Hunting Sense

I’ve been thinking about doing a contest of some sort for a while now, but wasn’t for sure what to do it on or what to offer as a prize. After my recent playing around with designing website layouts with Photoshop, I came up with an idea. To the left is a personal hunting site layout I designed over the weekend that I have decided to offer as a prize for the person who posts the best hunting tip.

The design is a 760×770 pixel layout with a deer hunting/outdoors theme that will make an excellent layout for a personal hunting site. The header and sidebar are both done in a green wood grain texture with menu buttons, logo plaque, and header plague done in a natural brown wood grain texture. The logo plaque has a burned in deer head silhouette and the background is a opaque photo found in a free deer picture site of a nice buck. The header and menu buttons can easily be customized with your own text in Photoshop, or I can add the desired text for the winner.

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I was reading Oklahoma Hunting Today and ran across a tip from Shane Gulbrandsen about not spooking deer on the way to your stand.

We all have to admit that we’ve likely spooked deer on the way in to our stands, it’s just one of those things that happen. What matters though is how the deer react to it. Although I have never tried the exact method that Shane talks about, I have had similar luck with tactics that were close to it.

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Hunters have long known about and taken advantage of topographic maps and aerial photos. They can be invaluable tools for preliminary scouting of possible stand locations. Finding them for the right area and/or waiting for them to arrive once you had was the hard part. That’s not the case anymore.

With advances in technology and the Internet, hunters now have these tools available at their fingertips. With just a few keystrokes, you can have access to nearly every topographic map in the U.S. and aerial photos to go along with them if available. Who says that the net is all bad?

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It can sometimes be hard to spot a coon when your dogs tree. It’s especially true when there are still a lot of leaves on the tree, but even spotting one in a bare tree can be tricky. Raccoons have a tendency to look away from a bright light so shining the tree with your headlamp on high beam may not work. Hit the dimmer switch and then watch for the glow of their eyes when they look back at the light.

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A woman going for a walk in a Canadian forest may have died from a hunting accident. While it hasn’t been confirmed, it does bring up an important reminder.

Public lands are filled with hunters each fall, but just because they are doesn’t mean other outdoor enthusiasts disappear. Just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean their not there, they may just be harder to see than all the hunters wearing orange. It falls to the hunters to make sure they have as safe of an experience as you hope to have.

I know, they should be aware of the dangers, but what they should know and what they do are two different things. When we go onto public land we have to realize others may be out enjoying what it has to offer, be it hiking, biking, or wildlife watching. Take a few extra seconds to make sure of what lies beyond your target. Saving a life is more important than a deer.

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As you can see on this McKenzie® Natra-Look™ Series 3-D Target, the best spot for placing an arrow for a one shot kill is right behind the shoulder. When the deer is broadside to you, this allows the arrow to pass through both lungs, creating a quick and humane kill. If the deer is quartering away, then you should aim a little further back from the shoulder so that the arrow still penetrates both lungs as it passes through at an angle.

When targeting the real deal, look for a small spot right behind the shoulder where the different hairs meet and create a tuft that stands up. Use this as your target spot or a reference spot for choosing arrow placement if the deer is quartering away.

Even though spining a deer can drop it in it’s tracks, there is little room for error with such a shot. A double lung shot will dispatch the animal cleanly, quickly, and humanely. This is what an ethical hunters wants, so it is your best bet.

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When hunting from the ground remember the trajectory of the shot changes. With the bullet or arrow entering at a more level angle, the animal may not leave as good of a blood trail as it would if shot from an elevated position. Where an angled trajectory allows the blood to pour freely from the body, leaving an easy trail to follow, a level one may allow the blood to pool inside the body cavity. If this happens, you may find little to no blood. Don’t give up looking though, widen your search area from the spot of the shot and you’ll likely find your animal down.

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Deer are able to sense changes in the weather and their activity levels increase just before the changes take place. If the barometer begins to fall, be ready because they will be on a feeding frenzy so they can bed down and wait out the bad weather. This is even more likely when it’s snow. Don’t be too quick to discount a rainy day though, big bucks are likely to use the wet conditions to sneak through the woods and you may have a chance at taking a monster.

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