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

For clarification...You saw animals in the area of a large cut that has sectioned strips of timber, and timer surrounding the clear cut.

Are you going to sit and wait em out?

Try to push the timber even though that would put you into a steep decline or incline to reach timber?

Or, leave the area after you felt you’ve given the animals enough time to show?

How long would you give the animals to pop out?
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One to two hours. That would be patient, right?

I've played that game with deer before. Patience is a virtue, and generally leads to a punched tag.

Guess it depends on the hunt, the species most of all. I know that time behind good glass in good locales nets good results. I glass a lot for mulies and blacktail, sit a lot for whitetail. Whitetail move a lot more than mulies or blacktail so I sit and watch, usually in areas where shots tend to be close. Elk is a mixture, east side of the cascades I glass alot, western wa I glass and move from clear cut to clearcut, looking for fresh tracks in between....

Now that I'm in my old age I'll stay put all day if I'm in the right area. That was the case with the last deer I got. Sat in one spot all day; filled my buck tag with less than 20 minutes of legal shooting time left.

[quote=jwall]
Updated Earlier Post:


No. 1 --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.


This one was in 2015 shot with M Six 270 Win - He was laying 26/27 steps from where I was standing. Blood is the exit.






No. 2 --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.

This one was in 2017 shot with M 98 in 284. Neck Shot



Jerry

All day and tomorrow :-)

at my age of 65 i have learned to be patient i can get in a stand a hour before sunrise and sit tell after dark with a bow or rifle. i do prefer a heated enclosed stand with the windows always shut too for gun hunting,my reason is no scent,warm hunter and your moment is less. i even have inside of stand painted walls dark ,use small windows,wear dark clothes once i am in stand. too shoot bigger whitetail bucks you need to be sneaky just as that old buck has learned ,you may only get 1 shot a year at a bruiser and/or one shot every other year ,its no very often you kill a good buck but its well worth when you tag a good mature buck.good luck this fall,Pete53

As I've gotten older become less patient. After about 2 hours I want to start walking. In some obvious cases I don't, like on a baited bear stand. But for deer, after a while I want to move.

I am both. I cannot hunt over bait or sit in a stand. I need to move my body, spot and stalk, hours and hours of glassing and equivalent hours of hiking. and repositioning.

I've gotten more and more patient as the years have progressed.

I can remember my first bow hunts back in the early 80's. I couldn't stop fidgetting and looking at my watch every whipstitch. I invented a game for myself-- trying to go 5 minutes without looking at my wristwatch.

In 2005, I was diagnosed with an underactive Thyroid. What that meant for hunting was that I had to fight to stay aware. "Patience" doesn't quite cut it. If I don't work hard at it, hours can go by. I get up and get out to the stand. Bang! It's first light. Bang! It's sunrise. Bang! It's mid-morning. Bang! It's time to go in for lunch. I'm not sleeping. It's just that my time sense gets screwed up, and I can go hours without noticing. Now, I have to be careful to deliberately get up and move around so my circulations doesn't stop. I've had my butt and legs go to sleep so bad I couldn't stand. That's hairy in a treestand.

The way I am now is ideal for turkey and deer hunting. I can go sit with my back to a tree and have hens come up and peck at my bootlaces. With deer, it's really easy to sit for hours and wait for them to come out to feed. I just become part of the forest.

Reading helps. Starting about 2005, I started carrying a book. I'll read a couple of pages and then scan about. Page turns are a good cue. In 2012, I switched to an Android Tablet. It's small, thin, and lightweight. I get through 2-3 good military history books per season. For deer season, I keep it on a retractable line so that I can drop the tablet, and it'll just roll up and stay attached to the shooting rail of my stand.

there’s lots of reasons and ways to go about a hunt. Type of animal being hunted, weather, etc...play a huge role in how a guy wants to hunt the country...

If I was in the hardwoods of the East, I would have a tough time staying still. Seeing thick, thicker, thickest cover would be tough keeping myself in the hunt game without going still hunt mode...Personally, “hats off” to all you that hunt that thick schit and are successful.

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I have always enjoyed moving in the mountains and rarely glassed for more than 1 hour. For the last few years I have mainly hunted coyotes and wolves. I have learned that when calling spending more time on a stand is more productive. The only wolves I have seen were at a long distance. When there is snow on the ground and I find wolf sign I will set up and glass and call where I can see a long way and spend at least 2 hours calling and howling.

I have invested in a sled, good down jacket, pants and mitts and a Helinox chair so I can remain still for several hours in the cold. When I am hoping for a wolf if a coyote comes into range my patience ends and I shoot the coyote and move to another spot. This year I plan on hunting from Sept.-March for wolves and may even buy a snow machine to extend my range. This will be the year


mike r

Amazingly impatient! If I am bowhunting from a treestand I force myself to stay there because it's to hard to move :-) Sitting on the ground and waiting, I am more likely to go see "what's over there"

I've now moved out west and REALLY looking forward to move of the glassing, spot and stalk model!

Developed a lot of patience when I started hunting rugged big sky country with binos and spotting scopes. Zero to be seen all morning, and then 8 to 10 different bucks appear around 4 or 5 in the afternoon. Admittedly though, we might be scanning 8 to 10 square miles from a single vantage point.

If one simply tries to walk something up for jump shooting, he mostly just wears himself out.

^ especially if I know there’s a good blacktail using the area 🦌

I’m patiently impatient....

I’ll glass for a while, then slowly hunt my way to the next glassing spot. We typically kill about 1/3 of our critters on the move between glassing spots.

Impatiently patient

I could spend a week in a stand in the wrong area for no benefit. I cover ground hunt scouting until I find sign/sight game. Then I put together a plan and become more patient but that patience can be pretty active. If I have more than one forest edge to view and can move between them I will move multiple times if needs be. My ideal is to sit for first light and still hunt to other vantage points thereafter. In the evening I prefer to sit for last light.

One thing I try and avoid is moving from woods to fields just before end of last light. Tend to ruin both ie leave woods before best time, arrive at field too late.

[quote=Beaver10
If I was in the hardwoods of the East, I would have a tough time staying still. Seeing thick, thicker, thickest cover would be tough keeping myself in the hunt game without going still hunt mode...Personally, “hats off” to all you that hunt that thick schit and are successful.

😎

[/quote]

I have zero patience. I will however painfully sit in a box stand for 3-4 hours because A. Deer are moving all around me constantly B, The wind is in my favor in the box blind .

C. I do not want to cross over property lines or mess up someone else that might be right across from me on another property.

Very little big woods anymore at least in the east where one can track a deer without worrying about trespassing , interfering with another hunter. Adirondacks, parts of vermont and the north woods of maine are the last of the mohicans. Battue even mentioned parts of PA that he hunts. I would not sit if hunting big woods deer .

Depends on how cold it is.
Phil