DOE BLEATS
I don't hear well and I'm forced to wear glasses when I hunt. And since poor eyesight and poor hearing are not much of an asset when you're trying to call up wary whitetails, my experience with calling deer has been mixed. Most of the bucks I've rattled in to my setups have spotted me before I could get in position for a shot. A few times, I've had a buck respond negatively to a deep, challenging buck grunt. But I've never had a deer spook at a doe bleat. Sometimes bucks pay no attention to me, but occasionally they'll turn and come in to investigate. I'm never afraid to use a doe bleat at a deer in most situations.

REMOTE FIELDS -- A POACHER'S PARADISE
I've spent countless pre-season hours glassing mature bucks in remote fields. I recall a big buck one year that was so predictable I felt like tagging him was going to be almost unfair. Unfortunately, this buck mysteriously disappeared just before the early part of archery season. I used to rationalize this yearly occurrence by telling myself that the acorns were dropping on the wooded ridges and that's why the bucks would leave the evening bottom fields. To some extent, I still believe this to be true. However, I've also come to believe that poaching is a real problem in some areas, and remote fields are a magnet for illegal activity.

Poachers, like all criminals, don't like witnesses. A nearby house or dwelling does much to deter illegal hunting. It's kind of like having an ADT sticker in your front yard -- even if you don't have the alarm system in your house, the sticker will sometimes deter the crook.

So what if a remote field you hunt is accessible or bordered by a public road without any dwelling in sight? My strategy has been to obstruct the view. A poacher can't kill a deer he can't see. One option is to stack large round hay bales along the perimeter or road border. I've also planted fast-growing pine trees or, at a minimum, let the first 40 or 50 feet of the field edge grow up with native vegetation.

Access is also important to these scoundrels. I've gone so far as to erect a board fence with permanent pipe gates to a field entrance, even on property I don't own (with the landowner's permission, of course), just to make field access more difficult.

Obstructing the view and limiting access are paramount to reducing this problem.

DECOYS
When deer decoys became popular a few years back, I had to try one. I first experimented with a doe decoy saturated with estrous deer lure. My initial experience was negative, and I quickly wrote this off as a ploy not useful in the areas I hunt.

page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5