I'm a big Sheppard fan, and I like to reflect and meditate on his necessary traits for Becoming a Successful Whitetail Hunter. In particular, the requirements at the top of his list:
Access to Quality Whitetail Habitat
Hunting Where the Pressure is Light
Hunting in the Right Place
Hunting When the Conditions are Right
I kinda want to self-indulge and do a write-up on each of these thoughts. I already did one of the first (https://saddlehunter.com/community/index.php?threads/access-to-quality-whitetail-habitat.29115/) and these are my thoughts on the second. I'd love to heard others' thoughts.
Hunters love to hate hunting pressure. Most folks who avoid public land avoid it because it's "over hunted." People pay big money to own or lease property and have to share it with as few people as possible. 99% of a deer's life is eating and not getting eaten, and we have eliminated most of their natural predators. Therefore, hunter pressure is a major dictator of deer movement. I'd argue that it is the single most important factor influencing daytime movement of the herd. Arguably it's a negative influencer. Pressure piles up, and deer reduce their movements during the daytime and wait until dark to come out of the thickets. That's problematic for the modern hunter since we have pretty universally outlawed night hunting for deer.
But there's a flip side. Lack of pressure means that deer are much freer to choose where they bed and feed, and which travel routes they take. This spreads the deer out and makes it harder to determine where exactly they can be on a given morning. On one hand, it's nice because you're liable to see a deer anywhere. On the other, it sucks because they could be anywhere.
There is very little you can do to control hunting pressure on public land in a macro sense. A particular piece of property just has the pressure it has. It will be high or low pressure or somewhere in between, and it will have to be hunted accordingly if you want to see deer. Finding low pressure public land is increasingly becoming more and more difficult, and I have found that many times a low pressure parcel is low pressure because there are limited opportunities to harvest a deer there. You'll have it to yourself, but you won't be on deer. Quality whitetail habitat is a scarce resource in today's world, and you will have to compete with others if you want to be on it. If you can learn to find low pressure areas in the middle of pressured but quality deer habitat, you will become more successful.
Once I have decided a piece of property meats the criteria for being quality whitetail habitat, the first thing I do is start thinking about how I want to hunt it. Not how I think others want to hunt it. That's 1990 thinking in my mind. We are living during a period of increased interest in and knowledge of "beast style" "run n gun" and "mobile hunting." The overall and orange hat bucket sitters are getting old and dying off. The guys in the woods today have a firm grasp of the internet and have read the same articles and watched the same podcasts as you have. They know all about saddles and onx. There is a night and day difference in the hunters in the woods now vs 15 years ago when I first started hunting public with my dad. You're competing against me, and I'm competing against you. We're friends because we share a passion, but we're adversaries because we want something that can't be shared...a big ole buck.
I firmly believe aerial scouting is rapidly becoming obsolete. 30 years ago few people had home computers, and fewer still knew how to use them. Computer-savvy whitetail hunters were a rare breed. Not everybody knew how to order physical maps or find the limited imagery available online. If you could get an aerial of your property, you had a competitive advantage. That's not the case anymore. Everybody hunting your property has instant access to high-quality imagery on their computer and phone, and they have at least a layman's knowledge of how to interpret it. That saddle you're looking at on that nice ridge in the swamp? You're not the only one looking at it on your lunch break. That little oak stand in the middle of the pines that you can't see from a nearby road? It's not overlooked.
Distance from the parking lot will only get you so far. If there is a road or trail that can be seen on an aerial, most people will walk it. Getting "way back" often means you'll see more people than you would if you just hunted 300 yards away from your truck. If there's a fire break, atv trail, field edge, or dim road 2 miles back down a gated road...it's getting hunted.
Getting off the beaten path and actually walking the woods still offers some advantage. There are still hunters who are afraid of the dark, out of shape, and cant' read a map or use a gps ap. But they're catching on! And just because you can't find their ribbons, tacks, soda cans, and climbers doesn't mean they're not there. Do you leave that stuff in the woods? Me neither.
