Late Season Hunts: Why Ground Blinds are Great
Late season deer hunting is often characterized by harsh conditions. Ground blinds are the perfect solution in so many ways. By Bernie Barringer My son Dawson sat close beside me as we watched two does feed out into the hayfield 40 yards out of range. Dawson was 12 years old and in his hand was the bow he had practiced with for hours all summer. In his pocket was his very first archery deer tag. He so wanted to cut a notch into it. I think I was as eager as he was. We had placed this blind in position on the edge of the alfalfa several weeks before. It took several days for the deer to get accustomed enough to the blind that they began to ignore it. When it came time to hunt the blind, we were both eager and ready. Soon movement to our left distracted our attention away from the does. A forkhorn buck stepped out of the pines and into the field at 15 yards. The buck noticed movement and tensed up as Dawson drew his bow, but it was too late. Those hours of practice paid off; 20 minutes later we were dragging his first buck to the truck. That was not my first experience with pop-up ground blinds and it certainly won’t be my last. I have used them at any time during the season, but lately, I have been relying on them more and more during the last few weeks of the bow season, when the cold wind cuts to the bone. Ground blinds not only protect you from the elements, but they conceal your movements and you can make them very comfortable. An extreme example of this involves the deer my wife Cheri arrowed from one just last December. Cheri has not hunted much, she has been too involved in raising five kids so I was the one who brings home the venison, but now our kids are older and she expressed an interest in shooting one of the deer that had been trudging through the snow to visit our food plot each evening. She had been shooting her bow during the summer and fall, so I readied the ground blind for her like I would for any queen who appreciates the finer things in life. The ground blind offered carpeted floor, a comfortable chair and a small table to place her book and other things she may need. A half hour before she would enter the blind, I walked out and started a small propane heater for her. That evening, I sat there beside her in relative comfort despite the near-zero temperatures and excitedly watched as she shot a nice doe to add to our freezer. Now, that’s hunting in style. Here’s the deal with ground blinds. Whitetails are freaked out by them. Some people do not get past that problem, but there are ways to deal with it. You have to give it time. Get it out early When a big blob shows up right in their living room, whitetail deer take notice. While some animals don’t seem to be too bothered by the sudden appearance of a structure (mule deer and pronghorn for example, whitetails just don’t like it. It takes the deer about a week to settle down and get fully comfortable moving about close to the blind, especially if it is out in the open. Put the blind out at least a couple weeks before you plan to hunt from it. Stake it down good to protect it from blowing away in a strong wind. I also take a piece of 2×4 lumber and block up the ceiling, otherwise it may collapse with a snowfall. Resist the temptation to hunt from the blind until the deer are casually moving about it, or you may have to start the wait all over. Disguise it It really helps them accept the blind if you blend it is with natural materials from the area. Cornstalks, pine boughs and long-stemmed grasses work great for this. You can also use these objects to cover some of the black window openings that seem to make the deer uneasy. The best way I have found to help the deer accept the blind is to position it right neat some object that is already in position. A brushpile works excellent for this. In fact, I have at times piled brush near where I will eventually put a blind, so I can put the pop-up exactly where I want it when the time comes. I have a friend who put the blind up near some abandoned farm machinery in the corner of a field and used a few branches to break up the outline of the blind. He killed a deer out of it that very night. That’s a rare case, but it does illustrate the effectiveness of putting the blind near some sort of “structure.” Put in your time Once the deer are moving or feeding around the blind, get there early and hunt it often. Wear black so you are well concealed within the blind. Only open the windows on the side you expect to shoot through, and do not open them any more than necessary. Too many open windows allow light to get into the blind and allow the deer’s amazing light gathering eyes to see you. Resist the temptation to open a window in the back so you can see behind you. The risk of having a deer see some silhouetted movement is too great. A small heater is not a bad idea to keep you comfortable in harsh conditions. A piece of carpet or a pallet can get your feet up off the frozen ground and an ozone generator will go a long ways towards limiting your scent and containing it within the blind. I have two blinds out right now and I will be hunting in one of them tonight. My confidence in them is very high,
Late season bucks
