The truth about all that deer hunting stuff

Ok! I am old school deer hunter and this article is about the truth as I see it, perhaps many of you hunters will not agree with me, in fact, probably most of you won’t, but I just have to get this subject off my chest.

I still deer hunt by climbing up in an eighteen-foot ladder stand tied to a seventy-foot black spruce tree that rocks back and forth with a good northwest wind. Some days it is not only bitterly cold, but all that rocking can be downright scary.

I sit along a creek with lots of brush and young trees mixed in with mature oaks. On most mornings I hunt until about 10 a.m., climb down from my tree stand and start stalking the woods looking for deer and warming up my frozen feet. During warm days it is really enjoyable, during cold windy days, not so much. I have had very good luck hunting this way, both in my tree stand and stalking deer in the woods. 

I grew up hunting the woods. Not sitting in a heated box stand along the edge of a deer food plot. I hunt with a rifle, knife, compass, warm blaze orange clothes, boots for sitting and another pair for walking. That’s it. I don’t need anything else. Well, I do bring a snack along. I am not a bow hunter so my comments here are for hunters of the rifle season. 

My grandpa and my father trained me to read the woods, figure out where the deer were moving, what they were eating, where they bedded down and how to stalk the woods quietly and safely.

Now, let’s take a look into the modern day hunting store and see what stuff today’s hunter are told they must have. Outside the store are the box stands, even ground stands that look like tree stumps, and ground tents. The stands are usually designed with windows and heaters.

Inside the store is the collection of hunting stuff that overwhelms the senses. Blaze orange heated socks, gloves, facemasks, orange hand warmers, binoculars, rattling horns, a ton of other devices that make sounds like a buck in fight, trail cameras, scents, scents everywhere, scents for does in heat, scents for does on the run, scents for bucks in heat looking for does in heat, fawn calls, doe calls, buck calls, tree mirrors, binoculars, fake tree branches, scent wicks for hanging on branches, cover scents for spraying on the hunter’s gloves, boots, coats, shirts and faces, and the best one…..that little bottle of puff that one squeezes so one can see which way the wind is blowing. 

Well you get the point, you need a four wheeler and a trailer to get all this stuff out to your stand. This is an unbelievable collection of stuff being marketed to go deer hunting!

So I like to keep it simple, carry what I need in my coat and hunt on the move. I leave all the rest of that stuff on the shelf. Full disclosure: that heated box stand with a heater does have a nice ring to it when the temperature is below zero.

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