pointers for a new guy
08-04-2013, 06:37 AM
#13
Nontypical Buck
Join Date: Jan 2008
Location:
Posts: 2,186
The 20" length is fine as long as the twist rate is adequate to stabilize the slug ... which the barrell maker should have taken care of in the barrel design. As a matter of choice, my center fire rivle that I hunt white tail deer with has a 20" barrel .... I find this rather compact size ideal for easy handling.
As for a scope, in your $200 price range or $50 or so above, there will be several decent options. I would suggest a heavy plex type reticle. ... German #4 or German #8 for example. This wider reticle is excellent for alignment in low light or to get on target quickly. But this is just my personal preference.
As for a scope, in your $200 price range or $50 or so above, there will be several decent options. I would suggest a heavy plex type reticle. ... German #4 or German #8 for example. This wider reticle is excellent for alignment in low light or to get on target quickly. But this is just my personal preference.
08-04-2013, 04:37 PM
#15
Spike
Join Date: Sep 2009
Posts: 41
Last year was my first year out. I went with a few buddies on opening day (public land) and I didn’t see any deer (well except for the ones in the back of other people’s trucks). I really didn’t expect to, being the first time and all. But shots were ringing all around us, it seemed like everyone was seeing them but me.
My suggestion would be, no joke, find a hunting buddy with land or get in on some kind of lease. Join the local sportsmans' club and meet some people. Perhaps you've already tried this.
As far as drives go, I will only participate if it's highly organized and on private land. Even then I'm not crazy about them.
08-04-2013, 06:25 PM
#16
Fork Horn
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Hamilton, OH
Posts: 456
Sounds like public land all right. It can make for hard hunting. When I hunted on public land as a kid, people would shoot at anything. There was no consideration of whether it was a buck, doe, fawn...it was strictly an "If it's brown, it's down" type scenario. If someone whacked a button buck, they would react as if it were a 10pt. Not the kind of hunting scene I enjoy very much.
My suggestion would be, no joke, find a hunting buddy with land or get in on some kind of lease. Join the local sportsmans' club and meet some people. Perhaps you've already tried this.
As far as drives go, I will only participate if it's highly organized and on private land. Even then I'm not crazy about them.
My suggestion would be, no joke, find a hunting buddy with land or get in on some kind of lease. Join the local sportsmans' club and meet some people. Perhaps you've already tried this.
As far as drives go, I will only participate if it's highly organized and on private land. Even then I'm not crazy about them.
08-04-2013, 10:16 PM
#17
Spike
Thread Starter
Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 18
Teach Deer I dont know how to PM. Thanks again for all the advice guys. I took the entire week after thanksgiving off this year to just sit in the woods so I will try it all out. I will look into joining a sportmans club but I dont think there are any in my area. Leasing land could be an option but im not sure where to find it. I have seen one add online but not really sure who to trust. One things for sure, I havent even seen anything yet and im hooked.
08-05-2013, 08:07 AM
#18
Nontypical Buck
Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: Onslow County, NC
Posts: 1,856
Well guess I will add in to this myself. I'm new to deer hunting myself this season will be my third. First season definitely didn't go to well and was cut short with my first son being born. That said i still learned alot and i improved going into my second season.
From the first season (This might pertain more to my location and state) - I got the same advice find well used trails things like that. My issue was being in the coastal NC you will really only find them trails being a new hunter during the winter. In the spring and summer the foliage grows far too fast and thick that unless you have a trained eye for it you will miss the details. So advice right after deer season and possibly going out shed hunting will help develop this. I also made the mistake that because i constantly seen deer tracks on a dirt road that this must have been one of those travel corridors i heard so much about. What i learned was 1. those tracks that look like 5 different deer may actually be just 1 using that walkway but because we havent had rain or wind the previous week tracks remain intact so it looked like more deer and 2. the deer as soon as they pick up on the fact that its hunting season will not be seen there again. If they do it is usually tracks that you can tell the deer ran across it. He no longer wants to get caught in the open so any larger opening that he knows hunters travel he will run across or cross in the dark.
Second i always heard find the food source and water source. Well that became another issue for me. I stuck to creeks and ponds and such on public land that also was near food plots the commission tilled and planted every year. The problem was again being where i am it rains in the summer and into the fall a lot so the deer don't have a need for a sustained water source like ponds, rivers, creeks, etc. They could find water just about anywhere. And for food. Well bow season starts in mid September and the temps are still in upper 80's to 90's so food was everywhere. It wasn't like other areas where the deer had a preferred source. The deer had plenty of food probably not 50 yards from his bedding site. What I had to learn though was not just the food, they had plenty of that but what foods they would eat first and as the season moved on what plants do they move on to before all else is gone. Like all i heard about was deer would eat acorns first its what they love. Well after sitting a week or two in a cluster of oaks i didnt see a single deer. Why it was marsh oak acorns that i was sitting under which from other hunters i finally learned was probably the last of the acorn group to be eating. So i had to find new food sources and had to rethink what i thought of as food for them.
