Proper location preparation can make the difference in whether or not you have success stories to tell. While your on-foot scouting only required the use of maps and or a notebook, location preparation requires specific tools and a great amount of physical labor. I finished drywall for 14 years and like any trade job, the more prepared you are concerning tools, more thorough and expedient the job will be done. The ideal scenario is to be able to pack in and carry the necessary tools to totally prepare a location yet be mobile enough to … Read More
Reality Of Bowhunting
Pre-Season Scouting/Speed Touring Mature whitetails are creatures of habit and once deer season is over it doesn’t take them long before calming down and reverting back to set routines which include more daytime movements. Their routines will take on slight alterations throughout the year primarily due to changes in weather conditions, preferred food sources and during spring fawning there will be alterations as does break with wintering social groups, force their previous spring’s fawns away, and birth their new ones. Bedding to feeding area routines by mature bucks also remains constant throughout the summer until … Read More
Scout NOW For Next Fall & Why! (Part II)
In order of importance, once on foot focus your attention on the following sign for stand locations: primary scrape areas, fruit and mast trees, within bedding areas, funnels between bedding areas and terrain feature funnels, areas offering security cover that protrude out into crop or weed fields, scrape lined runways, narrow draws offering transition security cover that protrude into crop or weed fields, funnels between bedding and feeding areas, clusters of rubs and rub lines, convergence points of several runways, and water in areas with minimal water sources. Primary scrape areas A primary scrape area … Read More
Scout Now For Next Fall…and why! (part I)
For each of the three instructional whitetail bowhunting books my son Chris and I wrote, my 4 instructional DVD’s, as well as for hunting articles, from 1998 to date we’ve; researched many whitetail studies, tracked bowhunting license sales for each state, found the absolute land mass for each state in square miles, and researched specific data from Pope & Young statistical summary books to compile factual statistics and there was one very important piece of kill data that remained consistent throughout the years. While Pope & Young entries per licensed hunters vary dramatically from state … Read More
Freelance Hunting – with a plan in hand
By: John Eberhart. Grabbing my bow, backpack and freelance pack I set off through the public land timber to a patch of white oaks I’d hunted the previous season. To my disappointment none of the oaks had acorns, the two scrapes from the previous season were inactive, there were no nearby rubs and the heavily used runways from the previous season were barely noticeable. It was late October and the mature bucks were beginning to break their nocturnal habits in search of early estrus does which I term as the pre-rut and because of that … Read More
“Just Play The Wind…?”
By: John Eberhart. Before scent reducing and eliminating products and garments hit the market “just play the wind” was the only number in town. Even today the vast majority of hunters claim there is no way to completely fool a deer’s nose and dismiss wind direction, basically meaning they believe scent control doesn’t work or doesn’t work well enough to negate the wind. To put it bluntly, that is absolutely not true. You can fool a deer’s nose and I’ve done it dozens of times each season for the past 17 years. Please allow me … Read More
Foul Weather Bow Hunting – Being Prepared Is Key
By: John Eberhart. Tomorrow mornings weather forecast calls for near freezing temperatures, heavy winds and rain. You set the alarm in hopes that the forecast is wrong. It goes off and as you reach to shut it off you can hear rain hitting the roof. You look out the window to see a steady rain and the treetops swaying with the wind, and checking the outside thermometer, it shows 34 degrees. You think about the last miserable hunt on stand when it started to rain. On that hunt the temperature was in the 50’s not … Read More
Natural Destination Areas
By: John Eberhart. As bowhunters we oftentimes tend to make things much more difficult than they need be. For instance from the late 60’s through the mid 80’s the amount of hours I spent on stand per kill was much higher than what it’s been since. In fact, since the late 80’s the amount of time I’ve spent on stand has steadily decreased whereas my success rate has significantly increased. How did I hunt differently back then compared to now? I used to hunt the standard short crop field edges, perimeters of marshes and swamps … Read More
Active Scrapes, #1 Natural Hunting Location.
By: John Eberhart. As you likely know by now the Michigan NRC has banned baiting in 12 counties for the 2018 deer season and in Michigan’s entire southern Peninsula for 2019 due to issues with chronic wasting disease or better known as CWD. For at least a generation and a half (30 years) a pretty high percentage of Michigan bow and gun hunters have been introduced into the deer hunting world by exclusively hunting over bait and have known no other method for taking deer. Also many hunters that began hunting without using bait have … Read More
Public Land Strategies – that actually work.
By: John Eberhart. Public Land Strategies Something that receives very little print or TV and video footage for the amount of hunters that do it, is hunting on public land. Hunters with private land options rarely gravitate to hunting open to hunting public lands simply because no matter how much hunting pressure private parcels in a given area receive, nearby public lands will typically receive much more and be far more difficult to hunt successfully. In Michigan however and even in our heaviest populated areas, there are public land gems that can provide somewhat consistent … Read More