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Bow hunting through the orange army

Tim0712

Tim0712

Well-Known Member
SH Member
Joined
Jan 18, 2021
Messages
773
I’ll start this off by saying I’m not part of any orange army I’m a lone wolf all year with the exception of hunting will one good friend and my brother occasionally during gun. This year I set a personal goal to get my first archery deer and it just never fell together right. So I have a question for you guys that strictly bow hunt primarily. What’s your tactics? Shotgun here gets hammered and now that we’re in black powder season the woods get quieter and now I’m gonna break the bow back out and pursue my goal. How do you guys differ your approach once the woods get hammered?
 
Tim0712 said:
I’ll start this off by saying I’m not part of any orange army I’m a lone wolf all year with the exception of hunting will one good friend and my brother occasionally during gun. This year I set a personal goal to get my first archery deer and it just never fell together right. So I have a question for you guys that strictly bow hunt primarily. What’s your tactics? Shotgun here gets hammered and now that we’re in black powder season the woods get quieter and now I’m gonna break the bow back out and pursue my goal. How do you guys differ your approach once the woods get hammered?
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Not sure where you are but what @Bigterp posted is pretty much the answer. Identify the primary food sources and bedding. If there is a spot that pinches travel between 'em, even better.
 
Deer are starting herd back up and get on the hottest food sources. Find the food, back track it to bedding. I will go in and bump the deer right out of there beds. Then follow there escape route for 50 to 100 yards. Then I setup and wait for them to return. This tactic works more times for me then it doesn't. The deer will be on edge looking for you, but just be ready. I've had them come back within 15 minutes of being setup all the way up to couple hours. But for the most part they usually return to there bed. If they return on different trail, make note and return for another hunt in a week. I know it's sounds weird to purposely jump deer, but you got to get them moving, other wise they may never get up before dark. Be aggressive.

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Anytime in preesured areas snd outside of the rut
I would be hunting alot in the super thick and wet spots. Especially along transitions.
make sure its spots that give bucks several sense advantages.
its why they will bed there.
if theres no advantage they probably wont bed there.
if you can find an area thats really thick and wet with food on the interior thst would be the best scenerio.
example would be a small oak flat inside of a huge nasty swampy briar patch.
deer will move within those kinds of areas almost all day long.
its nit impossible but very difficult to access these areas but thats the challenge.
figure that out and you will be seeing more deer than most other hunters all say long.
 
Bigterp said:
Rescout & find transitions along really thick stuff. Sounds over simplified but just think about where youlld be if everyone on that property was trying to kill you……
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Late season was really slow before I figured this out. I used to hunt late season the same spots I did early season. I would sometimes go all of late season and only see a few deer. For instance, pinch points do not work for me in late season if the pinch points are open at all.

I want to be in or right beside really thick stuff or places with other barriers. One of my spots is public but the only way to get there without trespassing is to put on waders and wade a shallow river. Folks just don't do that when they can watch a corn feeder in their backyards.
 
You might be able to exploit the other hunters. If you get out earlier or farther, maybe they'll push traffic towards where you are. Personally I rifle hunt during rifle season, and my main concern is safety. In addition to scouting for deer, I'm mindful of hard (ballistic) cover, parking and access areas, etc.
You might also use this as a hook to access private or agricultural land. Or look for city hunts, or really small parcels that might hold deer trying to evade us flying pumpkins.
 
For public land firearm season, i try to take some days off during week when nobody else will be out there if im going to archery hunt....ive noticed alot of the firearm public guys around here are pretty lazy and dont go more than 400-500 yards in most cases so i get in super early and hike to a section waaay back where i feel like they will push the deer to when they start coming in.
 
Tim0712 said:
I’ll start this off by saying I’m not part of any orange army I’m a lone wolf all year with the exception of hunting will one good friend and my brother occasionally during gun. This year I set a personal goal to get my first archery deer and it just never fell together right. So I have a question for you guys that strictly bow hunt primarily. What’s your tactics? Shotgun here gets hammered and now that we’re in black powder season the woods get quieter and now I’m gonna break the bow back out and pursue my goal. How do you guys differ your approach once the woods get hammered?
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Same way i hunt before theyre in the woods, bedding, food, sign, get between any of it quietly and wait long enough and youll get your archery deer. Archery makes the world smaller though, no more sniping deer past 40-60yds, makes it much more intimate.
 