The last thing i picked up on is exactly what was mentioned here. I thought staying around the food plots would increase my chances of seeing a deer. You would think as the season gets later and food begins to get scarce they would turn to the later planted food plot for food. Well I had a better chance of having multiple hunters walking right to and through the food plot I was set up on then seeing a deer. Had a gentlemen the first season start smoking as he was looking for tracks in the food plot with me not 50 yards away. So needless to say i have learned to stay away from these areas and position myself near bedding sites and these food plots because of that i have seen more deer pass by on my second season from this as the deer where skirting the food plot but the hunters in or on the food plot where pushing them in my direction and back to there bedding areas.
I hope i at least helped. My father and grandfather both hunt its just something I never got into really until 2 years ago. I hunted squirrel and rabbits but never deer and finally the bug bit me from nowhere. Hearing alot of the advice even from my father and others on this site. It sounds all good and they make it seem like its just that simple but from a completely new and inexperienced deer hunter i found out that without someone going out into the woods with you and showing these details majority of it just goes straight over our heads. What looks like a funnel, or pinch or even a great food and bedding area to me was nothing like what my father finally got the time to show me in my second season.
So in the end my advice would be to 1. just get out there. I started going out into the woods any chance i got just to walk around and see what i see, even in the summer. You learn the land and you find where trees are growing where food sources are growing. When you pick up on details and learn you get closer. Then comes the fun part. Damn near having a heart attack because now you see what they are talking about but you take it a little too far and jump a deer not 5 yards away bedded down that you had no idea was there. Thats when you start to learn to not push too far into a deers habitat that he calls home.
2. Find someone to show you what they know. They can explain things to you but if they explain that it looks like a cluster of trees well the whole damn woods looks like a cluster of trees. Its when they get out there with you and show what they mean that it dawns on you what they where saying.
Im still learning and have a long ways to go but did get my first shot with a bow this last season (Missed arrow hit a branch and went high). Also had my first stare down with a little fork tine buck. Thought it was a squirrel still clamoring through the leaves behind me (The squirrel was there for 2 hrs that morning and that noise has been quiet for at least 1/2hr when i started hearing leave again). Finally turned around to look around the big pine i was sitting at the base of to see the buck stop in his tracks and just stare at me. We just sat there staring for what seemed like 15 minutes before he slowly backup and and went back into a thicket. Few minutes later seen him another 200 yards down running out the thicket and as far away from where i was as he could get.
From the first season (This might pertain more to my location and state) - I got the same advice find well used trails things like that. My issue was being in the coastal NC you will really only find them trails being a new hunter during the winter. In the spring and summer the foliage grows far too fast and thick that unless you have a trained eye for it you will miss the details. So advice right after deer season and possibly going out shed hunting will help develop this. I also made the mistake that because i constantly seen deer tracks on a dirt road that this must have been one of those travel corridors i heard so much about. What i learned was 1. those tracks that look like 5 different deer may actually be just 1 using that walkway but because we havent had rain or wind the previous week tracks remain intact so it looked like more deer and 2. the deer as soon as they pick up on the fact that its hunting season will not be seen there again. If they do it is usually tracks that you can tell the deer ran across it. He no longer wants to get caught in the open so any larger opening that he knows hunters travel he will run across or cross in the dark.
Second i always heard find the food source and water source. Well that became another issue for me. I stuck to creeks and ponds and such on public land that also was near food plots the commission tilled and planted every year. The problem was again being where i am it rains in the summer and into the fall a lot so the deer don't have a need for a sustained water source like ponds, rivers, creeks, etc. They could find water just about anywhere. And for food. Well bow season starts in mid September and the temps are still in upper 80's to 90's so food was everywhere. It wasn't like other areas where the deer had a preferred source. The deer had plenty of food probably not 50 yards from his bedding site. What I had to learn though was not just the food, they had plenty of that but what foods they would eat first and as the season moved on what plants do they move on to before all else is gone. Like all i heard about was deer would eat acorns first its what they love. Well after sitting a week or two in a cluster of oaks i didnt see a single deer. Why it was marsh oak acorns that i was sitting under which from other hunters i finally learned was probably the last of the acorn group to be eating. So i had to find new food sources and had to rethink what i thought of as food for them.