So what's a boy to do? Compete against yourself. Identify the areas you don't think you have time to walk to, or that are too thick, or too wet to get to. "I think I can probably get there because I'm a good hunter/woodsman" means, "everybody else already has." "There's no way I can get there" means, "You might only have to share it with one dude."
My best spots are the areas that took me several years of repeated efforts to navigate to. I have to put on the chest waders and hit the swamp JUST right if I want to make it there dry. I have to resign myself to blood from the briars. I might have to sleep in the parking lot to give myself time to walk in there. I may have to drive up and camp the weekend to make it practical. Or park my truck in a place where it's statistically a matter of time before I come back to busted windows and a missing battery. If I kill a deer, I'm either agitating the missus because I'm coming back long after dark or I'm aggravating the boss because that quick morning hunt just turned into calling in sick.
One of the best ways I've been able to identify low pressure islands within pressured tracts is by utilizing GPS breadcrumb trails as I scout and hunt an area. I have maps that are just tangles of superimposed lines so dense that you can't see the underlying imagery. Over repeated outings to a tract, you start seeing the areas you don't walk, usually because they're wet and thick. I've gone back and hunted those blank spots and had great success.
Water access is still somewhat of an advantage, but the gap is closing. Kayaks have exploded in popularity, and non swamp folks are slowly starting to catch on to hip waders. Luckily, most kayakers are not in great shape, paddle inefficient hulls, and are scared of the dark, foggy water, current, and the cold. For the most part my water-access areas are still mine, especially if you have more than a couple of miles to paddle or you have to drag your boat through the woods to launch. Water too skinny to paddle or operate a boat, but deep enough to require chest waders or early season wet wading is essentially a razorwire barrier. Some land is 100% water access only, and requires a 5+ mile ride to get to by boat. A boat, motor, and trailer is a significant financial investment and has to be stored, so I've found that it's a barrier to entry for most public land hunters. Heck, it was for me for a long time.
I have one tract where I have a dirty advantage. There is no access except through private. I know the landowner. Aside from poachers and his friends, I have the area to myself.
Outparcels are frequently productive. If 95% of a parcel is on one side of a road or river, that little sliver on the other side often gets inexplicably overlooked. Especially if you have to park next to houses or businesses, which is frequently the case.
Corner hopping, if legal in your area, can get you in tracts that most folks are too scared to get to. Know the property well before you hunt this way. I usually scout it out in the summer where an accidental transgression is less egregious to most landowners. The same goes for hunting property lines. I will hunt right up on the edge of the public, because most people know onx can be wrong and especially if there is no fence and the paint is old, they're scared of crossing over or getting in a dispute with the landowner. Know what's legal, follow the law, and be discreet. And be dang sure you are where you think you are and the line is where you think it is.
Keep consuming the articles, podcasts, and youtube videos. Maybe it makes you a better hunter, maybe it just lets you know what the guys hitting the woods will have on their minds. When THP started talking about water access and hunting close to the parking lots, I noticed the shift in pressure. When saddles and lightweight stands started catching on, I noticed the Tethrd stickers in the parking lot and could anticipate running into guys I'd previously never seen on the back half of the property.
I like to hunt fresh, hot, good-looking sign. Hot oaks, heavy trails, rub lines, etc. But on a pressured area the areas where deer leave sign are the areas where deer are travelling at night. Other hunters can read that sign and hunt it. If you notice a tract in general has a lot of sign, try to get away from that sign. Down here young row pines to not register sign well. Deer don't leave tracks or make trails in it. A lot of times they don't rub or make scrapes in these areas. But you can hunt them and be in deer, especially on tracts where you have scheduled gun hunts. The gun hunters will pile up on the sign and force the deer into those row pines.
As I've learned more about hunting, I've grown to appreciate the pressured, public game. On unpressured tracts you're just playing against the prey. On hard-hunted tracts you get to play against the predator, and predators are much smarter than prey. I enjoy "beating" fellow hunters, and I think most really successful hunters do as well. Recognizing the signs of an experienced old hunter or a kid with long legs and a lot of enthusiasm in "my" woods, is almost as enjoyable as finding the sheds of a big buck. And it is in a sense easier to hunt pressured deer because once you find them, they have nowhere left to hide.
