Posts Tagged → still hunt
Is sitting in a box actually hunting?
Hunting season is cold, and getting outside to seek deer or bear or really any other wild game animal requires a person to put up with some level of discomfort. You can put a lot of effort into hunting, and still come up empty handed. So to up the odds of escaping the attention of deer and bear, some hunters created hunting blinds up in trees. The least difficult ones were railroad sikes driven into a tree to be used as a ladder, and we would hoist ourselves up onto a stout lower limb, and there wait for a shot at a passing deer.
The truly old tree blinds from the 1930s and 1940s were ridiculously frail, made of random assortments of surplus lumber; practically death traps as soon as they were nailed up to living trees. The better old fashioned tree stands would usually be put on what we called an “Indian tree,” where someone a long time ago had deliberately bent over and caused a tree to grow parallel with the ground.
When the horizontal bent limb was at least a foot in diameter, enterprising hunters would find creative ways to attach a stable platform, usually reached by a dangerous rickety wooden ladder made out of woods trash and nails. Platforms ranged from plywood to rough cut boards, some with railings and tattered old olive drab canvas and maybe a stool. Deluxe versions had some sort of roof or covering to keep rain, snow, and sunshine off of the hunter. These elevated hunting blinds were usually eight to ten feet up off the ground, and if the rickety blind did not fall down and kill you, the hunter, then you could usually use it to kill a deer. Despite requiring skill just to stay in them, these blinds were always in demand, and elders got first dibs.
Here I am talking about the American Northeast, and Pennsylvania, specifically. Not about India, where the elevated machan gave hunters of dangerous game not only an opportunity to shoot before being detected by tigers and leopards, but a chance to get in at least one more shot or even a stabbing blow with a spear before the claws and fangs were at your throat.
Fast forward fifty years, and now elevated blinds are everywhere. But they are not like the old rickety kinds jimmied onto trees with long spikes us older guys fondly recall. Witness the rise of the elevated box blinds, which are light years ahead of the rickety wooden tree stands in use when I was a kid. These new ones look like Martian landers, and are sold along the side of RT. 15 from Duncannon to Williamsport, as well as anywhere farm machinery and grains are sold, or even in Amish farm yards.
These modern elevated hunting blinds are airtight, have windows that open and close, and safe ladders or steps made of treated lumber of metal. They are downright sophisticated, and one farm lease I know of has propane heaters in all of their elevated “huts” where guys literally cook their breakfast while waiting for a deer to show up out one of the sliding windows. Some of them are big enough to hold a whole family, and indeed these are like little remote hunting cabin outposts, where everyone from Pap to the youngest kids can comfortably take a poke at a deer from a steady rest with plenty of quiet encouragement around them.
The question is, Is this elevated box blind business actually hunting?
My four-plus-inch-thick 1987 Random House Dictionary (the resilient if lonely, unknown cornerstone of our written culture) says Hunt: To chase or search for game or other wild animals for the purpose of catching or killing.
How much chasing or searching do you see going on from the ubiquitous elevated box blinds?
Not a lot. Well, none. Shouldn’t hunting involve actual pursuit and physical exertion? Don’t we need to earn our kills?
Go on YouTube or Rumble, and you can watch hundreds of “hunting” videos of hunters sitting in elevated box blinds, overlooking crop fields and power lines. These hunters usually have a long period of self-discussion to their camera about what they are looking for, any shots taken and misses they have had, etc. They have tripods and bipods, heaters, shelves with food, windows, and are generally protected from the punishing elements that mark hunting season.
The most dispiriting of this video genre has little kids holding forth, as if experienced adults, about the relative merits of various bucks caught on cell camera trail cams that very morning, and whether or not any of them are good enough for our young camerman.
And so I think we have to ask if this elevated box blind is not really hunting, then is it good for hunting? If maintained as a hunting method after their first one or two confidence building kills, the little kids are for sure being ruined by this stuff. Because it is not reality.
