not when hunting where I beleive a mature buck lives.

Im no expert, but I see all kinds of problems in Sams story.... but maybe Im the ones whose wrong.... good discusion non the less.

The beast tactics surely do say that but I think above and beyond its common sense. If I find what I believe to be a truly mature buck bed in the off season no way in heII am I hanging a pre-set stand anywhere near it, even if it is july. This is the whole 6th sense thing, that bed is going to go cold and even if a new buck moves in I'd think he would be able to determine what doesn't belong. That is how they get to be old. I'm not one to talk "mature bucks" because quite honestly I don't target mature bucks. I've seen plenty of 2.5yr old deer with racks that greatly meet my standards. Thats discussion for a different thread I suppose. The long and short of it is that I don't see a very high success rate in finding a good buck bedding area, and hanging a pre-set in its vicinity whether its pre-season or off season or in season. If I am personally hunting right over a bed its the same day I've hung the stand and then again the morning after if I am not in the mood to pull my stand and pack up in the dark the night I hung it.

[Matt3]

Just wanted to pull this from the dead as I found it was a great read/discussion and think a lot of new members can learn something from it.

I was also wondering if Sam has changed any of his techniques on the property or planning to this fall?

Stanley, how about you? Have you found any of the tactics on the beast able to be modified to fit your style of hunting?

[ Post made via iPod ]

[Sam Ubl]

This discussion, combined with so many more, has added elements to my fundamental approach that have definitely heightened the level of detail by which I strategize before entering the deer woods today. Stand placement, stand height, entrance/exit routes to and from the stand, thermals and overall saving time, money and energy on scent control by finally coming to terms with my previous misconception of scent control have all played significant hands in the why's, when's and where's of my hunting. The inputs shared throughout this particular discussion have hit on countless nuggets of gold that I keep in my pocket and put to use as best I can at this point in my hunting career. I admit I've battled the stubborn ego of learning on my own since a very early age.

As a young teenager, I denied the invitation to take guitar lessons. I thought I could learn on my own and eventually be the one giving lessons.. I got to a certain point I could make some music, but the time it took to get to the point versus where I could have been had I taken the lessons, well, I can't get that time back. Hunting can be very similar to this frame of mind. In some instances, learning on your own can have benefits. It allows you to learn through trial and error, which ultimately teaches you the details behind the "why not's" and "why that's" when it comes to deer hunting. Discussions like this brings so many minds together full of experiences all of their own, and if you page through the reply's on this topic alone, hardly anyone holds back from giving the reasons behind their inputs - there's no $0.02 here, it's pure gold. My point is I'd have been a fool to let ego get in the way of accepting the little gold nuggets offered here and not put them to use

Today, my confidence to my approach is tenfold what it used to be with a bow in my hand. As a musky fisherman, I don't waste time gambling on luck or chance - I fish strictly based on logic I believe in, which makes hours without seeing a fish go by way too fast because I'm having fun knowing it could be any cast. I've been bowhunting now for 17 years, but in the last couple years I've gotten closer to big bucks on a more consistent basis than ever before. Confidence is key, and so is patience. This discussion has given me the confidence to move in closer to the real sanctuaries - buck beds, and patience reminds me that I'm in the right spot given the conditions and time of day, so if he doesn't show, he simply wasn't there that evening. In the mornings, if he doesn't show, than all it tells me is I've got work to do - I have to find where else he's bedding and why.

Last year I said to with leaving the land I have to hunt to be untouched and I got my feet wet. I became more mobile, I got creative, and I got close to a couple bedding areas I learned from initially dedicating some time to an observation stand and much, MUCH more scouting over the off-season. The end result, blood on my hands and two new racks on my wall since 2010 when I first started this topic.

A lot of words, but I've hardly posted in over a year, so I guess I laid it on ya. Good hunting to all!

[Brandon]

great post Sam.


hopefully you can post more than once a year now... we value your opinion.

we are all stubborn, but it doesnt matter... we all love deer hunting.. big buck hunting... and especially talking about it!

thanks!