Allow me to defend hunting from a blind or treestand for y'all. I don't mean to change any minds here. However, I think it is important to understand why it is a good choice in our circumstances.
First off, let me explain that our camp is located on 200 acres in SW Bracken County, KY. It's a bigger than average plot. 40 acres are in pasture and the rest is either cedar thickets or Oak/Hickory savanah. Along the N/S axis it is about a mile long, and it is about a 3/4 mile walk from the house to the property lines on the east, west, and south. We have about 15 resident deer on the property at any given time. Probably one of them is a mature buck. This year, we scored 3 mature bucks on Opening Weekend. This was a good year-- one of our best. I have no more than 4 hunters on the property during season, and we all hunt from raised stands or ground blinds. SW Bracken County can sound like a war zone on The Opener. I count as many as 3 shot strings per minute over the first 4 hours of rifle season.
The first problem we face is safety. We need to make sure we're not going to shoot each other and we don't want to shoot or be shot by our neighbors. Therefore, it is a good idea to stay away from the property lines and hunt in the interior of the property. Second, we all coordinate our hunting so that we all know where each other are. We also use walkie-talkies to inform the others as we are leaving our assigned areas. The problem would get far more complicated if we were all stillhunting. So far we have had no close calls in over fifteen seasons. I'm not worried about a mistaken-for-game-incident, but it is still a good idea to know where your buddies are.
The other problem is pressure on the deer. Whitetails tend to follow the paths that offer the greatest amount of slack. They flow to the property that gives them the best habitat, best food, the least trouble and the least crowding. I try to offer them just that. I don't do a whole lot with food plots. I rely mostly less demonstrable habitat improvements. However, the deer find I have good place to offer them. I probably have have the hunter density of the surrounding plots and I don't do any ATV joyriding. The payoff is that we can see twice the number of deer out in the fields as normal after the Rifle Opener. All the deer come over to our place to get away from the Orange Army. My neighbor, who spends gobs of money on supplemental feeding admits that he's basically feeding my deer. They all bed on my place and come over to his to feast after dark. If I started putting hunters out to stillhunt, that would probably all change. As it is now, all those ATV's and stillhunters on neighboring plots are acting as beaters, gently herding deer onto our property. That may be as many as 3,000 hunters within earshot.
Treestands give you the best chance of getting a shot on a deer with a downward angle going into the dirt behind them. We all shoot from either a stand or a blind where we're firing down at the animals. We aren't making a lot of noise on the way in. We travel regular paths, so there's no blundering around in the dark. The deer are fairly used to our comings and goings. I spend all fall out and about scouting, so in a way I get my stillhunting desires out of my system before season starts. When I go out, I'm there to get a job done.
Lastly, my hunting buddy is 75 and recently had quadruple bypass surgery. His stillhunting days are over. I'm 58 and built like human landform. Geologists probably ponder the perturbations I make on their seismographs when I'm hiking. My sons are similarly blessed with gargantuan dimensions. We are not lithe creatures. Size 14 boots fall heavily in any forest.