The last thing i picked up on is exactly what was mentioned here. I thought staying around the food plots would increase my chances of seeing a deer. You would think as the season gets later and food begins to get scarce they would turn to the later planted food plot for food. Well I had a better chance of having multiple hunters walking right to and through the food plot I was set up on then seeing a deer. Had a gentlemen the first season start smoking as he was looking for tracks in the food plot with me not 50 yards away. So needless to say i have learned to stay away from these areas and position myself near bedding sites and these food plots because of that i have seen more deer pass by on my second season from this as the deer where skirting the food plot but the hunters in or on the food plot where pushing them in my direction and back to there bedding areas.
I hope i at least helped. My father and grandfather both hunt its just something I never got into really until 2 years ago. I hunted squirrel and rabbits but never deer and finally the bug bit me from nowhere. Hearing alot of the advice even from my father and others on this site. It sounds all good and they make it seem like its just that simple but from a completely new and inexperienced deer hunter i found out that without someone going out into the woods with you and showing these details majority of it just goes straight over our heads. What looks like a funnel, or pinch or even a great food and bedding area to me was nothing like what my father finally got the time to show me in my second season.
So in the end my advice would be to 1. just get out there. I started going out into the woods any chance i got just to walk around and see what i see, even in the summer. You learn the land and you find where trees are growing where food sources are growing. When you pick up on details and learn you get closer. Then comes the fun part. Damn near having a heart attack because now you see what they are talking about but you take it a little too far and jump a deer not 5 yards away bedded down that you had no idea was there. Thats when you start to learn to not push too far into a deers habitat that he calls home.
2. Find someone to show you what they know. They can explain things to you but if they explain that it looks like a cluster of trees well the whole damn woods looks like a cluster of trees. Its when they get out there with you and show what they mean that it dawns on you what they where saying.
Im still learning and have a long ways to go but did get my first shot with a bow this last season (Missed arrow hit a branch and went high). Also had my first stare down with a little fork tine buck. Thought it was a squirrel still clamoring through the leaves behind me (The squirrel was there for 2 hrs that morning and that noise has been quiet for at least 1/2hr when i started hearing leave again). Finally turned around to look around the big pine i was sitting at the base of to see the buck stop in his tracks and just stare at me. We just sat there staring for what seemed like 15 minutes before he slowly backup and and went back into a thicket. Few minutes later seen him another 200 yards down running out the thicket and as far away from where i was as he could get.
08-05-2013, 02:57 PM
#19
Fork Horn
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Kentucky
Posts: 201
GordonRS...
I tried to upload a post to you, but due to the length, the forum [???] would not accept it...that is why I offered to PM...
I will try again...
1. Your Shotgun...is perfectly acceptable with a 20" barrel...ammo companies design their sabot slugs around that length... assuming it is a rifled barrel, purchase a box of several types of sabot slugs...you have to find out what your gun likes (my shotgun really likes the Hornady SSTs)...bore sight your shotgun to get it on paper, then with specific aiming points fire 3-5 rounds of each type to find the most precise ammo (50 yards is far enough away for this)...after you decide what to shoot, buy several boxes and sight the gun in at 75-100 yards.
2. Your Scope...shotgun recoil is rough on a scope so the general rule that you get what you pay for goes double here...invest in a scope made for shotguns (preferably with a bullet drop compensating reticle)...Bass Pro/Cabela is a good place to check out a lot of different scopes at one time...I like the Nikon series...be sure to get a quality (steel) set of scope rings...
3. Your Equipment...get a climbing stand that you can carry in/out of the woods...watch the weight...many of these stands are really too heavy / but make sure the stand will support you...try to find deals in the off-season or on Ebay, etc... go for under 20#...when at your tree, try for a height of about 20 feet (use a 20 feet pull rope and go up until it tightens (you will feel it), but stay with background cover, even if it is a bit lower...make sure you have a good safety harness and use it... Place your stand on the NORTH side of the tree when feasible...
Buy a Windicator bottle ($4 at Walmart)...little white bottle that puffs out talc to indicate the wind direction...when used up, you can refill it with corn starch...I use mine to death...remember you want to set up so that any wind is blowing from where you expect the deer to be (trail) to your stand... Don't fight the wind--you will loose!
