Question:
I've had to teach myself deer hunting having not grown up in a hunting
family and while I've been successful I still feel that I have a lot to
learn. Send me stories about sucessful still hunting. I can sit for a while
but 3-4 hours is torture for me. I need to move. Slowly, quietly,
cautiously, with plenty of attention to the wind but I need to move. Still
I just kick up more deer than I get a good shot at. So please send me still
hunting ideas that work.
Answer:
This is a technique that has never failed me when still hunting. It
involves knowing where to sit still and while someone else may have
invented it somewhere else, I invented it as far as I am concerned since
I have not seen anyone else describe it. Here is my never failed (so
far) method. I live in an area where several communities are nearby but
all the traffic goes at one point on one road because a stream runs
through the area and there is only one bridge. For some reason I was
thinking of that when I was hunting one day in the cold and the light
went off. I went down into the stream and walked it until I saw an area
of high traffic in deer prints where the deer crossed it. I continued
to walk past that area until convinced that this was THE deer crossing
favored by all the deer. I went to the bank 100 yards away from the
crossing and worked back down wind to take a position 50 feet from the
crossing where the rise in the ground gave my bullets a good backstop
against a little hill. I waited sitting in a bush with my back using a
tree as a back reat. The first deer came running from in back of me
making enough noise to wake the dead and passed within 6 feet at 20 MPH
I guess and went down the bank and up the other and off. I hope you
won't be too critical is I tell you I missed it. In fact I didn't
chamber a round. In fact, I damn near shit...and then started smiling.
It is for this reason of technique that I have hunted with a handgun.
Long guns are simply too eask at the distances I am involved in. By the
way, I have Never since this discovery not seen a deer up close when
hunting. In fact I have found myself choosing not to shoot deer some
seasons since my wife doesn't like deer meat. I have simply sighted the
deer and "shot" an empty round. The deer sometimes stop to look at me
apparently curious about the click before running off. So, how about
that. I too learned to hunt without a family background or friends in
hunting. Perhaps everyone starts the hunt with wet feet walking a small
stream to find the crossing. I have no idea. And obviously you need an
area which provides such natural features. If the only nearby water is
the Mississippi you could drown trying it out. :-) Hope it works for
you.
