Except for the Christmas Holiday Deer Hunt from Dec. 26-28, the firearms portion of deer season is done. However, archery and crossbow hunters may continue to hunt until Feb. 28. Tha is a productive and fun time to hunt because you will pretty much have the woods to yourself. Everybody else has oiled and put […]
Except for the Christmas Holiday Deer Hunt from Dec. 26-28, the firearms portion of deer season is done.
However, archery and crossbow hunters may continue to hunt until Feb. 28. Tha is a productive and fun time to hunt because you will pretty much have the woods to yourself. Everybody else has oiled and put away their guns for the year, and the casual archers scratched their itch in early autumn. Only the most hardcore hunters are sitting in trees after New Year’s Day.
In January, deer will be unpressured. They will quickly slip into a post-season routine. Having recovered from the rigors of the rut, bucks will become more active. Without constant ATV and UTV traffic and without gunshots echoing through the woods, they will be more likely to feed during the day.
Buck behavior was confounding this season. While the statewide deer harvest will be very close to 200,000, bucks were scarce in some areas. My game cameras recorded only a couple of photos of bucks in daylight. Other members of my hunting club said the same. Even so, two new members killed the biggest bucks known to have been taken from our property.
Timing could have played a part. The moon was full when modern gun season opened, which might have contributed to nocturnal activity for the first week or so of the season. It was also very warm. Even if deer aren’t uncomfortable walking around in warm weather, many hunters — I included — avoid it. We don’t like fighting mosquitoes at dusk and dawn, and we don’t like field dressing and skinning deer when it’s warm. We only had a few days of optimal deer hunting weather this fall, but many of us can’t take off work or rearrange family schedules to take advantage of a cold front.
That was then. This is now. If you have a bow or a crossbow, you should take advantage of the nation’s longest continuous deer season.
If you can consistently shoot a vertical bow accurately, you’ve already done the hard work. All you have to do now is position yourself for success, and that comes down to basic woodsmanship. Find active deer trails between feeding and bedding areas and figure out when deer use them. Hang a stand over the trail, come out when the wind favors that stand and wait.
An elevated stand isn’t necessary, really. I have noticed while turkey hunting in the springtime that deer are not overly concerned by a person sitting beside a tree in a gillie suit. Often, they investigate out of curiosity. They have frequently passed within a few yards. During a turkey hunt at Madison County Wildlife Management Area, a spike buck came within inches of touching noses with me.
Hunting from the ground with a vertical bow is problematic for obvious reasons. You have to sit high enough to run your bow without ground interference. Shooting a vertical bow also requires holding the bow in an offset position parallel to your shoulders. It’s very hard to assume that position while sitting in a chair, and it’s hard to rise to that position from the ground or from a chair.
Chair hunting is ideal for running a crossbow, though. I mount the bow on a Primos Ground Swat tripod, a dandy device whose legs can splay almost flat on the ground to accommodate a ground-level shooting position. It also swivels.
I have two really good crossbow spots on my lease. One is customized. I sit at the back of a very narrow lane amid a thicket that conceals me from the sides and the rear. Deer approach from two directions, one of which provides a long sightline. I can’t see them coming from the other approach, but they can’t see me, either. When they appear, they are relaxed and not on alert.
The other spot is similar, and I hunt it the same way.
I have considered hunting behind a ground screen, but a gillie suit makes a ground screen, which is really just horizontal gillie material, superfluous. In fact, it might even be counterproductive because it creates an unnatural horizontal line.
Taking a deer with a crossbow or vertical bow is highly satisfying. Keep in mind, though, that bucks start dropping their antlers as early as mid January in some places. Examine a deer’s head before you commit to avoid shooting a mature, antlerless buck.
