Buck Hollow Sporting Goods - click or touch to visit their website Midwest Habitat Company

What will you do different?

Shredder

Shredder

Life Member
With mistakes made every season fouling up hunts, what do you all plan to do different this season in hopes of making it more sucessful?

My changes for the season are to sit on my stand well into early afternoon if I have the day off or all day if I can. I got out of my stnad too early twice last season only to meet nice bucks face to face on the way out.
 
this year i will be taking Limb's quote into affect. "go early, stay late".

first two weeks of October it will be difficult to get me out of the timber before 11 a.m. and i'll be hunting by 1 p.m if possible. when i get that first buck to come into the horns i will be sitting dawn to dusk. i had, what i feel was, a succssfull season last year. in order to take it a step up i am going to be going ballz to the wall and taking my quote into affect.

HUNT HARD, or go home.

this WILL be my year.
 
This year Im not gonna hunt a spot unless I have absolute confidence in something I wanna shoot coming through there. Last year I hunted to many spots that I knew werent gonna produce. Its all about confidence, and if I got some reason to trust in my spot, its that much easier to sit there.
 
Two things...

Simplify - I was taking too much stuff into the tree last year. I usually ended up forgeting something important becasue I was focused on remembering those things that in the end where unimportant.

Stay later in the morning and get in earlier in the afternoon. Not only have I run into deer approaching or leaving my stand - I have watched nice bucks crossing fields as I drive out of my area at noon or 1:00.
 
I'm gonna try not to step on as many sticks when im walking around the woods this year
smile.gif
 
1. I'm going to rattle way more in Mid to late October.
2. I'm going to not overhunt certain areas like I have in the past, I think I burned out my best spot last yr hunting one buck I only saw twice.
3. I'm not going to let anybody else capitalize of my set ups, twice in the past 2 years I've had friends shoot good 150+, but young bucks out of my stands. Call me selfish cause I am but my spots are my spots until my son is old enough to come with me!
grin.gif
 
I'm going to find some place closer to home to shoot a doe or two. Then I will be ready for the hog when actually get to go to camp 3 hours away.
 
I think it's starting to sound like a broken record, but stay out longer in the mornings. For some reason, I have a harder time making myself stay in the stand past 10 am. I will also not over-hunt a stand. I did this last year, so that any doe that near would look up into my tree before coming in.
 
I am going to concentrate more on scent control this year. I have always tried my best to do this but the past year following different post on this matter has been very informative and I think it will contribute to this year's success trying to kill a monster buck.
 
After a break in rattling I am not going to hit the horns hard again until I've tickled them and then thurally glasses the nearby area.
 
Better scent control and playing the wind better. Last year was my first year and I made basically every mistake and still managed to get a decent buck. I am also going to spend more time with scents and scrapes.
 
This year I’m not going to sit in stands that I know are burned out, thinking ‘I saw so many deer from this stand two weeks ago that surely one will come walking by soon…’ while watching deer 100 yards away.
wall.gif
Last year I started staying until noon on my morning hunts and saw a lot more deer. I will do a few all day hunts this year, and try to get out earlier for the afternoon ones.
smile.gif
 
Not too much really. I'm going to try some of the gel-type scent. This year I'm going to try to shoot a doe a little earlier in the season.
 
This year I dedicated alot more time and energy to preseason scouting and filming, along with the trail-cams. I think that will be my biggest benefactor come October and November. It's a-lot easier to sit in a stand all day when you already know the caliber of bucks in your area. This year I'm going to have the camcorder with me every time in the tree, that in itself will be a very large change to what I've always been used to.
CRITR
 
I spent 5.5 hours today walking around in the woods, and one thing Im gonna do different while hanging stands, scouting etc. is walk SLOOOW, and pay more attention to the small details, instead of the obvious big details. I couldn't believe when I slowed down and walked super slow and just scanned the whole country the things I noticed compared to just tromping around and being like oh theres a rub, theres a scrape. When i slowed down and scanned the contour of the land, the funnels, trees, fresh sign, old sign, it all started adding up alot quicker than the things I would of missed if I wouldnt of taken the time to walk down every ridge, every tranistion area, find all the low spots in the fences etc and really get to know the area. Also I might of slowed down because it was 80 degrees outside too, but im gonna start sticking to that, i know which trees to hunt with different winds now, and how to get any to any of them in pitch dark I did find about 50 rubs, I was pretty impressed by that, i havent found that many this early in a long time
 
bob foulkrod said at the IBA banquet that to walk to your stand like you were a deer and someone was hunting you with a 300 win mag. slowing down can make a HUGE difference, good point mike!
 
a couple of things:

one: pick a part of the day to miss from the start of the chase phase to the end of the rut. the long days on stand can sometimes burn you out quick and from the info i have gathered and documented in the last 4 years, i am going to choose sunrise to 9:00am, and hunt from 9:30am til sundown because from what i have gathered the bucks activity seems to wind down towards sun-up and pick back up real hard at about mid-morning!

two: do what i can to not get fixated on one piece of property just because i have seen a monster on there. i have access to many different pieces of private property but when i am hunting anyone of these given piece of properties and i see a monster, the others almost take the back burner the rest of the season
waytogo.gif
 
I am really going to change things this year. In the past I have starte hunting hard on 10/1 and quite frankly have burned both my locations and myself out by the time the rut hits....

I have 1 location that I will hunt a couple of times in early October. I really want to hit it hard, however, this year I am not going to hit it hard until the first week of November.

Mark...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom