For all of the experienced hunters, take a look at some of these links. I have learned a lot during this exercise.
As you probably know, successful deer hunting involves:
- Gun safety
- Being in the right spot at the right time
- Not spooking the deer by sight, sound or scent
- Accurate shooting with the right shot placement
- Proper retrieval techniques for a shot deer
I already sent a few links regarding gun safety. This is really important! A fun hunting weekend can turn into a real
family tragedy in an instant. It happens
every year.
Being at the right spot at the right time
Kit and I will try to get you in the right place at the
right time. Lots of luck is
involved. For example, last year,
Sterling and I hunted the same spot on Saturday morning, Saturday evening, and
Sunday morning, and did not see a single deer.
On Sunday evening (just about half an hour after Sterling left to drive
back to Tulsa), I got a (very nice 8 point buck) deer in the exact same place we had been hunting that
weekend. It was the only deer I saw for
the first 4 or 5 days of the hunt.
Spooking deer by sight
Not spooking the deer by sight involves:
- Wearing camo if possible (but you don’t have to go overboard because the blind will help disguise you and we will be hunting with rifles which have a MUCH longer range than bow and arrow).
- Hunting from a blind
- Sitting still in the blind (deer are excellent at seeing movement)
- Making slow movements if necessary
While hunting in an exposed blind such as a tree stand, even if a deer doesn't see you move it will probably notice that you weren't there the last time it passed by your location. In these situations a deer will stare at you without blinking. It is looking for anything that will indicate you are a danger rather than part of the tree or landscape. if this happens, DON'T MOVE! If you are wearing a cap (which I recommend) then slowly lower your head so that the bill of the cap covers most of your eyes. A set of blinking eyes is a dead giveaway to a deer. I always squint my eyes in order to cover up most of the white and the shape of my eyes. Squinting your eyes also helps you to not blinks as much because it slows down evaporation of your eye's moisture. Then, as difficult as it can be when you see a deer, control your breathing. I can always feel my heart start to race when I see a deer, but the last thing you want is a giant cloud of steam escaping from your mouth as you breath. But don't stop breathing either because eventually you will have to breath and if you hold your breath, you will eventually have to breath, and breath harder after holding your breath. Instead, you should try to intentionally breath slowly and try to direct your steam downward. It is hard to do sometimes.
Once you have been spotted as a mysterious shape by a deer, a deer will sometimes look down and pretend to eat. Don't be fooled by this tactic because sometimes, in a flash, the deer will look right back at you to see if you have moved. Bucks will sometimes look right at you and stomp their front hoof on the ground in an attempt scare you into making a movement. Be patient because they will eventually become comfortable with your presence and resume walking and eating. That is when you MAY be safe to raise your gun for the shot.
When is it OK to raise your gun? The following quote comes from this website:
"With the head stationary, a deer can see a 300-degree band
around him. A slight turn of the head either way reveals the other 60 degrees!
Compare that to the small point of focus you have in your 120-degree field of
view.
But there are some trade-offs. The visual acuity of the
whitetail is surprisingly poor. In fact, they have about 20/40 vision. Plus,
deer only have depth perception for that 60-degree area where their vision from
both eyes overlaps in the front of them. While they may be terrific at picking
up your movement anywhere around them, they can’t really focus on you unless
their nose is pointed at you so they can see you with both eyes."
This means that you have to wait for a deer to be looking the other way before you can raise your rifle. Several times I have watched a deer enter my field of vision and leave without ever raising my rifle. However, if you are patient and if there is plenty of food for it to eat (corn that we will throw down) then it will wander around your area eating and eventually look away. THAT is when you can safely raise your gun. Sometimes you have to wait for its head to pass behind a small tree or shrub. Take advantage of every chance you get to raise your rifle because you may not get another one.
Spooking deer by scent
Not spooking deer by scent involves:
- Not washing hunting clothes in scented laundry detergent or drying with scented dryer sheets (Wal-Mart and hunting stores sell unscented laundry detergent for hunters – it can’t hurt)
- Not using scented soap, shampoo, perfume, body spray, aftershave, etc. the day you arrive at camp and while in camp
- Not having B.O.
- Some hunters (like me) try not to wear hunting clothes in camp where they might pick up aromas of food or campfire
- We will have a hunter’s deodorizer spray in camp for all to use on their outer layer before each hunt.
Spooking deer by sound
Not spooking by sound involves:
- Not wearing noisy clothes
- Parking far from the blind
- Walking quietly to the blind
- Sitting quietly in the blind
- When a deer is spotted, getting into shooting position quietly
- Clicking the safety off quietly
Spooking the hunter by sound? Yes. The area we will be hunting will be covered with leaves and THICK. In this environment, squirrels sound A LOT like deer. ABS - You should Always Be Scanning the area by moving your head left to right, moving your eyes instead of your head when you can. But sometimes your head may be turned to the far left and you hear a noise to the far right. There is a tendency to want to quickly turn your head when you hear a noise in the woods. DON'T DO IT! In time you will learn to fight that temptation and complete your scan until you slowly return to where you heard the sound. If it was a deer that you heard then it will most likely still be there when you complete you scan, and you moved slowly to reduce detection. If it wasn't a deer, then by jerking your head quickly to check out the sound you may have given your position away to an actual deer that you haven't yet seen. If you are detected, sometimes they will snort and run. In this case you will be saddened to hear it go. Other times they will simply walk in the other direction never to be seen again, and you will wonder why you didn't see any deer that day.