Access to Quality Whitetail Habitat
Hunting Where the Pressure is Light
Hunting in the Right Place
Hunting When the Conditions are Right
I kinda want to self-indulge and do a write-up on each of these thoughts. I already did one of the first (https://saddlehunter.com/community/index.php?threads/access-to-quality-whitetail-habitat.29115/) and these are my thoughts on the second. I'd love to heard others' thoughts.
Hunters love to hate hunting pressure. Most folks who avoid public land avoid it because it's "over hunted." People pay big money to own or lease property and have to share it with as few people as possible. 99% of a deer's life is eating and not getting eaten, and we have eliminated most of their natural predators. Therefore, hunter pressure is a major dictator of deer movement. I'd argue that it is the single most important factor influencing daytime movement of the herd. Arguably it's a negative influencer. Pressure piles up, and deer reduce their movements during the daytime and wait until dark to come out of the thickets. That's problematic for the modern hunter since we have pretty universally outlawed night hunting for deer.
But there's a flip side. Lack of pressure means that deer are much freer to choose where they bed and feed, and which travel routes they take. This spreads the deer out and makes it harder to determine where exactly they can be on a given morning. On one hand, it's nice because you're liable to see a deer anywhere. On the other, it sucks because they could be anywhere.
There is very little you can do to control hunting pressure on public land in a macro sense. A particular piece of property just has the pressure it has. It will be high or low pressure or somewhere in between, and it will have to be hunted accordingly if you want to see deer. Finding low pressure public land is increasingly becoming more and more difficult, and I have found that many times a low pressure parcel is low pressure because there are limited opportunities to harvest a deer there. You'll have it to yourself, but you won't be on deer. Quality whitetail habitat is a scarce resource in today's world, and you will have to compete with others if you want to be on it. If you can learn to find low pressure areas in the middle of pressured but quality deer habitat, you will become more successful.
Once I have decided a piece of property meats the criteria for being quality whitetail habitat, the first thing I do is start thinking about how I want to hunt it. Not how I think others want to hunt it. That's 1990 thinking in my mind. We are living during a period of increased interest in and knowledge of "beast style" "run n gun" and "mobile hunting." The overall and orange hat bucket sitters are getting old and dying off. The guys in the woods today have a firm grasp of the internet and have read the same articles and watched the same podcasts as you have. They know all about saddles and onx. There is a night and day difference in the hunters in the woods now vs 15 years ago when I first started hunting public with my dad. You're competing against me, and I'm competing against you. We're friends because we share a passion, but we're adversaries because we want something that can't be shared...a big ole buck.
I firmly believe aerial scouting is rapidly becoming obsolete. 30 years ago few people had home computers, and fewer still knew how to use them. Computer-savvy whitetail hunters were a rare breed. Not everybody knew how to order physical maps or find the limited imagery available online. If you could get an aerial of your property, you had a competitive advantage. That's not the case anymore. Everybody hunting your property has instant access to high-quality imagery on their computer and phone, and they have at least a layman's knowledge of how to interpret it. That saddle you're looking at on that nice ridge in the swamp? You're not the only one looking at it on your lunch break. That little oak stand in the middle of the pines that you can't see from a nearby road? It's not overlooked.
Distance from the parking lot will only get you so far. If there is a road or trail that can be seen on an aerial, most people will walk it. Getting "way back" often means you'll see more people than you would if you just hunted 300 yards away from your truck. If there's a fire break, atv trail, field edge, or dim road 2 miles back down a gated road...it's getting hunted.
Getting off the beaten path and actually walking the woods still offers some advantage. There are still hunters who are afraid of the dark, out of shape, and cant' read a map or use a gps ap. But they're catching on! And just because you can't find their ribbons, tacks, soda cans, and climbers doesn't mean they're not there. Do you leave that stuff in the woods? Me neither.
So what's a boy to do? Compete against yourself. Identify the areas you don't think you have time to walk to, or that are too thick, or too wet to get to. "I think I can probably get there because I'm a good hunter/woodsman" means, "everybody else already has." "There's no way I can get there" means, "You might only have to share it with one dude."