People who think that hunting season solely involves sitting in one spot all day, especially an enclosed and elevated spot, and then stiffly climbing down to either bitch about the lack of deer or worse, to boast about one’s prowess whacking “the big one“, are not hunters. They are shooters. If they have at all practiced target shooting before season, and they have some huge Hubble Telescope mounted on their Million Magnum Blastem Rifle, then surely they can make that three hundred yard shot on some unsuspecting deer eating dinner in a crop field.
Sorry to be negative about this, but we are losing our souls to these elevated blinds. Yes, they make hunting season more comfortable, and they make ambushing and surprising our quarry easier, but they are really dumbing down and whittling off our hunting instincts and skills, our woodcraft that separates us from the flatlander slobs who have no self reliance abilities. Hunting is not supposed to be easy, or comfortable, it is supposed to test us and make us earn the trophies we kill.
In Europe and Asia, hunting was used until the 1800s by warriors to hone their combat skills. Nothing like dismounting your horse to face off at ground level with a mean 4,000 pound Gaur or a ferocious 1,000 pound wild boar, armed with a stout spear in hand and a short sword at your hip. Back then, hunters were tough. As were our own American Longhunters on our frontier.
You want to actually hunt? Go do a deer drive like the BNB Outdoors kids, or with The Hunting Public guys. Or take a quiet, slow still hunt woods walk like John does at Leatherwood Outdoors. These hunts take skill and effort, which is the heart and soul of the chase. Everything else is just a hands-on video game at this point. No thanks.
A deer taken while still hunting two weeks ago, with open sights. Don’t look too closely, it was hit between the eyes.
Checking nearby cell cameras to see where the deer are while sitting in a blind…
Not picking on anyone here, but you boys can do better than this
Calling Elon Musk, we have landed on Mars
Ballistics Lesson #439
Today I learned a ballistics lesson that I have learned before, that everyone under the sun knows, but which I always seem to forget every few years. Maybe it is not forgetting, but curious wondering that gets the better of me. If you are interested in reading about an old man making a foolish mistake, read on.
So late this morning I set out to still hunt a large section of reverting, regenerating forest. It is brutal stuff – blackberry, briars, weeds of every sort, and jungle-thick growth of oak and popar saplings and whips, all anchored in downed tree tops and branches from a timber sale we did about twelve years ago. It is hell to hunt, and that is why this place is full of hiding deer. So, we go to where the deer are, and if we do it right, we can still-hunt our way into close range of a fat doe or a decent buck just rising out of his bed.
When I finally got there after a fifteen minute hike, the wind was howling, tree branches were falling, leaves were flying, and the couple inches of snow on the ground made it all perfect. And so I set out very slowly walking into the wind, taking a few steps, then stopping to look all around, watching not to step on any big sticks that would make a loud crack, and also moving quickly when the wind raged. My own movements and sounds were masked by the crazy roaring winds and falling tree debris from above.
After about ten minutes of slowly picking my way downhill and into the wind, I was looking at a nice juicy doe. Probably two years old and plump, she was just 25 yards away and looking around. She probably was getting brief whiffs of me, but in the blasting seesawing winds she was not able to get a read on where the scent was coming from. Too late for her, I raised the rifle and bang, watched her standing there, unfazed. A clear miss.
Levering another round into the chamber, I took more careful aim at her, now acutely aware of the chunky backpack strap on my shoulder that was making it difficult to correctly anchor the buttstock to my cheek. With her right shoulder clearly centered in the ghost ring, I pulled the trigger and again, watched as she just stood there, stock still and unable to detect where the strange sounds and smells were coming from.
As I jacked a third round in, she suddenly jumped up and took off running fast, downhill, her head pointed low and her tail tucked. She was obviously hit by the second shot, but usually the 325 grain 45-70 caliber bullets just absolutely smash critters at that close range. I know from my own experience. But this running after the smashing blow was a new one to me.
And so I took my time to catch up to her clear trail in the leaves and snow. I searched around on the ground and found the two spent brass shells ejected from the Marlin, shook off the snow, and put them in my left front pocket.
