Hunting For Deer

Although it’s been awhile, one deer hunter can still remember how seductive the thought of chasing whitetails with a bow and arrow was as a young boy. The very idea of it consumed him and he often fantasized about loosing himself in some remote corner of a lonely forest. Once there, he would partake in the ultimate chess-match with a wise-old, big-timber buck. His antlers unlike anything the young hunter had ever beheld; dark, heavy, wide and tall. A few clever moves and one well placed arrow was all it would take….and he would forever be his.

Game cameras can make all the difference when it comes to building your confidence. Due to the terrain, you will most likely not see the buck you shoot prior to actually drawing back on him. Let your camera be your eyes. Hunter shown wearing Lost Camo.

Eventually, he sought to turn that dream into reality. So like any enthusiastic teenager, he began to read and scrutinize everything he could get his hands on pertaining to bowhunting this elusive creature. He wanted to understand the whitetail buck, get inside its head and know what it was thinking before it was even thinking it. He wanted to stand in that lonely forest for real, and watch his arrow as it zipped ominously through the cool autumn air. He wanted nothing more than to fulfill his dream of harvesting a “Mountain Buck”. Now, some 20 years later, he has learned one cold hard truth….be careful what you wish for.

It is truly hard to put into literature exactly what it’s like trying to tag on one of these phantoms. These are various lessons that the deer hunter has learned in the past 20 years while hunting mountain bucks. With any luck, those who’ve never chased whitetails in a mountain setting will be entertained by the deer hunter’s exploits. And those who have, well, you understand that as hard as initial success is to come by, the real challenge is finding a way to achieve it again, and again. Hopefully, somewhere in the midst of the following truisms, you will discover the key to help you do just that.

Essential Mountain Buck Gear List

With so many products promising to give you the edge you need, it can be hard figuring out which ones actually deliver on that vow. Adding to the uncertainty, is the back and forth promotion by high pro-file “celebrity” hunters; advocating one item this year and a different one the next. This section isn’t about promotion. It’s about sharing with you the gear hunters deem vital to their success as mountain bowhunters.

Seeing is Not Believing

Unlike most parts of the country, you won’t have the luxury of long-range observations. In fact, the very deer you’re after could pass by as little as 50 yards away and you would be none the wiser. Steep ridges and points, combined with heavy thickets make it hard to get a good look at anything that isn’t setting right in your lap. That can be tough, mentally, for the aspiring big-woods bowhunter.

When you aren’t seeing much action do you stay or do you go? Honestly, the best advice is to utilize as many trail cameras as possible, and get to know your area intimately. Those two factors will give you the confidence to stay on stand even though you haven’t actually seen a buck with your own eyes. Looking back over the bucks the deer hunter taken, each one was shot the very first time he laid eyes on them. Think about that.

Camo Everything

It may not be “in vogue” to put camo on your mug. However in mountain country, bucks will easily spot your moon-pie face unless it is properly covered.  If you dislike head nets, then face paint is the way to go. Also, don’t neglect your hands; they are just as important. Hunter shown wearing Lost Camo.

When a buck walks by your treestand in hill country, he is just as likely to be eye level with you as he is to be 15 feet under you. Mountain Bucks can approach from any direction and finding a way to put them underfoot, every time, is an art hard to master. As a result, it is crucial to pick a camo pattern that merges with the terrain. More importantly, the overall color scheme must match a multitude of conditions. For example, since a buck can look up at you, down at you, and side-hill at you, try to choose a color-tone that blends well with all of those situations. Most tend to favor those camo patterns utilizing a lighter, more natural feel, with browns and grays being the dominant color.

Forget the Wind

Naturally, when you here someone say “just hunt the wind”, you have to laugh because they have no idea what its like to do that in the Eastern mountains. Honestly, when you hang a treestand, wind direction is the last thing you consider. And you never climb out of a treestand if it suddenly shifts directions. If you did, you would spend very little time actually deer hunting. As mentioned earlier, bucks can come at you from any direction. Setting up with a favorable wind to cover all of the possibilities is next to impossible.