4. Scouting...most DNRs have maps of public land (and this CAN be some very good hunting)...the best time to seriously scout (other than while hunting) is AFTER the season closes (snow on the ground for a couple of days can really point out the trails) when you can easily see the rubs/rub lines and/or scrapes...record locations of trails and other sign with latitude/longitude (a GPS is great here, but a smartphone will do this too)...
USE Google Earth...you can create flags by inputting the lat/long with a description...after a couple of years, you can really start picking up on deer movement patterns...
5. Deer Patterns...deer have the same basic requirements as humans...food, water, shelter, safety and reproduction...unless you are hunting a really dry area, avoid the water deal...locate food sources (but they will change throughout the season) and bedding areas (generally any area that you don't want to go into will hold deer)...follow the trail between the two...look for geographic features that funnel deer into a bottleneck (creeks with steep banks can do this...find the crossing)...preferably with two or three trails intersecting and deer sign (some big rubs, etc) nearby...pick out a tree or two or three based on the prevailing wind conditions (generally out of the west)...
6. RUT...prepare to stay all day...let other hunters move the deer for you...take a snack (trailmix, apples --stay veggie based) and enough water...also take a book (read a paragraph / look carefully around...repeat)--the book actually aids in concentration and keeping you still...video games/phones can work, but in lower light conditions they tend to backlight your face...
There are so many tricks and techniques that everyone on the forum could tell you something new, in the end you have to spend time on a stand watching deer and even other hunters... Best of luck ...
David
I tried to upload a post to you, but due to the length, the forum [???] would not accept it...that is why I offered to PM...
I will try again...
1. Your Shotgun...is perfectly acceptable with a 20" barrel...ammo companies design their sabot slugs around that length... assuming it is a rifled barrel, purchase a box of several types of sabot slugs...you have to find out what your gun likes (my shotgun really likes the Hornady SSTs)...bore sight your shotgun to get it on paper, then with specific aiming points fire 3-5 rounds of each type to find the most precise ammo (50 yards is far enough away for this)...after you decide what to shoot, buy several boxes and sight the gun in at 75-100 yards.
2. Your Scope...shotgun recoil is rough on a scope so the general rule that you get what you pay for goes double here...invest in a scope made for shotguns (preferably with a bullet drop compensating reticle)...Bass Pro/Cabela is a good place to check out a lot of different scopes at one time...I like the Nikon series...be sure to get a quality (steel) set of scope rings...
3. Your Equipment...get a climbing stand that you can carry in/out of the woods...watch the weight...many of these stands are really too heavy / but make sure the stand will support you...try to find deals in the off-season or on Ebay, etc... go for under 20#...when at your tree, try for a height of about 20 feet (use a 20 feet pull rope and go up until it tightens (you will feel it), but stay with background cover, even if it is a bit lower...make sure you have a good safety harness and use it... Place your stand on the NORTH side of the tree when feasible...
Buy a Windicator bottle ($4 at Walmart)...little white bottle that puffs out talc to indicate the wind direction...when used up, you can refill it with corn starch...I use mine to death...remember you want to set up so that any wind is blowing from where you expect the deer to be (trail) to your stand... Don't fight the wind--you will loose!
4. Scouting...most DNRs have maps of public land (and this CAN be some very good hunting)...the best time to seriously scout (other than while hunting) is AFTER the season closes (snow on the ground for a couple of days can really point out the trails) when you can easily see the rubs/rub lines and/or scrapes...record locations of trails and other sign with latitude/longitude (a GPS is great here, but a smartphone will do this too)...
USE Google Earth...you can create flags by inputting the lat/long with a description...after a couple of years, you can really start picking up on deer movement patterns...
5. Deer Patterns...deer have the same basic requirements as humans...food, water, shelter, safety and reproduction...unless you are hunting a really dry area, avoid the water deal...locate food sources (but they will change throughout the season) and bedding areas (generally any area that you don't want to go into will hold deer)...follow the trail between the two...look for geographic features that funnel deer into a bottleneck (creeks with steep banks can do this...find the crossing)...preferably with two or three trails intersecting and deer sign (some big rubs, etc) nearby...pick out a tree or two or three based on the prevailing wind conditions (generally out of the west)...
6. RUT...prepare to stay all day...let other hunters move the deer for you...take a snack (trailmix, apples --stay veggie based) and enough water...also take a book (read a paragraph / look carefully around...repeat)--the book actually aids in concentration and keeping you still...video games/phones can work, but in lower light conditions they tend to backlight your face...
There are so many tricks and techniques that everyone on the forum could tell you something new, in the end you have to spend time on a stand watching deer and even other hunters... Best of luck ...
David
