Pennsylvania Game News - October 2017 - 36

ROUTES & RELATIONS
Farm-country hunters also must carefully consider how they will approach
and return from their stand sites without
alerting deer of their presence.
Most deer movement in farm country
occurs either very early in the morning,
as deer abandon food sources for daytime
bedding cover, or through the evening
hours, as they travel back to feed.
An aptly placed stand in a field corner
or just inside the woods line can be a
tremendous ambush site.
However, a field full of eyes, noses
and ears makes getting to the stand in
the morning, and leaving in the evening,
equally complicated.
A smart approach to avoid getting
picked off is to use the lay of the land
as a natural barrier for breaking up your
outline as you access the stand.
This might mean slipping into the stand
by way of a drainage trench, rising from
below the contour of a nearby ridge or
using a stream bank to cloak your human
profile.
Another idea is to plant a narrow strip
of screen cover, such as standing corn or
switchgrass, right up to your hunting location. While it's tempting to plant preferred
food sources right below your tree stand,
it's smarter to keep high-draw food plots
at more of a distance so you're not trapped
in your stand at the end of a hunt.
With deer at a distance and screen
cover masking your movements, you
can quietly descend the side of the tree
opposite the field, and sneak out through
a corridor between the woods and tall vegetation, without the deer even realizing it.
Without a doubt, there will be years
when neighbors shoot the No. 1 buck
you were hoping to get. It is just a fact of
life when hunting the country. When this
36

happens, it's important to put aside your
own pride and be happy for them, because
the very next year, you might kill the buck
they were after. It happens!
Maintaining a positive relationship
with your neighbors is essential to the
overall enjoyment of your hunting property. We regularly keep in touch with
our neighbors during hunting season,
exchanging text messages, updates from
the field and success photos. They regularly stop by to see the bucks we harvest,
and we do the same with them. To me,
that makes the hunting more fun.
There also have been times when I've
needed to blood trail my buck onto the
neighboring farm and vice-versa.
Without a good relationship with
those whose properties border ours, this
wouldn't be possible.
It also helps that we have similar goals
for the age of the bucks we target, making
it a win-win for everyone.
Always do what you can to promote
and maintain positive farm-community
relations, and you will mutually see better
results because of it.
As mentioned before, farm country
whitetails aren't as easy as many people
believe. They require months of preparation, a local knowledge of preferred food
sources, and plenty of undisturbed bedding cover.
Additionally, hunting farm bucks
takes patience, a smart entrance and exit
strategy, and the willingness to avoid their
core sanctuaries in order to keep them on
the property.
Even when you do everything right, it
might not result in you placing your tag on
the best buck in the neighborhood.
But that's OK. If there's anyone who
can appreciate the hard work that goes into
harvesting a mature ag-land whitetail, it's
a fellow farmer.
Pennsylvania Game News - October 2017

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