So as of now I usually hunt edges of thickets and swamps during archery so basically I should just get deeper into them and hope for the best? I have 2 weeks off starting tomorrow so hoping to make the best of it!!!
 
So I have went to archery only. I pay the gun hunters no mind. I go in scouting and setting up with archery only in mind. I actually killed my buck this year in opening day of rifle with a bow
 
Tim0712 said:
So as of now I usually hunt edges of thickets and swamps during archery so basically I should just get deeper into them and hope for the best? I have 2 weeks off starting tomorrow so hoping to make the best of it!!!
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Sounds like you may already be doing what it takes. If it were me, I would go in and hunt as usual on day one. If the deer are not on the edges of the swamps and thickets, then I would go deeper. If that failed, I would plan to scout aggressively and bump deer if need be. Find out where they are then make a plan to hunt them. If they are there during gun season pressure, they feel relatively safe. Good luck and kill a giant!
 
thedutchtouch said:
I cheat and hunt bow only areas, if that's an option it'll probably be a best bet. If not, you already have better advice above than I could give. Just make sure you wear your orange too, some of the army gets trigger happy with motion, but you know that already
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This is my solution on public land. One year I was hunting what I thought was a bow-only tract, turns out they’d just opened it to muzzleloader that year and hadn’t changed the regs to reflect it. I found myself down the sights of another man’s muzzleloader and he admittedly almost pulled the trigger on me until he saw my vest. He spotted my Montana decoy, somehow didn’t see me less than 10 yds away on the ground, and drew a bead on it before I shifted my weight and he finally spotted me (making sure to swing his barrel in my direction before letting down). Moral of that story is: make sure that if it says archery only, it’s truly archery only. And double check everything because regs can change in the middle of the season or without being reflected in your manual.
 
I do something maybe a little off. I wear an orange hat 90% of the time if I’m by myself. One so I’m seen and two if I’m down. It sticks out. I take it off and put it in my back once on the stand.
 
If any form of gun season is in, I wear orange when I am on the ground and use a light in the dark. I don't have any bow only areas to hunt. I usually wear an orange shirt over my base laver and then I put on a camo coat over the orange when i am settle in the tree. I never wear orange for long when I am in the tree.
 
Tim0712 said:
So as of now I usually hunt edges of thickets and swamps during archery so basically I should just get deeper into them and hope for the best? I have 2 weeks off starting tomorrow so hoping to make the best of it!!!
Click to expand...
If I was starting a two week hunt and didn’t have any good leads I would focus on scouting first. If I found good sign quick I’d set up there. If not I’d just keep scouting and maybe not set up at all for a couple days. This is assuming I’d be hunting a large public area.
 
John 35 said:
If I was starting a two week hunt and didn’t have any good leads I would focus on scouting first. If I found good sign quick I’d set up there. If not I’d just keep scouting and maybe not set up at all for a couple days. This is assuming I’d be hunting a large public area.
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Everything around me is large public parcels or large private parcels but private means nothing here if it’s not posted. So consider it all public lol I think my plan will be to go to my spots on thickets in the morning and the. When the sun comes up if there’s no visible sign from the tree I’ll wait it out a little bit then get down and scout through until I either find a spot or the sun sets
 
Tim0712 said:
Everything around me is large public parcels or large private parcels but private means nothing here if it’s not posted. So consider it all public lol I think my plan will be to go to my spots on thickets in the morning and the. When the sun comes up if there’s no visible sign from the tree I’ll wait it out a little bit then get down and scout through until I either find a spot or the sun sets
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Sounds like a good plan. I was duck hunting a few days ago and saw a nice buck go into an area grown up in head high weeds and young trees. It’s an area of near zero visibility and he disappeared almost instantly when he got in there. I’m tagged out or I would have hunted there that evening. But it was a perfect example of the type of area they like this time of year.
 
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