The rut and the gun seasons are over, and gone with them is the helter-skelter buck movement. Now the deer are focused on the available food; they need to replace fat reserves. In the opinion of many deer hunters, it’s the best time of the year to shoot a big buck… if you can take the cold. By Bernie Barringer Many bowhunters consider the early season the best time to hunt deer, and with good reason. The deer at that time are undisturbed, they can be found in somewhat predictable daily movement patterns and the weather is nice for sitting in a treestand. The rut and the gun seasons open up and the normal patterns go out the door. Bucks are running around helter skelter and hunters either figure out how to take advantage of the conditions, or just sit home and wait it out. The majority of bowhunters who have an unfilled tag in their pocket just hang it up and wait until the following year to go after it again. That’s a big mistake. When the gun seasons end, most states offer late season bowhunting that lasts until the end of the year, and in some cases, well into January. When the gun hunters go home to watch football, the deer quickly return to daily patterns that involve taking in lots of calories. The rut is hard on them, especially the bucks which have significantly depleted their summer fat reserves and they will need to return themselves to good condition as soon as possible in order to survive the harsh winter conditions. In my opinion, the bucks can be found in their most predictable patterns of the year at this time. They need high-carbohydrate foods; they need a lot of them and they will focus on food at this time even at the risk of exposing themselves more during daylight than at any other time of the year. If you can find where they are bedding and where they are feeding, you can easily capitalize on this situation by ambushing them in between the two places. Glassing and Patterning One of the best ways to discover their daily movement is by long-range observation. A good spotting scope or at least a good pair of binoculars is an important tool to monitor their movements. The deer will have to cross open areas to get to the feed in the evening and back to the bedding areas in the mornings. Often, the deer are feeding in open areas such as harvested crop fields, food plots and open timber with mast crops on the ground. Their visibility allows you to pinpoint where they are entering the fields. Spend some time with some good glass and you will have a good idea where to set up by learning where the bedding areas might be. The feeding areas may change from day to day, but if there is food available, the buck will be back. Just because he is a no-show on any given evening doesn’t mean he has left the area. If there are does and small bucks still using the fields, he is nearby. There’s a good chance he has just chosen a different bedding area for that particular day so it pays to understand why bucks choose to bed where they do. Bedding areas: Thermal cover and solar cover Bucks will use two primary types of cover to bed in during the day. On sunny days, they will most likely be bedded on the south sides of slopes where they can take advantage of the sun’s warming rays. When the weather is bad, say cloudy and windy or snow is coming down, they are more likely to be found in the thickest snarliest cover around. Knowing where these two types of cover are found will help you choose the stand location where you will eventually waylay the buck. They key of course is to get as close to the bedding area as you can without tipping them off to your presence. Too many hunters observe where the buck tends to enter the field and then set up a stand on the edge of the field right where he enters. That can work, but more often, the buck may hang up off the field edge for a while before entering. By finding the trail he uses from the bedding cover he has chosen for that day and setting up on the trail, you significantly increase your odds of getting a shot at the buck well before dark. Dealing with Cold Conditions The nastier the weather the more the deer move and the earlier in the day they move. That’s bad news and good news for the hunter. Days are short in the late season, so bad weather can influence deer to move earlier, which improves the odds that they are going to walk by your stand during legal shooting hours. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the couple hours spent on stand at this time of the year can be downright brutal. Aching toes and shivering shoulders can make a hunter long for the early season. There are ways to beat the cold, including hand and foot warmers, body bags—which are like sleeping bags that allow you to unzip and ready for a shot with a minimum of noise and motion. Some of these even have heater elements built into them. I have begun to use ground blinds more and more for late season hunting. They keep the wind off you and if you really want to add comfort you can add a small propane space heater such as the ones used for ice fishing. One drawback of ground blinds is the need to put them out early and hide them well by covering them with things that are natural to the area. A ground blind just plopped down in the open will make the deer uneasy, often for a week or more. You must hide them