Initially, no blood was visible, but her feet were going in all directions as she staggered. She was hard hit and struggling. A hundred yards later, large smudges of blood and hair appeared on trees. Then blood on the snow. Another hundred yards and we were out of the more open forest regeneration and back into the thick jungle. Her clumsy hoof marks were easy to see, and here and there was blood. This animal was dying and did not know it. At every turn I expected to find her lying there, expired. So much indication of impending death, and yet so much resilience to live on.
The long and short of this tale is, I ended up tracking her for over an hour, which is an eternity. During this time I had bedded deer up and running in all directions, including a large buck. If you really want deer, the thick, nasty, gnarly places are where they are hiding. But I was after this one wounded doe, and I had no eyes for any others, including one that stood up almost in front of me. After quickly checking that she was not bleeding, I let her leave.
Doing a 360 degree circle around where her last blood sign was located, I determined that she was either dead or close to dying in a large tangle of old rotting tree tops covered in Japanese stiltgrass, burdock, mile-a-minute, bramble, and briar. Nasty, difficult, not a place for a man to easily or comfortably move in, I marked where she was and moved on to the afternoon sit a mile away. Tomorrow morning I will return and find her frozen body. Unless the coyotes get to her first, she will feed a hungry family here in Central PA.
After withstanding the afternoon’s buffeting winds and feeling colder than I have in years on the edge of the crop field, I finally gathered my kit, ducked out of my friend’s blind, and headed back to the truck. He later sent me a trail camera picture of the local deer herd walking out into the crop field literally one minute after I had exited the blind. They knew I was there and were just waiting for me to leave.
Back home I emptied my pockets onto the kitchen island, including the two empty 45-70 brass cases I had emptied at the doe. Picking them up to look at them, I noticed that one of them had the Hornady stamp, and the other bore the Star Line stamp. I use the factory 325 grain Hornady FTX bullets for bear and deer hunting (very successfully with both species), and I reload the Star Line with 325 grain brass solids, from Cutting Edge Bullets, for grizzly self defense in Alaska and for black bear hunting here in Pennsylvania. Especially on drives through the laurel. These brass solids will absolutely and unstoppably smash their way through a tough grizzly bear with its heavy bones and super tough muscles, but they will ziiiiip right through a whitetail deer.
And suddenly it dawned on me. I had first overshot and missed the doe with the Hornady FTX, and then literally drilled her body through-and-through with the brass solid second shot. I had jumbled up the two loads in my pockets, and when loading the rifle I had failed to put a second Hornady FTX round in the gun as the initial followup shot. Instead, I had a grizzly bear load as the followup shot, and as one might expect, the grizzly bear load did not kill the doe on the spot. Nope. That brass solid at 2100 feet per second just zipped cleanly through her entire body like a small laser beam. None of its energy was dumped into her by the bullet mushrooming, with massive terminal shock, as the FTX is designed to do.
And only then, when back at home, did I understand why the doe had reacted that way, how she took a few seconds to realize that something bad had happened to her, but that while fatal, it was not something that was going to kill her dead right there. She was only mostly dead from the brass solid. By now, as I write this, she is most assuredly frozen solid in that tangled hell that I will go back to tomorrow morning. Hopefully the coyotes will not have found her.
Had I used the correct expanding bullet, I would have had nothing to write about tonight. It would have been just another successful slow stalk through the thick ‘n nasty, with the rifle butt up at my shoulder, the hammer back, and me ready to jump shoot a deer.
Instead, I had to re-learn a rudimentary ballistics lesson, which is if you want to kill thin skinned game, use expanding bullets that transfer all of their energy into the prey animal’s body. If you shoot a high velocity scalpel at the prey animal, it will cleanly and surgically cut it, even make neat clean holes through bones, but that wound might not bleed much and the animal might not know it is supposed to be dead until it has run a long distance away from the man with the gun, and into impossible cover.
Sign like this, blood smear and hair at deer chest height, says this is a dead deer running.
A 325 grain solid brass Cutting Edge Bullets 45-70 load I make for grizzly in Alaska is a terrible backup load for whitetail deer
Advice from a deer
As sure as the sun rises, there is sure to be complaining among hunters about the state, condition, blood pressure, and dental hygiene of Pennsylvania’s deer herd. In fact, you can’t escape the topic if you spend any time, like even a minute or two, in the company of devoted hunters. No matter who I am standing around, next to, or in line with, the complaints begin to flow about the Pennsylvania Game Commission and its deer management.