Also, after hours of sitting in a blind, you may begin to believe that you can accurately distinguish between a squirrel sound and a deer sound. Until you have eyes on the squirrel, don't kid yourself. Sometimes you will NEVER hear the deer, even when you are looking right at it. Sometime they sound just like squirrels, making the same sound as their hooves move through the dried leaves. Other time they sound like bulldozers crashing through the leaves. You should never assume that a sound is anything but a deer, unless you have eyes on the squirrel.
Final note on this topic. Don't assume that because you made a lot of noise getting to your blind, climbing a tree, etc, that there couldn't possibly be a deer nearby. Last year I stomped through the leaves to find a place to put my stool and hunt. I didn't like my first location so I picked everything up and moved over about 15 yards in order to have better shooting lanes. After making all that noise of locating two times I sat quietly and waited. In less than 5 minutes (more like two minutes) I heard what I thought was a squirrel. So I readied my rifle just in case, and sure enough a buck walked out of the bushes. It couldn't see or smell me, and the moise I was making wasn't enough to spook it. When I quieted down a bit, the deer continued his trek into my shooting lane.
Accurate shooting with the right shot placement
Accurate rifle shooting is a skill that can be developed and
practiced. We will have a rifle for you
to use, and we will sight it in before you arrive, but you will not have an
opportunity to practice with it before the Saturday morning hunt. At lunch on Saturday, you will probably have
an opportunity to practice rifle shooting with a .22 rifle with scope. Sterling was very accurate with the .22 last
year. Chris may benefit from some rifle
practice before coming to deer camp.
Most shooting ranges rent rifles.
There are probably videos online about accurate rifle shooting
techniques – mostly involving proper gun positioning and grip, proper support,
proper breathing, and proper squeezing of the trigger hand.
Accurate shooting is an important part of the equation – and
so is shot placement, i.e. where exactly to shoot a deer. For beginner hunters, it is always best to
not try to shoot a moving target. The
deer we will see (hopefully) will usually be walking or grazing. If the deer is walking, wait for the deer to
stop in order to get an accurate shot.
Sometimes, a low whistle or grunt will get the deer to stop walking –
but it will probably look right at you!
If the deer is grazing, you may have to wait for the deer to lift its
head out of the way (or if the head is not in the way, you may have to wait for
the deer to resume grazing so it will not see you move). The recommended shots are when the deer is
broadside, or quartering away or quartering toward. These videos and web sites describe shot
placement for these various scenarios:
There is a slightly different shot placement for rifle
hunters versus bow hunters (because bow hunters want to avoid hitting
bone). If you watch any bow hunting
videos, take that into consideration.
I LOVED that last video. I learned a lot.
Who gets a black eye hunting? I have. While you are practicing your shooting skills you will notice that there is a point where your eye is the perfect distance away from the scope and you can see the entire circle within the scope. This is called the sight picture. If your eyes is too far away from the scope, then the sight picture shrinks and starts to move around as you move your head. See the graphic below.
Being too close to the scope can be misleading because you will get almost a full sight picture, though the edges may be blurry. If you are too close to the scope, especially with a 30-06, you will likely return from that hunt with a nice new shiner. In teh video below, though the girl doesn't have her eye too close to the scope, because she didn't have the rifle positioned properly (and her idiot dad stood behind her to keep her body from moving away from the scope) she got popped by the scope.
Take it from somebody who has enjoyed two black eyes from a scope, it hurts A LOT. This is something that you don't learn from shooting a .22 because it doesn't kick.
Just remember, even if your eyes is the proper distance from teh scope, if you don't have the gun properly seated against your shoulder, not only will the kick hurt your shoulder, but the scope can damage your eye.
Proper
retrieval techniques for a shot deer
Even if you do everything else right, it is possible to
“lose” a deer by not correctly retrieving it.
If you are lucky, the deer will fall down and die within sight. But this has not been my experience -- even
with heart/lung shots. A wounded deer
will get the hell out of there, by taking off at breakneck speed through the
brush. The brush where we are hunting is
very, very thick.
If all is quiet and still after a shot, a seriously-wounded
deer will likely bed down after it has run out of danger -- IF it feels like it
is NOT being pursued. Because of this
natural tendency, the best practice is to wait at least 30 minutes after a shot
to give the deer a chance to bleed out wherever it may be. But, if the deer feels like it is being
pursued before it bleeds out, it may run a long, long way before dying. It is amazing how effectively a deer (even a
dead deer) blends into the surroundings.
If the deer runs more than 100 yards in this brushy area, your odds of
finding it substantially decrease.
So, after a shot, while staying still and quiet, take a
mental picture of the exact place where you shot your deer, note the deer’s
reaction and the exact place where the deer left your line of sight, and listen
for the sounds of your deer crashing through the brush (but often this is
confusing because there may be other deer in the vicinity, all
scattering). Then, wait for the deer to
die before heading off to search for it.
Here are some articles that describe this process:
Kit and I will have tracking tape with us. Sometimes it is necessary to call for extra
help in tracking – especially if it
starts getting dark or if it starts to rain.
Flashlights are imperative for evening hunts.
Don't assume that you are done hunting after your shoot a deer. Reload the gun and sit quietly. Another deer could be spooked into your area or the shot deer may circle around, giving you a chance for a second shot.
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