Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Are you Patient or an Impatient Hunter?

Assuming you’ve scouted and seen animals in the area...

How long can you sit quietly, glassing, and not make a lot of movement before you become impatient or bored and have to start walking around?

Me, I can sit all day looking for fur - getting up to take a leak or stretch my legs without having to go wandering around out of boredom.
😎

I find that the older I get, the more patient. Years past I could only sit for an hour or so; now I'm good for 1/2 day then a lunch break.

I can sit from daybreak till dark.

In 2015 we glassed for almost two weeks before making a move on a Kodiak bear.

Have glassed for many days before making a move on a bull moose. And have done it over and over again for over three weeks.

I'm impatient. And I know it, so I plan accordingly.

I try to get in deep early so that I can still hunt and move without bothering other hunters much. More often than not my movement probably benefits them anyway.

I enjoy sneaking up on critters and have shot several whitetails in their bed. Including with a bow.

Just how I prefer to do it.

-Jake

If I’m covering an area it’s because I’ve put eyes on fur...Unless they got pushed out hard by another hunter or predator. The animals are in the area.

Often is the case you can’t go after them in the heavy timber where they’re likely bedded due to high elevation and steep thick canyons creating way too much noise...You’d be so busted!

Your best play is to wait them out by staying quiet and allow the fur to pop out of the thick stuff and into the clear cut to fed...Then open up on them.

This has always worked well when I’ve bedded elk that early morning. But, if you have a couple of pards who can’t sit still and work the glass because it’s boring, they preferring to move around...Walk game trails, while talking to each other, basically making too much noise. It’s a PITA trying to get their heads in the hunt when nothing is happening yet...

Lack of experience is my excuse for them. A few more successful hunts I am hoping will help my guys understand this one type of hunt works well for this situation.

All they need to remember is this country is the home of the critters. Unless, pushed or an act from the weather god...They’re patternable. They just need to stay in the game 100% instead of moving around eleviate their boredom. 😎

Sometimes I still hunt, move real slow around low lying rim of a field looking for coyotes. In my deer stand, I’ll usually sit 1/2 the day during deer season and still hunt the rest, both work for me.

So long as I am in the open not in a ground blind and I can look in all directions I can sit all day. I can only make it about 3 hrs in a blind or looking down a shooting lane.

If I'm in open terrain, say out west, it will almost always be a spot and stalk deal. I can sit all day and glass until I put eyes on the object of my desire. If I'm back east hunting whitetails, I'm either still hunting or snow tracking. I don't have the patience to sit when all I can see is 70 or so yards in any direction, if I'm lucky. I always feel that there might be deer moving just beyond where my eyes are able to penetrate. Besides, that's how my dad and grandpa taught me. Now that I've gotten older, if my back tightens up, I'll sit for a 1/2 -1 hr and stretch it out.

I'm impatient and not much for "stand" hunting. I'm usually good for glassing an area for 2 hours, or so, then move on to a different vantage.

I supposed I'm pretty impatient - I doubt I can sit still for more than an hour even in an area I know well that holds animals. Probably the reason I'm not the most successful hunter:) I just never can shake the feeling that if I don't see something right away it has to be because they are just over the hill or in that next canyon so I better go look. I guess it keeps me in shape right And it never fails when I do that I kick up animals for other to shoot at.

I've sat all day and other times I've got up and moved 15 minutes after I sat down.

I'm old enough now I do what ever I WANT to do. It's not a job.

I’m a little of both! I grew up hunting Whitetails in the southeast. I would sit a stand for several hours, then “slow stalk” home for lunch....then go back to the stand for evening hunt.

Up here (for elk) slow hunt from dawn until we get to our desired location, sit it a while. Then, slow hunt for a few hours, until late evening....then sit and watch. Though, as we age......we don’t cover the ground we used to! We now do a lot of the “glassing” from the Polaris Ranger! memtb

If I know animals are in the area, I can and often have spent an entire day waiting for them to come out. Often I'll build a little blind to cover my motion while I eat, read, snooze, whatever. When I know the game is around I don't see any point in going elsewhere.

Used to be my buddies and I would hike 5-10 miles a day with little to show for it. As I got older and slowed down my success rate jumped dramatically.

Several years back I hiked in to an area where I knew there were elk. Nestled into some scrub oak and spent the day there watching, listening, eating, reading, sleeping. Towards dusk they finally came out. I had to move across a saddle and around a patch of pines before I could get a shot. Next morning Daughter #2 and her hubby joined me to pack out the rest of the meat. Afterwards we got them situated on a hill where we could hear the bulls bugling in a valley below us. They stayed put while I took a 3 hour round trip to town with my elk. When I returned we spent several more hours listening to the bulls in the valley and watching elk on the opposite ridge. The elk finally came out in force at dusk, Daughter and SIL thought this was a pretty weird way to hunt elk, but the elk didn't get spooked and run out of the area as they might have had we tried to get them in the valley or the opposite ridge. Just as the sun was setting over a ridge, SIL got his shot, dropping a mature cow at 382 yards.

First time I ever waited long in one place was when we had spotted elk in the sage. They bedded down on a knoll about 600-700 yards out, much too far for anyone to shoot. We closed the gap a bit and took cover behind a line of sage along a drop-off. No way for us to get closer without spooking them. We waited there from about 11:30, through sun, fog, rain, several inches of new snow and more sun. The elk finally came off the knoll with half an hour of shooting light left. They moved into a shallow valley on our right and we got as close as we could as a group. I was up as shooter and crab-walked a bit closer before going to my knees and then all fours. The last 100 yards or so I went head-first through the snow, pushing myself through the sage and cactus with my feet. Finally sat up next to some sage for what was my longest shot ever for many years - 350 yards. It is still my 4th longest.

Beav

I am a patient hunter who STILL hunts. No enigma intended. Still hunting - for me - is closer to STALKING because I'm moving so slow and think of it as stalking the cover.


Having hunted deer leases for so many yrs and you could only go stalking or still hunting after a couple of weeks when most hunters have given up and had to go back to work during the week. I purposely have NOT put up any type of stand. I have a 17 1/2' ladder stand and an Ol Man climber -- both are in my shop.

It's also more interesting to me to gradually see a diff scene rather being stuck in one place.
On one morning a buck was chasing (running) a Doe, she was headed straight for me. I yelled HEY ! the buck stopped and I dropped him.
I don't have any idea WHERE the Doe went but she WAS only a few steps from me when I shot.

On another occasion I was approaching 2 Pine trees and a buck was trailing 1 of 2 Does with his nose on the ground. None of them had seen me. This time I just said 'hey' and the buck stopped and looked up. I dropped him.

I have pix of both bucks laying where they WERE standing when I shot them. It's exciting.


Jerry

With age I've developed more patience. I love a good vantage point, armed with great glass.

I used to hunt by tromping through the timber and thick stuff because that’s where the elk were. Emphasis on “were” since they usually busted me long before I saw them. Now, I try to slip into my hunting area in the dark and sit in a pre-scouted vantage point or blind. Often, I’ll move to a different spot for the evening light if I haven’t seen anything of interest all day. My success rate is much higher than all my years of still hunting and is less wear and tear on my old bones. But whatever works for you is all that really matters; just like your choice of rifle and cartridge.

You hunt alone?....😎

I am impatient. Guess it's the forester/bird hunter in me, I prefer to be moving. Unfortunately, I live in an area where it's almost impossible to kill deer like this; too much underbrush and ground cover. I have to force myself to sit still for an hour or two. Don't kill many deer but like JR said, it's not a job.

Some days I can sit 4 hours and other days I have to keep moving. It's just whatever mood I'm in.