Keeping It Mobile
It’s really easy to get bogged down in today’s busy lifestyles and time is more than just a premium for most as work duties, family, and hobbies seem to chomp away at every second of your day. This reflects in many hunters regimen as they create time for some basic scouting and hang a treestand with the hopes of, more or less, getting lucky. You can usually decipher which hunters these are by the tone in their voice or lack of excitement and enthusiasm. Often these are the same men and women who end their season with an unfilled tag and a self-made promise to make next year more productive by dedicating more time to scouting. There is one easy method for combating this scenario and it involves more than just attitude. Understanding your deer herd densities and their appropriate relation to relative ranges will provide further insight and increase your percentages of connecting with a suitable set of antlers and a freezer of fresh venison.
First off most states have a growing deer herd and offer plenty of hunting for those willing to put their feet on the ground and get back what they have put into the process. Keep in mind that deer have a home-range of roughly one square mile. You can most likely find deer density information locally for the area you plan to hunt. Around this area deer densities per square mile fluctuate rapidly so let’s use a constant of 12 deer per square mile as an example. Understandably that number is going to be extremely low for some areas and high for others. We’re talking examples here.
Let’s now take your hunting area and, because I live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I will need to draw a very narrow figure since our forests stretch practically from end of the state to the other at over 16,000 square miles. We’ll use a 10 square mile tract of land for this equation. At 10 square miles with a deer density of 12 deer per square mile we conclude 120 deer minimum population for this tract of land. You could go further and filter results according to buck to doe ratios for the county but we’re simply looking at deer here. Now you can view the accessibility of this particular tract. You probably didn’t walk here so this means that you access by public or private roadways. Let’s calculate a road runs parallel 3 miles to the tract with the outlying acreage being tucked behind the main access. For many hunters a mile through the woods is a long trek so, dealing with the first square mile of forest and adjusting for your minimum access of 3 miles you have roughly 36 deer to hunt. If you’ve figured your own buck to doe ratio than you also have the perceived number of bucks in the area. Now here’s where you increase your percentage by providing the ability to stay mobile.
Your three acres of hunting area need to be divided mentally, visually if you will, in your head. By utilizing the land accordingly you can place 3 treestands or create 3 hunting areas near center of each square mile quadrant. This should allow the best results for viewing deer that are relative to each quadrant and provide the possibility of deer activity from acreage that resides beyond the furthest marker of the square mile you are hunting. Optimizing these percentages would mean walking through the first mile of forest and placing your treestand at roughly the borders of the square mile mark. Keep in mind for those who are really just learning that there are no actual markers. You need to visualize or guesstimate each mile to make these decisions. Chances are if the herd density is roughly 12 deer per each square mile you won’t be walking very far to setup your first treestand but keep your goal in mind of optimizing your percentages. Don’t park your butt 50 yards off the road and expect a bonanza of bucks to filter past your stand on command.
This practice will take the entire afternoon if everything goes well but if you look at the dividends you allow yourself three different hunting areas all in one short tract of land with different deer in each tract. All are accessible from the same road and it comes down to a simple matter of where you want to hunt today. Sometimes all it takes is that change of scenery and a deer or two wandering by to adjust your outlook on the season. This technique will help keep you mobile even in a small area and provide alternative options to play wind direction while keeping travel times to and from your hunting area to a minimum. It’s an effective method for those who are truly limited in their time afforded to hunting.
Your Attention Span
This may sound completely irrelevant for many hunters but for those, like myself, who have struggled to spend more than a couple hours on a treestand, you’ll understand the bigger picture here and know when to call it quits. By referring to the phrase of calling it quits I don’t mean giving up by any means. It’s simply a matter of knowing your limits, pushing that limit, and expanding the total length of time spent on the stand.
I’m one of those people who can sit at a desk and write an article in a fairly relaxed fashion from beginning until end. But, get me outdoors and it’s like a kid in an arcade with pockets overflowing of freshly minted quarters. I like to move about and view the other side of the hill, the greener grass on that side of the fence, and of course everything else I might be missing. As relaxing as it is, twenty minutes use to seem like an hour to me on a treestand and before you know it my fingers and toes were tapping a silent rhythm to my favorite music. It wasn’t long afterwards and my head began to swivel in an effort to find that deer that wasn’t there yet. During all of this mayhem I could still vividly hear my father’s voice telling me to sit as still as stone decades earlier. In his own words, “Jim, when it’s cold your nose will start dripping like a faucet. Don’t move! Let it drip! If you absolutely have to move do it in slow motion.” Probably not the best visual picture with that example but it that’s how I was taught and it quickly snapped me back to the moment and my constant fidgeting.
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