Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters JB Article on Stalking Big Game

Scott, its my favorite method as well, but we use an elk call here. Elk are very vocal and I keep an ELK Inc call in hand or in my mouth 100% of the time. Anytime I make a tiny noise I give a little cow chirp. Anytime I think game has spotted me and don't recognize me, I give a mew or a chirp. It instantly puts them at ease, and has put a bunch of them in the freezer.
But you are right...you can never fool their nose...

I've used a cow elk call with success on Sitka blacktails as well.

The o ly techniques I've used with any degree of success is to take 5 steps, lean against a tree and you to 100, repeat.
Short of that your wasting your time here and stepping all over next weeks hunt.

I'll have to find your article and read it Mule Deer. I spent quite a bit of last year's WI gun season still hunting or following a track and it was very enjoyable. I read Shots at Whitetails and The Still Hunter a few times after season and now I can't wait for this November. I hope there is a little snow again! I've enjoyed reading this thread and everyone's experiences.

I had my rifle on a little fork buck before it got out of it's bed on opening morning. Too small for me. That was over a clear cut and at about 60-70 yards and it is not common to have an open shot that long here. I saw the south end of one other adult deer a day later. It had made a semi-circle and bedded to look across a grassy hole downwind at it's track. That was where I was coming from. No shot and I chalk that up partly to my inexperience. I also jumped an adult deer I never saw on a different day after about two hours on its track. I saw quite a few does and fawns. Ended up shooting the only deer I've shot at for a few years later in the season during a four man deer drive. This was a moving buck that showed me ribs in an opening in the brush at about 20 yards.

The overwhelming majority of hunters here sit in a stand or blind. The majority of those are over a corn pile. I don't bait and don't like to sit for long. Getting out and moving around gives me a chance to see some of those deer that other guys might only have night time pictures of. There haven't been a lot of deer around here for a few years and I thought I saw quite a few compared to most guys I talked to. Even thought he buck I did shoot was in a drive, the still hunting or stalking or whatever you want to call it is a real thrill too.

Does that work if you rip one?

Never mind, you already answered.

I love to still hunt whitetails on mountain sides. Pick a tree, hunt to it, then glass...and glass everything. Like someone mentioned, it often turns into a stalk. Happens a lot when a buck is chasing a doe and you've got to catch up to them. If it's raining or windy I love to still hunt. I've had 2 bucks walk in looking for me during the rut just from leaves crunching where I was walking (I was downhill and downwind from them in both cases). It's just deer, but it's exciting to me when a nice one comes in with his hair up.

I do enjoy stand hunting as well. I kill more deer while on stand and I hunt from stands more but the main reason for that is other hunters...another reason I like the rain is that it thins out the hunters.

Still hunting is a lot like stand hunting; the stand just moves a few feet every so often. More often than not while still hunting, the deer have come to me in the course of their normal travel while I was paused.

Had an interesting experience on whitetails 2 years ago. I had my 15-year old son with me and were trying to rally up something for him to see or shoot at. So we decided to push downhill through a small canyon with some trees and brush in the bottom. My son lost sight of me so he kept walking rather quickly downhill through the middle of the trees and brush trying to "catch up to me." Obviously I was behind him.

I thought maybe he had gotten turned around in a little side canyon, so I went over there to look around. Realizing that he had taken off downhill without me and might get himself "lost" rather quickly, I decided to head down the canyon at a good clip while yelling out his name as loud as I could. I kept hollering it up with quite a bit of echo, and he never heard me, and I didn't catch up to him for at least a half mile.

The oddest thing are all the deer that were still bedded down in the trees and brush, past which he had walked, and which all laid there just fine when I was yelling and moving. Not one of them broke from their beds until I would stop and stand silent for a couple of minutes trying to hear my son. Then they'd get nervous and break from cover.

Once I got my son, we turned around and went back uphill through the canyon again trying to get one of those deer, and we pushed a bunch more out of their beds that had apparently tolerated us walking, yelling, and spooking them all two times previously.

Still hunting, for deer has worked for me in the Midwest. I have the best luck when the woods is wet and there is a good wind to keep my nose pointed into. It also helps to know the land your hunting so you know when to go into super stealth mode and when to cover ground. The best advice I have heard is to look as far as you can in the woods or cover, you will see the stuff close.

Your eyes adjust their focus from far to near much more quicky than the opposite. Try it.

Rain is good. Soft, wet snow is better as it doesn't squeak underfoot or crunch and you can see everything.

George Mattis wrote in "Whitetail, Fundamentals and Fine Points For the Hunter", that a gentle falling snow combined with a soft cover already underfoot was "it", and anyone who stayed inside then was more interested in comfort than venison.

That book is a real sleeper. I can't recall ever seeing it mentioned among the hunting classics, but it is well worth reading. It's kind of old school, but full of great info and well illustrated with line drawings. I got it, along with many others, as a member of the Outdoor Life Book Club.

I never could seem to send those little cards back on time.

The biggest thing I've learned is that like humans, deer are individuals. They have different personalities. There are smart ones. There are dumb ones. There are jumpy ones. And there are laid back ones. Yeah, there are general rules to follow while hunting, but you can just never flat out say that something will or won't work.

I've had deer within ten yards of me with the wind at my back blowing directly into them, I know they smell me, be completely unconcerned. I've had others bolt off after winding me and I can't figure out how they do it at all.

I haven't killed but one deer out of an above ground stand in the last ten years. All of mine have been on the ground. I like to set up in a lawn chair and then get up and move after a couple hours. Even, so most successful still hunting involves moving slow enough that deer come to you instead of you going to them. But, on a windy day or a drizzly day, you can have enough of an advantage to actually sneak up on them. Once bumped a deer will almost ALWAYS stop and look. If you have binoculars and follow them, you can many times get a shot right there.

It is tough to hunt the wind where I live. I remember one morning getting up and turning on the Weather Channel to get a wind direction. I drove forty miles to where I hunted. On the way I passed paper mill, I could see the wind was blowing the opposite direction of where the weather channel said it was. Got out to open the gate when I got to where I was going and it was blowing another direction. When I got to the stand, another direction again. Hell, I couldn't even pick which stand to hunt, much less plan on still hunting with the wind.

That is another reason I'm big on scent control. Yes, I know that it doesn't work to the point of eliminating human scent. It just doesn't. But the deer where I hunt are acclimated to human scent. They smell guys checking cows, messing around in the woods, and all that. I figure where I live the deer ALWAYS smell humans. If they bolted at every smell they would do nothing but run. So, they have to be able to judge how strong the smell is and base their level of alarm on that. So, even though the scent control might not "work" in the sense that it completely eliminates smell, if it lowers it enough that the deer thinks you are a quarter mile away instead of fifty yards, then it has done its job.

I've never gone in for scent control, partly because it's a major PITA, but mostly because I figure a rifle is advantage enough.

I'm not being judgemental; it's just how I choose to play.

Lately, hunting on public ground, I spend a lot of time in ladder stands for safety and visibility. I don't want them too high though, as I'm chicken. I really prefer to hunt from the ground in hilly country which gives you the advantage of a little elevation and is much more comfortable. It also is a lot more flexible.

I mostly bow hunt with a longbow these days. I need every advantage.

Indeed you do. For traditional archery, everything short of Claymores and heat-seekers is pretty much okay with me.

I spend most of my hunt days, Still hunting and jump shooting. Mostly Jumping with not a lot of shooting.

+1 John delivers a well thought out and logical article with new information and ideas that can help experienced and new hunters alike.