OUTDOOR HUB
Bernie Barringer | November 19, 2013
Reading a book can make time on-stand pass much faster. Just make sure you have a plan because things can happen fast and you don’t want to be caught holding a book when you should be holding a bow.
Sitting all day during the peak of the rut can be very productive, but very boring. Here are five tips to make it more bearable and improve your odds of being ready when the big one shows up.
I’m a pretty high-strung person. Sitting still for long periods has always come hard for me. Three hours is a long sit for me and a four-hour sit seems like an eternity. But I have forced myself into some long vigils because I know the payoff can be terrific. The axiom that you can’t kill them from the couch seems like a tired old saying, but it rings true when it comes to hunting mature whitetails during the rut.
There is a window of opportunity for whitetail hunters when mature bucks are on their feet during the day and constantly on the move. If you can park yourself in a high-percentage spot to contact one of these cruising bucks, you will up your odds greatly. In most of whitetail country, where the rut is a frenzy of activity during early November, the window of opportunity we want to take advantage of is during the five to seven days of peak movement before the so-called lockdown phase. These few days have bucks in a tongue-wagging, to buy flagyl online hoof-pounding fury. They are on the move, following terrain contours, checking doe bedding and feeding areas, interacting with other bucks, working scrapes, and generally carousing. It’s a wonderful time to be in a treestand—if you’re in the right spot.
Confidence is key
For me, having confidence in my spot is the most important factor in keeping me there. If I feel very strongly that I am in the right spot, and something good could happen at any moment, I can not only stay on-stand, but also stay focused and alert for much longer. Confidence is gained by knowing your surroundings.
My buddy Chris Dunkin was the beneficiary of a long sit. Something terrific can happen at any time, but you have to be there to take advantage of it.
You can’t know you are in the right spot unless you know what the other spots are like. If you don’t know what is just over that ridge 200 yards away, how can you know that you are in the right spot? You have to spend the time on foot learning the area, looking at the directions of the tracks, analyzing the terrain contours, and finding the bedding areas and the travel corridors. You don’t do that the day of the hunt, you need to do that with time for evidence of your presence to dissipate. Trail cameras can be key to this, but nothing works better than really burning the boot leather and walking it out.
Images courtesy Bernie Barringer