Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Bowhunting tips for early season success
With our archery season on whitetail deer on the near horizon and slated to open here in Wildlife Management Units (WMU) 5C and 5D on Sept. 16, it’s high time for serious bowhunters to visit their favorite whitetail haunts and perform some scouting chores. Like most hunters, I enjoy spending time exploring our local woodlots and scouting gives me an excuse to do just that. After a few such forays, even on unfamiliar properties, I’ll get a pretty fair sense of where I want to be when the sun rises on opening day.
Actually, if you’ve planned ahead, much of your pre-season scouting took place throughout last year’s season when noting rubs, scrapes, tracks, scat and other evidence of whitetail activity, much of which will likely still be valid heading into our upcoming season.
Typically, bowhunters like to identify bedding areas and preferred feeding areas like soybean, cornfields, fruit trees, acorns, and other mast droppings. They’ll then determine the whitetail’s favored travel routes among these areas, factoring topographical and structural features into the mix before selecting likely trees in which to hang their stands. It’s surprising how many hunters don’t take the time to sit in the woods at dawn and dusk in order to track deer movements first hand prior to the season opener.
By the same token, if your budget affords you to purchase and hang a few trail cameras, you’ll stay ahead of the game. These little technological marvels can save you a lot of scouting time and effort as well, snapping photos of the deer that inhabit your hunting zones along with a time code that tells you precisely when the animal passed through.
It’s prudent to stop scouting your location at least a week before the season opens while retrieving all trail camera data immediately prior to the season opener. If you’re hanging tree stands, cutting shooting lanes, and marking distances with all the commotion these activities entail, get it done as early as possible. When scouting or hunting, always apply a masking scent. Fox and raccoon scents are best. Fox would be the choice if you’re staying on the ground, raccoon if you’re climbing into trees.
Wear clean rubber boots. Leather boots or cloth sneakers can track human odor all over the place. Rubber boots, especially those treated with scent removers or masking scents, will help your visits to the woods stay relatively undetected. Wear clean, unscented clothes. At the very least, don’t throw your scouting or hunting clothes into the dryer with scented sheets of static-guard, fabric softener or other such products. Ultra-cautious hunters wash their hunting clothes with baking powder, then store them in a plastic bag with earthscented wafers or other scent suppressing products in the weeks leading up to opening day. During hunting season, you should also bathe without applying scented soaps, aftershaves or colognes. A smart buck lives and dies by his nose. Your job as a bowhunter is to see that the latter happens.
Be settled in your stand an hour before legal shooting light. I know some guys that carry this to extremes. Maybe it’s early season anxiety, but some bowhunters like to be on stand two hours or more before first light. They want to give the woods plenty of time to settle down after hiking to their stand, but in most cases an hour will suffice. Less than that and you’re likely to end up spooking the deer you would have otherwise seen at sun-up.
Don’t quit early. For some folks, that opening day adrenaline burns off quicker than the morning dew. They get too bored or too antsy after an hour and decide to bag it for the day or go for a walk in the woods while telling themselves they’re “still hunting.” Early season deer that haven’t yet been alerted to the threat of bowhunters often take their sweet old time strolling back to their beds after feeding all night. If you don’t stay on stand until at least 10:00 a.m. those first few days, you could be missing out on some excellent shooting opportunities.
Set up early in afternoon stands. By the same token, unwary deer tend to move to feeding areas earlier in the day. This will change as the season wears on, but adding an hour or two onto the front end of an afternoon’s hunt during that first week can pay off in some venison dividends. Be flexible. Have a plan B, C and D. Don’t doggedly stick with a stand where you’re not seeing deer or where other hunters have intruded and already alerted those trophy bucks that hunting season is afoot.
If you’ve scouted thoroughly you should have at least three or four early season stands set up on different properties or at least at significant distances from each other. Having scouted these areas, you’ll also have determined if they will best serve as evening or morning stands. The fewer stand locations you have planned out in the preseason, the fewer options you’ll have after opening day.
Use calls sparingly. Yes, it’s true deer are vocal, but I’ve heard some early season hunters grunt, bleat, and antler-rattle their brains out on opening day, even when there were no deer in sight. No doubt they were doing themselves more harm than good (although the judicious use of doe and fawn calls can be very effective in the early season). I can remember one season when I grunted a young six-point in on opening day. I suspect he responded out of curiosity as much as anything else. Mature bucks may also respond out of curiosity in the early going, but you’re more likely to put them on their guard. Calls in the early season, particularly doe and fawn bleats, can be most effective when used sparingly to coax sighted animals into range.
“Back in the day” I was
partial to using hanging and climbing stands at elevations of between twenty to thirty feet off the ground. Now, as a slightly less limber senior citizen, ladder stands of fifteen or twenty feet are my preference. Early season deer that don’t see you or smell you will follow their patterns longer, and hunting above their line of sight helps accomplish this. Of course, height is a relative thing when you’re hunting hilly or mountainous terrain. You can be thirty feet off the ground and still be eye level with a deer ten yards away. Just make sure you’re not backlit and casting obvious shadows across terrain where you expect deer to appear. Hang your stand with these things in mind.
Remember, the longer you can keep the deer you’re hunting undisturbed and unsuspecting, the better your chances for early season success. If your woods become contaminated with the residue of careless hunting (your own or other hunters’) alerted deer will respond accordingly and that early season window of opportunity will squeeze shut. Don’t expect it to pop open again until the rut kicks in when November rolls around.
BACKYARD BUCKS EVENT
Helping to usher in our hunting seasons, once again, are the folks at Backyard Bucks, the Chester County Chapter of Whitetails Unlimited, when they host their 8th Annual fundraising event on September 9th at the Wagontown Fire Hall, 412 West Kings Highway in Wagontown. Doors open at 4:00 p.m. followed by games of chance, raffles, auctions and more with buffet dinner at 6:00 p.m. Tickets for the event are $40 single and $30 for spouse and kids under 15. A ticket purchase also includes a year-long Whitetails Unlimited membership. The event helps raise funds in support of educational programs, wildlife habitat enhancement and acquisition, and the preservation of the hunting tradition and shooting sports for future generations. All ticket sales are in advance and will not be sold at the door. For more info contact Art Lyle at 484-643-6132, Andy White at 610-505-6676, WTU National Headquarters at 800-274-5471or online at http://www.whitetailsunlimited.com.