Good Camo

“Good” means a pattern that’s effective when viewed from a variety of angles; not just straight up. As mentioned earlier, if a buck notices you, he will likely be looking downhill or at you from the side. Sometimes he may be very close to eye-level. Consequently, not only must you blend with the very tree you’re hiding in, but the ground behind you as well. That may sound odd, especially to a flatlander, but much of the terrain is such that you’re really only above an approaching deer’s line of sight on one side of the tree.

Of those patterns the mountain hunter has tried, he has found that Lost Camo best matches most of the conditions he finds himself in. With its neutral color tones, made up of light browns and grays, he can disappear in a tree or on the ground at the same time….which is exactly what you need to do. Check out the latest offering, Lost Camo, at http://www.lostcamo.com.

Sure, you can easily hunt atop the main ridges where the wind is constant; but many have played that game. They have found that wise old bucks often avoid such easily accessed areas like the plague because most hunting pressure originates there. Therefore, if you are going to hunt where the deer are, you have to hunt where the crowds are few and the wind most often swirls.

Now before you write this deer hunter off as crazy, he does have a plan. It is simply a matter of suppressing your human scent to the point that you are no longer perceived as a threat.

The Kiss of Death

Waiting until the pre-season to do your scouting is worthless. There are no food plots to monitor from afar, therefore piecing together an early season travel pattern is impractical. Not only will scouting at this time put most mature bucks on high alert, but it will also deceive you because you will be hanging treestands based on information that is going to change in a few short weeks. For example, when natural cover and food sources change so will travel patterns. Scouting in the post-season will allow you to gather the most pertinent information regarding treestand placement.

Does are Key

Although you may have seen a television hunter or two get busted while wearing charcoal impregnated clothing, don’t doubt the effectiveness of such garments.  Watch closely, most of these celebrity hunters can be seen wearing their hunting clothes in the lodge during morning breakfast, in the truck heading to the stand, and even into town to pick up supplies. While that may satisfy the advertising exec’s it greatly diminishes the overall effectiveness of the suit. Hunter shown wearing Lost Camo.

For years deer hunters have tried to fit a square peg in a round hole. What that means, is that they would read the latest “how-to” strategy in a hunting book or some other means of informative literature or media and then immediately try it out for themselves. The only problem was that many of techniques people read about were written by guys that had never hunted in a mountain setting. To their credit the theories and tactics are convincing and valid, but they did little to help you fill more tags. The problem was that there were too many variables. You see, in the places mountaineers hunt, there are no well defined bedding or feeding areas. Deer come and go mostly at random because their choices in both are almost limitless.

Oak trees don’t produce acorns year after year, and deciphering which heavy thicket is being used on the day you plan to hunt can be a nightmare; to say the least. It took a long time, but one hunter finally decided to build his strategies around the one universal truth regarding whitetail bucks….the desire to breed. Once he started concentrating on that, his success rate increased as well as his shot opportunities.

The Inevitable

One thing you can count on is bumping deer on the way to your treestand. No matter how hard you try to ensure that your entry and exit routes are as low-key as possible, you still seem to run into deer when traveling to and fro. Some deer hunters used to think that the encounters were simply a result of haphazard bedding and feeding locations. Unfortunately, most hunters have no idea what to do about it. Then guys started to understand that most of these locations (if viewed from above) were spread out very similar to a shotgun pattern. Meaning, the closer you get to the center, the more concentrated things become. As it turned out, the “fringes” of the shotgun pattern was where one hunter was experiencing most of his encounters. Lucky for him, he wasn’t venturing close enough to the “center” of the pattern to completely blow his setups.

If your hunting big-timber and you find yourself frequently bumping deer, you might want to rethink your treestand location. Chances are probably good you’re closer to the center than you think. Initially, hunt the outside perimeter of the pattern until you feel it is time to move closer. This will usually be around the time breeding has begun; after the chase phase has ended.