P
Pahunter106
Guest
Hello gb22,
I know that your first name is Grant and you did ask me a perfectly valid question, and it would be fine with me, if you are still up for it. I wrote you a response to your offer, and am apologizing now, because I did not see it, when I first read through everyone's responses. I also wrote you in a PM. I have explained in a matter of fact kind of way, what I go through to get ready for a hunt in the body of my response to your offer of setting up a hunt for me where you hunt if I were to set a hunt up for you in my neck of the woods.
What I did not mention is that hunting in PA here is vastly different than what you experience out west. Our habitat, and hunting skills have got to be spot on, only because the bigger the buck, the less mistakes that you can make in your pursuit of him. They are wiley, and react differently than 1-3 year olds. You will never see a video that tells you what it is like to hunt in PA, because unlike the Primos videos and Dream Season videos that are out there, whispering is not something that you should be willing to take a chance that the deer will not hear you. SCENT CONTROL is paramount, and using the right sign/scent is key to altering a whitetail's behavior. We grunt bucks in, in some places we decoy them, and we are always either in a tree, or in a ground blind. We use rattling bags, and we use terrain to determine where they are most likely to go to eat, or bed or whatever.
After I saw some of the footage of western Mule deer hunting, I stopped being so antsy, or nervous about hunting them... I am not saying that it does not take skill, just merely pointing out, that there is a major difference between the two types of hunting. We are vastly over populated compared to anywhere in the west. Which means that the deer are very familiar with human contact year round. You have got to become the deer. I know guys that rather than use scent lok, because of the money issue, will if needs be, smear deer poop on them so that they smell like the stuff from head to toe, and won't spook a deer. PRETTY EXTREME to say the least.
ALL I am saying is that the more you know about the animal, before next Fall the shorter your learning curve to hunt them. Subscribe to Deer and deerhunting magazine at the very least. Whitetail Institute magazine is good. Bowhunting published by Peterson's publishing house. Any book written by Greg Miller or Charlie Alsheimer, ( Also works for Deer and deerhunting magazine), Bowhunting pressured white tails is another good book and will explain why it is important to be in a tree along a funnel route to a bedding area. Scrapes are the whitetails prime means of communicationg with the herd... The more you understand the better you will be in collecting your prize. We regularly spot deer at night from the road with big powerful spotlight's out of our trucks. You can legally do this until 11:00PM. There are many things that we do, that a guide would normally do for you, on a paid hunt. Bucks bed together, and does bed together. Until the Rut, when everything changes. Then big bucks don't eat and concern themselves only with mating as many does in heat as they can. They fight off other bucks that are less in stature, and this where decoys can come into play. You are looking for any trick to get him to concentrate on what he wants to do, and not concentrate on you, or the possibility of danger.
Anyway, there is a ton of info out there, if you really want to do this. I am game, are you?
Happy Thanksgiving, I will be in Michigan all this week, and unable to respond incase you write me back.
Thanks,
Scott
[email protected]
I know that your first name is Grant and you did ask me a perfectly valid question, and it would be fine with me, if you are still up for it. I wrote you a response to your offer, and am apologizing now, because I did not see it, when I first read through everyone's responses. I also wrote you in a PM. I have explained in a matter of fact kind of way, what I go through to get ready for a hunt in the body of my response to your offer of setting up a hunt for me where you hunt if I were to set a hunt up for you in my neck of the woods.
What I did not mention is that hunting in PA here is vastly different than what you experience out west. Our habitat, and hunting skills have got to be spot on, only because the bigger the buck, the less mistakes that you can make in your pursuit of him. They are wiley, and react differently than 1-3 year olds. You will never see a video that tells you what it is like to hunt in PA, because unlike the Primos videos and Dream Season videos that are out there, whispering is not something that you should be willing to take a chance that the deer will not hear you. SCENT CONTROL is paramount, and using the right sign/scent is key to altering a whitetail's behavior. We grunt bucks in, in some places we decoy them, and we are always either in a tree, or in a ground blind. We use rattling bags, and we use terrain to determine where they are most likely to go to eat, or bed or whatever.
After I saw some of the footage of western Mule deer hunting, I stopped being so antsy, or nervous about hunting them... I am not saying that it does not take skill, just merely pointing out, that there is a major difference between the two types of hunting. We are vastly over populated compared to anywhere in the west. Which means that the deer are very familiar with human contact year round. You have got to become the deer. I know guys that rather than use scent lok, because of the money issue, will if needs be, smear deer poop on them so that they smell like the stuff from head to toe, and won't spook a deer. PRETTY EXTREME to say the least.
ALL I am saying is that the more you know about the animal, before next Fall the shorter your learning curve to hunt them. Subscribe to Deer and deerhunting magazine at the very least. Whitetail Institute magazine is good. Bowhunting published by Peterson's publishing house. Any book written by Greg Miller or Charlie Alsheimer, ( Also works for Deer and deerhunting magazine), Bowhunting pressured white tails is another good book and will explain why it is important to be in a tree along a funnel route to a bedding area. Scrapes are the whitetails prime means of communicationg with the herd... The more you understand the better you will be in collecting your prize. We regularly spot deer at night from the road with big powerful spotlight's out of our trucks. You can legally do this until 11:00PM. There are many things that we do, that a guide would normally do for you, on a paid hunt. Bucks bed together, and does bed together. Until the Rut, when everything changes. Then big bucks don't eat and concern themselves only with mating as many does in heat as they can. They fight off other bucks that are less in stature, and this where decoys can come into play. You are looking for any trick to get him to concentrate on what he wants to do, and not concentrate on you, or the possibility of danger.
Anyway, there is a ton of info out there, if you really want to do this. I am game, are you?
Happy Thanksgiving, I will be in Michigan all this week, and unable to respond incase you write me back.
Thanks,
Scott
[email protected]
