Pennsylvania Game News - July 2016 - 62

but I don't want to play the "I was here
first" game.
You might end up in that situation
anyway, if another hunter walks in on
you unsuspectingly, or vice versa. But if
you have evidence that others are around,
then you know you might run into them.
I go to great lengths to minimize my
scent and noise to keep deer from knowing I'm around. Other hunters might not
be so diligent. If I'm hunting an area
other hunters use, everything I do to avoid
detection could be moot.
Rest assured, on almost any piece of
ground, it's likely there are places hunters
avoid. The deer know where they are. You
need to find them.
The first place I always look for is the
thickest, nastiest patch of cover.
You'd be surprised how a big-racked
buck can snake into such a place. If it's
legal, trim a narrow path into such cover
to a tree where you can hang a stand and
get above the tangles. Don't overdo it.
You don't want other hunters to find your
honey-hole. Selectively cut just enough
branches to allow you to slip through.
Remember, cutting brush is not legal
on Pennsylvania's public lands. It is
allowed on private property, with landowner permission.
Overlook nothing. There could be a
tiny cluster of trees out in the middle of
a field that everyone walks past because
it looks worthless. That's just the kind of
place where a mature buck might go when
the pressure is on.
In 2004, Pennsylvania bowhunter
Lester Zimmerman shot a monster,
15-point buck that currently ranks 35th
among archery harvests in the state's
record book by hunting from a stand he
placed in a fencerow jutting into a cornfield. The whole area Zimmerman was
hunting saw a lot of bowhunting pressure,
62

but only he hunted that fencerow.
If you scout and scout, and still can't
find a place without hunters, study their
travel patterns to see if you can use their
activity to your benefit.
My brother-in-law had great success
bowhunting a state park when he canoed
across the lake to get to a wooded peninsula a good two hours before daylight.
This finger of woods was not terribly
remote, but by approaching it from the
water very early, he could get into position
at the very tip before other hunters walked
in from the road. Often, they pushed deer
out the peninsula, which funneled them
right to his tree.
Also, hunt during the week.
I'm always amazed at how little competition I find on even the most pressured
ground, simply by hunting weekdays.
And especially in the morning. A lot of
hunters get off work early enough that
they can slip out for evening hunts.
But I usually have mornings to myself.

Walk Away
The most difficult aspect of bowhunting in a crowd is your willingness to walk
away from a spot.
If someone moves in on you, don't be
stubborn. Move out. It's hard. It's going to
hurt. But what good does it do to sit defiantly in your stand if the deer now avoid
that area because of pressure from others?
I once put three years into finding and
then figuring out how to hunt a funnel
between two patches of thick cover on
private land where a lot of people had
permission to hunt.
Where I hung my stand, the landowner
wanted no gun hunting. That suited me
perfectly. And it seemed all the other
guys on the property stayed away from it,
because they wanted to find spots where
they could hunt with bow and gun.
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Pennsylvania Game News - July 2016
