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.

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?
😎

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.

😎

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

I’ve only hunted one place where I could walk with a chance to ease up on deer. That was fun, I was in my twenties, I walked all over that lease in Ozona. After that I was in south Texas for years, no walking, sat in a stand on senderos. I hunted north Texas for twenty five years, that’s stand hunting brush and big fields of winter wheat. I hunted east Texas piney woods and Juniper thickets in central Texas now. That’s all stand hunting. I sit until about 10 am, go back out at 3:00 pm until dark. Boring hunting compared to open country, but at least I’m out hunting.

I think to much and when Im sitting on a deer stand it gets even worse

If you hunt big mule deer you better be patient. A couple years ago I sat for 17 hours over a 3 day period waiting for a buck to edge out of the timber. He finally made a mistake at daylight of the third day, staying out at timbers edge. I shot him at 200 yds. Nothing to do but wait and hope he made a mistake.

Do my best to be patient and hunt hard.

All of our deer here are mulies plus elk. I'd make a lousy whitetail hunter. There's no way I could sit for hours staring at a tree line.

Great post.

I grew up hunting WT deer. I would usually sit in a treestand until around 8:30, then I would Still Hunt until noon. Go back at 3 and Still Hunt my way back to the previous or a different Tree Stand ( or Box Blind) and sit until dark. When I moved out West, I learned to move fast until I found/got into game, then I'd slow down. But OP said when we "knew" game was in area, I go back to bowhunter mode.

Depends on a lot of factors. how much property one has to work with and if you have a good deal of land to work then when the weather is suitable still hunting can be an option. As I get older tree stand hunting has been the most productive for me. Though I do have fond memories of a Windy October day where the deer were not moving and the wind made siting in a tree unbarable.

Made a plan to work a Tree lane along a large beding area a few miles from my tree stand. As I approached 75 yards from the start of where I expected the deer may bed I noticed a doe and faun ahead. They seemed uneasy for reasons I did not understand why as the 20 to 30MPH winds were blowing my scent crosswind in a safe direction. The noise I was making should have been cover-up by the wind.

Well they moved on & I attempted to close the distance. Turns out a nice 4x4 buck was up wind of them and was looking to close the distance as well. I found myself between the buck and the does path. when he reached 11 yards Broad side in heavy cover I released the arrow. The arrow threaded through through the cover and the dear rain off. I sat back at replayed the shot and seen no reason the shot would not be good. I eased over to the place the deer was standing to look for the arrow.

Did not take long & the arrow was found buried in a tree. Stepped over to evaluate the arrow & found the arrow to be covered in deep red blood. That was enough for me, Backed out and headed to the vehicle too retrieve a dragging rope. Upon returning an hour later an attempt to pick up a blood trail was made. Nearly no blood was found over the corse of 80 yards where I found this 4x4 leaning agents a tree Purdy as could be. Sorry to say I had no camera.

H a

Man THAT would have been a Fantastic Photo !


Jerry

I can sit for an hour or so on a favorite vantage point where a couple well used trails intersect 400 yds out, that usually includes lunch and hydration. Knowing the number of deer and elk killed from that vantage point by family members over the last sixty years is conducive to patience.

But that is the exception, I have always spent the majority of my hunting time walking or horseback riding trails looking for targets of opportunity.

Patient. Very patient.

During the whitetail rut, I'll put in up to 12 eleven hour days out of 14 days (fewer if a mature buck does something stupid in front if me) 20-some feet up a tree on a 24" x 30" hang-on. I love It !!!

So ... that doesn't describe how I hunt. I seldom glass, seldom spot and stalk. I'm a primarily a still-hunter and I focus on heavy brush and black timber. I hunt in equal parts by sight and sound. In oaks and brush I often sit and listen for the sounds of bucks running does or deer pawing acorns. In big timber it is almost all by sight though sometimes I'll find a semi-open ridge to sit and watch, still timbered, but distances open up to 50 yards or more.

In over 40 years of deer hunting, most of my shots have come at 40 yards or less. 2-3 have been under 20 feet ... still hunting, not in a stand, not in a blind, but on the ground face to face with them. Y' oughta see that horrified "oh crap, I just effed up" look when a dominant buck thinks he's come to whoop ass on another buck and suddenly realizes instead that he's brought antlers to a gun fight.

Tom

I get real patient if it’s cold and raining. Turn my heater up a little more!

Yes sir, there are a few spots we hunt that I can recall multiple good deer and elk kills year after year. I tend to stick to those multiple days if it is my turn to hunt them. Happy Trails

Impatient. Hunting season is still MONTHS away.

Patient in the field.

