One Week to Hunt
BY BILL WINKE
BOWHUNTING
101
22 PETERSEN’SBOWHUNTING 09 • 20 19
I
n my feature for this issue
[Celebrating October, p. 80],
I mention the need to keep
impact to a minimum during
the early season in order to
save your best stands for the
best times. However, I stop
short of telling you how to ac-
tually hunt those stands once
the time comes. In this column,
I’m going to dovetail the fea-
ture by focusing on that goal.
gers or nature hikers and even in
fringe cover near active farmsteads.
For example, the deer I hunt near my
house are much less paranoid about
some human scent than the deer I
hunt in the middle of the farm are.
On the other hand, when deer
find signs of human intrusion in
their sanctuary areas, they move
on or become extremely cautious.
In human terms, a deer’s reaction
to our presence in these places is
similar to you or I walking into our
house and seeing a stranger sitting
in front of our television.
High-activity areas are also dan-
gerous places to hunt, as counterin-
tuitive as that may be. When there
are lots of deer passing your stand,
you have the potential to educate
lots of deer. That’s a bad risk to take
on the first few days of a weeklong
hunting vacation. Start slow (on the
outside) and finish strong (in the
high-activity areas).
The Ultimate Week
Pictured above is a hypothetical
hunting area containing many of
the terrain, sign and cover elements
found in a whitetail’s range. While it
may not look like your hunting area,
the principles involved in this image
are the same everywhere.
Assume that the most active spot
on the property is listed as location
number 6. In the past, this is where
you might have started. This year,
it’s where you’ll finish.
Day One: Be conservative — start
slow. The stand in the fence line
marked number 1 is a great starting
point. It’s easy to get to/from this
spot without spooking deer — a
very important quality of any great
stand. There will still be buck traf-
fic coming past the stand because
it represents a good travel funnel,
and it will give you a good view of
what’s happening in other areas. I
would hunt it morning and evening
on day one.
Day Two: If your stands are al-
ready up, you can move on. If not,
hunt location 1 in the morning and
Let’s assume you have just one
week to hunt and the property
you’re going to hunt is relative-
ly small — 120 acres or less. Your
hunting vacation will probably fall
during the rut. The idea is to apply
as much pressure as you can with-
out the deer knowing it so they
keep moving naturally (i.e, moving
in daylight). The perfect squeeze is
more art than science, but here’s a
simple formula you can fine-tune
based on your circumstances.
Outside In
Where you squeeze, and how
hard, depends on the situation
(again, this is the art of deer hunt-
ing), but the idea is universal: work
from the outside in and apply pres-
sure gradually. Take an orange, for
example. If you wanted to juice it,
you wouldn’t stick your spoon right
into the middle and start twisting. In
the same way, if you want to squeeze
all the “juice” out of your hunting
area, start wide and steadily work
your way in.
On the surface, it seems reason-
able to go right to your best stand
on the first day. I’ve done it myself
more than a few times, but there are
several reasons why this often leads
to a disappointing season.
Deer have amazing abilities to
sense human intrusion. They can
pick up our presence in a number
of ways: sight, sound, airborne
scent and ground scent. A high per-
centage of the deer that come past
your stand, even after you’ve left
it, will realize your presence. Un-
less the setup is perfect (and few
are), deer know.
Start Slow
Deer react differently to signs of
human intrusion depending upon
where they find it. Deer live around
people, so they usually come to ac-
cept some human scent along the
fringes of their core areas. This typ-
ically occurs along fence lines that
farmers walk when checking cattle,
near roadways that see walkers, jog-
Whitetail habitat
differs across
North America,
but many
elements of it are
the same. Deer
always need food,
shelter, cover
and water; learn
to hunt these
effectively and
you can kill a big
buck anywhere
they roam.
