Pennsylvania Game News - November 2024 - 52

to wind direction when I'm hunting. I
don't hunt certain stands if the wind is
wrong. I'll leave a chosen stand if the
wind changes direction during a hunt.
Wind direction dictates where and
when I hunt, period. I've spooked
enough deer to know it's a losing battle
to say, " Maybe they won't smell me
today. " It's not worth the risk. We stink
and the deer know it.
2. DEER IN THE RUT
You know all the rules regarding
movement, noise and odor control we
hunters follow when hunting deer? You
can throw those out the window in the
rut. When a buck is chasing a hot doe,
he's a totally diff erent animal than he
was just a month earlier.
Once when I was hunting pheasants
in a Chester County swamp many
moons ago, I kicked up a doe in some
reeds no more than 20 yards in front of
me. When she took off , a huge 8-point
buck emerged from the grass and walked
toward me, neck swollen, eyes and
nostrils bulging. I was scared. This was
an angry, 200-pound whitetail glaring at
me as he closed the distance between us.
Not knowing what was about to happen,
I pointed my shotgun at him and started
yelling. At 10 yards, he fi nally stopped,
gathered his senses and took off .
Another time I took a walk into the
woods behind my house wearing my
church clothes just to kill some time
before heading to Thanksgiving dinner.
A doe ran across the trail no more than
10 yards from me, followed closely by a
nice buck. The buck stopped on the trail,
looked at me, and then put his nose back
to the ground to continue the chase. It's
like I wasn't even there.
These and other encounters in the
52
rut have taught me I can do some pretty
unorthodox things in the rut to try to
shoot a buck, because they let their
guard way down. Spot and stalk from
the ground, change stand locations in the
middle of the day to get closer to rutting
action, call aggressively, don't worry so
much about the wind. When the bucks
are chasing does, the only thing to worry
about is getting into the woods to fi nd the
action.
3. ARE YOU STILL ENOUGH?
Whitetails are experts at fi nding
things in their environment that don't
belong. A squirrel can run up and down
a tree right next to a deer and it won't
pay any attention. But let that same deer
catch me slowly reaching for my bow 20
feet up a tree, and it will lock on me with
its eyes and ears like a bird dog on point.
You can think you're sitting still in a
deer stand, but until you've had to beat
the icy stare of a mature doe, you don't
really have an idea what it means to sit
still in a stand. Turning your head might
seem pretty innocuous. A deer staring
you down will spot that in a heartbeat.
Adjusting your seat to ease an aching
back isn't a lot of movement, but it can
be too much in the eyes of a deer.
Sitting in a tree stand for several
hours, we have to move. Even if it's to
grab your bow or shoulder your rifl e.
You have to move at some point.
But how should you move? When
should you move?
One of the keys to tagging a specifi c
deer is to be able to get past the eyes,
ears and noses of deer you don't want to
shoot. Through years of close encounters
with those deer, I've learned how to
move to avoid detection, and how to
freeze if a deer is looking my way. And
Pennsylvania Game News - November 2024

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