Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Bowhunting How many stalks...

My Grandpa killed 7 busks in his lifetime with a recurve in Wisconsin, all stalking. I have killed 9, mostly blacktails in Washington state and another 17 from a stand...

Impossible...grin ..

Most people don't have the stamina or desire to stalk wild bucks and fail constantly. Until you don't....

The slower you go the better you do...

out of curiosity define stalking.

Vs still hunting.

Its pretty rare for us to see whitetails bed up. I see moose do it quite a bit and we can stalk them.

But have to have a target to stalk.

That was what was neat about mule deer. They bed where you can see em sometimes and you can watch em walk to the bed at times. Gives a much better chance. At least I can get down to moccasins or heavy socks close enough to try to finish.

when i started bowhunting back in 1970 before the days of the compound bow , bowhunters could put up a homemade deer stand 6 ft. high and the whitetail deer never seen you .but as years went by deer got an education from bowhunters so we had to put our stands up much higher now days . yes maybe in the old days of the 60`s to early 70`s we could sneak up on whitetail deer sometimes which i could do with snow on the ground and just follow fresh tracks , but that practice does not work very well anymore and that was more of a still hunting with a bow. whitetail deer today have been very educated by the doe mama deer the dumber ones are dead that gene is long gone, also if you hunt the north country of Minnesota because of all the wolves these whitetail deer are weary and more spooky. i really hate to see wolves out west mule deer will be easy pickens for the crafty wolf .

By stalking, I mean spot and stalk. See an animal and either sneak up on it while it's bedded, or move to intercept.

Still hunting I would define as slowly and deliberately moving through the woods, in hopes to come across or incidentally sneak up on an animal.

Western North Dakota mule deer with a bow in the badlands I "hope" for 1 or 2 stalks in a 3-5 day hunt. My personal goal is just getting to full draw un-detected. In the past 12-15 years I have killed 3 mule deer bucks and missed 2 dandy mature bucks. The biggest heartbreaker in my life was drawing blood on a mature mule deer buck 2 years ago and never finding him. I still have nightmares about that one. The only conclusion that myself and hunting partners have come up with is I ended up in "No Man's Land" above the heart/frontal lung area and the spine. No matter what, you learn something on every hunt or stalk so get out there and do it. A lot of times I think people get paralysis by analysis or just spend too much time on internet sites hoping to find a magic bullet. Access to hunting land seems to be a factor I have seen change in 30+ years of hunting. We are fortunate in ND to have some public land to hunt on but finding a parking spot seems to be a bigger issue every year. All that being said, get out there and do it. Slow down when you think you are going slow enough is the best advice I can offer and the wind is EVERYTHING.