Post by Buckfever on Jan 12, 2006 0:40:51 GMT -5
To follow along the lines of tailnbone's thread, I thought we could start a thread with little stuff that we picked up this past season, that improve our hunting.
A couple of small things for me:
1. I wore a large Smartwool hunting sock and an XL Smartwool hunting sock over that, in my oversized Mickey boots and never needed a chemical foot warm up. Didn't even need a wicking sock, that much Smartwool just sucked the moisture away and kept my feet toasty in single digits with below zero wind chills.
2. For my lone wolf sticks I attached the 3' extension onto the straps and kept them on all the time. In the few cases where the tree was too small for 2 straps I just wrapped it around twice. Much faster than fumbling with the straps in the field.
3. Use a bicycle. I started using a bicycle here recent to get to remote spots and then started to use it for even 1 mile hikes. Way faster to dump the gear off the road, park the truck and then ride the bike to the gear and go in. Honestly it's such a simple idea that I feel real stupid for not having done so sooner.
4. Kill the first day and scout the property. It's one of those things, a habit that's hard to break. You go in on a new property, scout a little and hunt, figuring you'll slowly figure it out. Screw that. 95% of being successful is having the big picture right. Don't waste your time hunting till you have the big picture right. What's it take, some aerial photos and a day on the ground? Kill the first day and scout the property.
5. In season scouting. This is something that I've been pretty good about doing but slip sometimes and when you do it right man your odds go up big time. Non invasive, low impact scouting of travel corridors is HUGE!!! But it takes time. You have to get there earlier to check. But if the wind is right and you can slip into a travel corridor to a bedding area and observe fresh droppings from the morning, that for sure weren't there the afternoon before. Your odds of seeing a deer come out of that bedding area, just went through the roof.
Anyway those are some of the things that kinda struck me this year, maybe I'll think of some more. What about you?
A couple of small things for me:
1. I wore a large Smartwool hunting sock and an XL Smartwool hunting sock over that, in my oversized Mickey boots and never needed a chemical foot warm up. Didn't even need a wicking sock, that much Smartwool just sucked the moisture away and kept my feet toasty in single digits with below zero wind chills.
2. For my lone wolf sticks I attached the 3' extension onto the straps and kept them on all the time. In the few cases where the tree was too small for 2 straps I just wrapped it around twice. Much faster than fumbling with the straps in the field.
3. Use a bicycle. I started using a bicycle here recent to get to remote spots and then started to use it for even 1 mile hikes. Way faster to dump the gear off the road, park the truck and then ride the bike to the gear and go in. Honestly it's such a simple idea that I feel real stupid for not having done so sooner.
4. Kill the first day and scout the property. It's one of those things, a habit that's hard to break. You go in on a new property, scout a little and hunt, figuring you'll slowly figure it out. Screw that. 95% of being successful is having the big picture right. Don't waste your time hunting till you have the big picture right. What's it take, some aerial photos and a day on the ground? Kill the first day and scout the property.
5. In season scouting. This is something that I've been pretty good about doing but slip sometimes and when you do it right man your odds go up big time. Non invasive, low impact scouting of travel corridors is HUGE!!! But it takes time. You have to get there earlier to check. But if the wind is right and you can slip into a travel corridor to a bedding area and observe fresh droppings from the morning, that for sure weren't there the afternoon before. Your odds of seeing a deer come out of that bedding area, just went through the roof.
Anyway those are some of the things that kinda struck me this year, maybe I'll think of some more. What about you?