Despite being highly skeptical about government in general, and therefore despite keeping an open mind to complaints about government failings, I find myself repeatedly unpersuaded by these deer management complaints. While not quite ranking up there with UFO sightings or insistence that PGC has helicopter-imported mountain lions and coyotes to eat the deer, the fretting and nail biting and angry denunciations always seem to lack key aspects of any serious argument.
For example, for twenty years I have heard that Sproul State Forest harbors no deer. Then last year I easily killed a deer standing right at the edge of Sproul State Forest, and saw many others. This November, I hunted elk in Sproul State Forest and State Game Lands 100 in northern Centre County, and found myself endlessly surrounded by deer, from dawn until way past bed time while driving. Conventional views that these deer do not exist are easily reinforced around bar stools, but I have found them easily and quickly disproven in personal contact with the deer habitat itself.
One of the real challenges to Pennsylvania deer hunters is the change in deer herd size and behavior since 2001, as well as the maturing of our forests since the 1970s, when a lot of today’s older hunters were really getting into the lifestyle. A hunting culture based on sitting in one place and watching unsustainably sized deer herds migrate by resulted, and now that most rural deer herds have been lowered, just sitting and waiting is not enough. Especially when the mature forests we now experience are devoid of any acorns for the second year in a row.
In 2021 a late frost killed the oak flowers in northern PA, resulting in no acorns up north and spotty acorn crops in the south. In 2022, rampant gypsy moth infestations across the entire state denuded entire oak forests of every leaf and flower, which has again resulted in zero acorn production across a great deal of Pennsylvania’s forests. If you are inclined to blame people for things that are mostly out of people’s control, then I suppose we can point out that PA DCNR seemed to hold back on gypsy moth spraying in 2021 and 2022. Had DCNR sprayed more, then the state-wide acorn crop failure we now behold probably would not have been as bad.
The fact is that a great many of us started sitting or walking in beautiful mature forests this past Saturday or Sunday as PA’s deer rifle season opened up, and found ourselves marveling at the incredible silence greeting us. Hardly any bird activity. Maybe one squirrel seen all day, and certainly no bears and few if any deer. This is the result of there being nothing for anyone to eat in the woods.
So, unless your woods escaped gypsy moth damage and has acorns, get the heck out of the woods and go find brushy and grassy areas where deer can browse. Utility rights-of-way and clearcuts are the best places to find deer this season, and in fact the only person I know of who killed a deer anywhere near me yesterday (Sunday) was an older guy in a deer drive through a beautifully overgrown overhead powerline right of way. His hunting party also reported seeing eight does with the now deceased buck, none of which they shot.
Yesterday, while I was sitting miserably sick in my covered stand and waiting out the miserable cold rain and wind, a deer in a top hat and silk gloves happened by and gave me the following advice:
In general, access your hunting area well before sunrise and start every deer hunt with a quiet Sit from 6:30-9am, overlooking some promising travel corridor, funnel, or feeding area. Then slowly and quietly Still Hunt into the wind or quartering into the wind until lunch time. Then Sit down and eat lunch quietly, while overlooking some promising location through which wildlife regularly pass or eat. At 1pm pack up the lunch stuff and Still Hunt again slowly until 3:30pm, and then find a good spot with good views and shooting lanes and Sit quietly until 15 minutes before shooting light ends. Then slowly and quietly walk out, and maybe kill something on your way back to your vehicle or camp, only unloading your firearm when shooting hours have officially ended.
I myself am about to suit up for a long and slow stalk through some brushy utility rights of way. Yes, they are now wet, and always steep, and the going is tough. But that is where the deer are, because that is where they can eat and survive, and I am hunting deer so that I might actually kill one.
The deer and I must meet in person in order for this transaction to happen.
As much as a covered hunting blind may be a necessity when the hunter is sick or the rain is pouring down, the fact is this not really hunting. Slowly and quietly walking into the wind through good deer habitat with your firearm at the ready is real hunting. Do it.