I hate hunting out of a tree stand but oftentimes it’s the best approach for certain applications, 3 hours or so on average unless I’m seeing animals then I can sit there all day. With a rifle I’m usually up walking from the start unless I have a particular place I want to sit, then I can only take it for an hour or so.

+1.....I’m impatiently waiting for summer to end...😎

Myself, I have oodles of patience but I need to climb, walk and glass. Sitting at a preplanned spot watching a lick , bait area or an opening just does not feel like hunting. Climbing a mountain, glassing along the way and sometimes for hours , is my style.

If the woods are alive, I can sit for half a day. If things are obviously slow, it gets harder. It all depends on the game.

In a tree stand, one hour before first light until dark. Yup, I bring along an empty 1/2 gallon jug so I'm not smelling up the place.

I can sit all day if I have to. In Alaska this can mean 20 hours or so. Day after day, but my preference is not. Mid-day napping is in order....

It depends on what it takes to giterdone. Some animals/conditions are best hunted by "stand" or spot and stalk; sometimes it's better to exchange one bit of barren ground for the next, hopefully productive piece.

I would say I am patient, either sitting or slip-hunting. More so stand hunting, but my preference goes the other way. I don't HAVE to move.... and I get to see stuff on stand that I would not if moving. Hawks landing on a branch 2 feet from my head for instance, or a cow nose-trailing my path for 700 yards, to right under my stand, then standing there looking puzzled, or a moose belly 13 feet away from a ground sit... but mid-day tends to be dead, dead, dead as far as seeing moose from a stand.

I tend to move a bit too fast when slip-hunting, but sometimes that's the best hunting method, depending on terraine, cover, weather, and other circumstances. So I guess that tilts toward impatience when slip-hunting.

The first hunting season I was in residence on the Kenai, I can-to-can't-see stand hunted for 13 full days without scoring, and killed the feeding 40 inch bull I'd briefly seen while walking in the first day, not far from where I'd seen him, while slip hunting along a closed-to-vehicles, 3-mile long oil-field access road on the last day I had to hunt, several hours before dark, but with several days of season left. Several factors played into it, too long to go into here, including the ending of a 3-day downpour, but I determined over-winter that stand hunting all day long was not the most productive way, since the moose were almost all seen within an hour of dark /dawn. Mid-day they were bedded down. Yawn.......

For the next 14 years or so, I almost exclusively slip hunted, getting a moose every year - usually on the third or fourth day of hunting. I was working by then, so could only hunt weekends. And I didn't have to be out there before dawn, nor hunt to dark. 18-20 hour days that way...

I did little hunting within a mile of the road and was usually all alone back in there. I hunted the same 2 roughly square-mile areas all those years, learning them thouroughly. Even named some of the moose. One was a bit over a mile back in, the other nearly 5, although they were about 2 miles apart.. I reserved the latter for late season, when I could bring meat out by float-plane, tho I did pack one small bodied spike out of there in 3 heavy loads one year, one afternoon after shooting him mid-morning, and all the next day. I had the time and saved the flight fee.... .

This was a 1969 burn area, with a lot of second growth feed, 30 yard visibility, and scattered "islands" of unburned timber, which the moose used for day-bedding. I simply slip-hunted these bedding "islands", going from one to the next, potentially all day productive hunting, rather than just dawn/dusk. At that time it was "any bull", and I was hunting meat, so when I saw antlers, that was nearly always the end of it, within seconds. A couple times I passed up shooting a bull simply because I didn't (ahem) "know quite where I was" or knew I was waaaay in trouble if I did shoot one there. I never shot anything if I didn't already know how I was getting it out.

20 years later, the stuff had grown up to where the moose bedding areas were a lot less concentrated, the population was declining due to less winter feed, and antler slot limits had been imposed. Usually a jumped bull (other than spike/fork) doesn't give one enough time to both examine him for legality and then shoot while slip-hunting, so it was back to largely unproductive stand hunting. Learning to call them in helped, but this is still mostly a dawn/dusk productive, dead mid-day proposition, with a population maybe 15% now of what it was back in the 80's and 90's.

Mind you, season ends just before or as rut gets started, so from what I've seen on hunting shows on white-tail and elk during the rut, I have no doubt stand hunting/calling moose during the rut would be equally effective as with whitetail during mid-day if you don't mind killing inedible stink-bulls.

I miss the good old days!

more fires!

I have been applying for a desert sheep permit in Arizona for 25 years. Does that count as patience?

No. 40 years unsuccessfuly for a bison permit might....

So to hell with patience. I quit this year!

Bison meat isn't as good as some others anyway. That and sheep/goat hunting have been my ventures into "Sport" hunting over the years.....