My best spots are the areas that took me several years of repeated efforts to navigate to. I have to put on the chest waders and hit the swamp JUST right if I want to make it there dry. I have to resign myself to blood from the briars. I might have to sleep in the parking lot to give myself time to walk in there. I may have to drive up and camp the weekend to make it practical. Or park my truck in a place where it's statistically a matter of time before I come back to busted windows and a missing battery. If I kill a deer, I'm either agitating the missus because I'm coming back long after dark or I'm aggravating the boss because that quick morning hunt just turned into calling in sick.
One of the best ways I've been able to identify low pressure islands within pressured tracts is by utilizing GPS breadcrumb trails as I scout and hunt an area. I have maps that are just tangles of superimposed lines so dense that you can't see the underlying imagery. Over repeated outings to a tract, you start seeing the areas you don't walk, usually because they're wet and thick. I've gone back and hunted those blank spots and had great success.
Water access is still somewhat of an advantage, but the gap is closing. Kayaks have exploded in popularity, and non swamp folks are slowly starting to catch on to hip waders. Luckily, most kayakers are not in great shape, paddle inefficient hulls, and are scared of the dark, foggy water, current, and the cold. For the most part my water-access areas are still mine, especially if you have more than a couple of miles to paddle or you have to drag your boat through the woods to launch. Water too skinny to paddle or operate a boat, but deep enough to require chest waders or early season wet wading is essentially a razorwire barrier. Some land is 100% water access only, and requires a 5+ mile ride to get to by boat. A boat, motor, and trailer is a significant financial investment and has to be stored, so I've found that it's a barrier to entry for most public land hunters. Heck, it was for me for a long time.
I have one tract where I have a dirty advantage. There is no access except through private. I know the landowner. Aside from poachers and his friends, I have the area to myself.
Outparcels are frequently productive. If 95% of a parcel is on one side of a road or river, that little sliver on the other side often gets inexplicably overlooked. Especially if you have to park next to houses or businesses, which is frequently the case.
Corner hopping, if legal in your area, can get you in tracts that most folks are too scared to get to. Know the property well before you hunt this way. I usually scout it out in the summer where an accidental transgression is less egregious to most landowners. The same goes for hunting property lines. I will hunt right up on the edge of the public, because most people know onx can be wrong and especially if there is no fence and the paint is old, they're scared of crossing over or getting in a dispute with the landowner. Know what's legal, follow the law, and be discreet. And be dang sure you are where you think you are and the line is where you think it is.
Keep consuming the articles, podcasts, and youtube videos. Maybe it makes you a better hunter, maybe it just lets you know what the guys hitting the woods will have on their minds. When THP started talking about water access and hunting close to the parking lots, I noticed the shift in pressure. When saddles and lightweight stands started catching on, I noticed the Tethrd stickers in the parking lot and could anticipate running into guys I'd previously never seen on the back half of the property.
I like to hunt fresh, hot, good-looking sign. Hot oaks, heavy trails, rub lines, etc. But on a pressured area the areas where deer leave sign are the areas where deer are travelling at night. Other hunters can read that sign and hunt it. If you notice a tract in general has a lot of sign, try to get away from that sign. Down here young row pines to not register sign well. Deer don't leave tracks or make trails in it. A lot of times they don't rub or make scrapes in these areas. But you can hunt them and be in deer, especially on tracts where you have scheduled gun hunts. The gun hunters will pile up on the sign and force the deer into those row pines.
As I've learned more about hunting, I've grown to appreciate the pressured, public game. On unpressured tracts you're just playing against the prey. On hard-hunted tracts you get to play against the predator, and predators are much smarter than prey. I enjoy "beating" fellow hunters, and I think most really successful hunters do as well. Recognizing the signs of an experienced old hunter or a kid with long legs and a lot of enthusiasm in "my" woods, is almost as enjoyable as finding the sheds of a big buck. And it is in a sense easier to hunt pressured deer because once you find them, they have nowhere left to hide.
