AlphaTrilogy.com

26 July 2007

Treestand and Deer Hunting Tips for the Mentally Challenged

Posted by Darrell under: Whitetail Deer; Rantings Of An Outdoorsman .

I read a post over at Big Buck Zone  about a guy that was hunting on public land and walked in to find someone hunting out of his stand. I’ve heard lots of similar stories and thought I’d share my own.

Several years ago I hunted during whitetail rifle season at a large membership club. This place was over 6,000 acres and had about 200 hunters during rifle season. I spent the months before opening day scouting and further learning the lay of the land and the resident deer habits. About 4 weeks before season opened I put up a stand in the ‘perfect’ location.

The evening before opening morning I worked my way in to the stand to make sure it was OK and that no one else had set up anywhere close. I was relieved to find that my stand was Ok and that there was deer sign everywhere! I was so excited about opening morning that I couldn’t sleep.

At about 4:30 am I worked my way into my ‘perfect’ stand. Boy, was I excited. I dozed in the stand for about an hour - waiting for first light and the deer to begin streaming in. Just about 15 minutes before first light I began smelling some really sweet smoke. Yet, look as I might I couldn’t see anything. The smoke began to intensify. I actually had to stifle coughs.

I sat there for fifteen minutes completely baffled. It smelled like the Hershey bar in my pack was on fire, yet I couldn’t see anything. As daylight finally began to break I noticed movement in a tree not 10 feet directly in front of me. As I focused on that spot, I slowly began to make out the image of a hunter in full camo. This was rifle season, mind you, and orange is the law. This guy apparently didn’t care. He was wearing full camo and even had his face painted.

He was looking right at me AND his gun was laying across his lap - pointed directly at me. Now, I’m not talking about a distance of 10 yards. He was within 10 FEET of me, in a tree stand (fixed stand, not a climber) - just glaring at me. My initial thought was that he must have somehow come in while I was sleeping and set up his stand, but that didn’t even seem possible. Yet, I had checked the area not 10 hours before and his stand was not present.

Finally, after rolling a cigarette (?) and lighting it, he asked me what the hell I was doing. This was all happening right at first light of opening day - the period most hunters find themselves dreaming about for the whole year prior. I told him that I’d set up my treestand in that spot 4 weeks ago and that I’d climbed up it at 4:30 that very morning.

He said he’d set up his stand at 3:30 that morning and had been sitting in ever since. “Didn’t you see me climbing my stand at 4:30?”, I asked him. “Sure” he said. “Why didn’t you say something then?”, I asked. “Didn’t want to spook the deer”, he said. “What about spooking them now?”, I asked (remeber we were 10 feet from each other at eye level 15 feet up seperate trees and his gun was pointed at me). “Don’t care about it now ’cause I’m fixin to leave”, he told me. “Didn’t you see my tree stand before setting yours up?”, I asked. “Yep, I did - but hows I to know if you’d be in this mornin or not?” he shrugged.

This whole encounter and his subsequent leaving took about 1 hour. The 1 hour that every hunter looks forward to for the entire year. I was sick. I couldn’t figure out which of us was the bigger moron.  Yet, I decided to stick it out in that stand. Did I forget to mention that he stopped and took a leak (about 50 yards from my stand) on his way out?

Anyway, about 2 hours later I heard something walking my way. My heart began to pick up its pace. And then… it relaxed. Something wasn’t right. Sure enough, two hunters walked right under my stand. They stopped about 2o yards away, sat down, started talking and lit up their own ’sweet’ smokes.

“What kind of hunting are you boys doing?”, I found myself asking. Both those guys looked like a ghost had just spoke. One of them fell right off the log he was sitting on. “Uh, we’s just lookin for Robbie. He sed he’d be huntin over in this area” the more literate of the two informed me. “Robbie dun left on out of here” I politely told him.

“Uhh, Ok” the most literate one said as they high-tailed it out of there. Of course the least-literate one spilled the jar of pickled eggs he had just opened. You ever smell pickled eggs in the deer woods? One wouldn’t think it’d be a big deer attractant. Did I mention that neither of these Einsteins were wearing hunter orange, either?

One hour later I shot a doe from that stand. For some odd reason I considered myself really, really fortunate to have even seen one.

It seems odd that it needs to be said, but I’ll go ahead and give the following tips:

1. If you see someone else’s deer stand, don’t set yours up 10 feet away - chances are they’ll come back and hunt it if they took the time to set it up in the first place
2. Deer can smell pickled eggs and cigarette (and even pot) smoke
3. I’d rather have someone spook the deer away at 3:30 am when I can’t shoot them, then at 6:45 am when I can.
4. Wear orange during rifle season. Otherwise, somebody might shoot you. I’m going out on a limb here, but my guess is that if you did get shot it would be by one of your fellow non-orange wearing bozos.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will readily admit that I may not have included everything I had to say to both Robbie and his bozo friends. I did not include this because 1) I’m a lot nicer guy now and 2) I want to keep this blog family friendly.

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