Thinking of giving it a go this year...anyone else leave the boom stick home?(If it's legal in your state)
I do. I just hunt deer with a bow no matter what the season. Last year I shot a doe on Pearle Harbor day in the snow, pretty cool.
Jack
I do if I haven't tagged out, let me tell you it is a tough row to hoe if you are after mature bucks.
Shot my best deer, a big 8 during gun season last year. But I'm on privite land surrounded by nonhunting privite land owners.
99% of my hunting is done with a bow in hand with an occasional muzzle loader thrown in from time to time.
I like to get close to what I'm hunting & the satisfaction of taking game that is fully alert with my bow.
I have some lightly pressured areas I can try.After hunting shotgun season in Ohio last year I thought our rifle season was pressured..LOL.
May take off one or two weekdays of the first week too.
I don't gun hunt at all, but I took two deer during firearms season last yr. Don't forget the flo orange hat.
I have only bow hunted for years now,but will say I am lucky enough to have my own farm that
I don't have any gun hunting except for the early youth hunt,so when the guns start popping on farms around mine the hunting usually only gets better.I will say it's pretty cool to go check in a deer during guns season and see all the looks of amazement.All I do is smile.
Pappy
Some of the best huinting has been with bow during rifle season.always get a kick ouy of watching from a tree and seeing how many the rifle hunters dont see.always orange up alittle more, the deer dont seem to mind
Gun hunters in the woods can push deer your direction. Just be more careful in/out from your stand. I never stillhunt around gun hunters.
QuoteOriginally posted by straitera:
Gun hunters in the woods can push deer your direction. Just be more careful in/out from your stand. I never stillhunt around gun hunters.
Sounds like being in a tree 20ft up would be the safe place to be.
It is a good way to hunt and makes your bow season longer. I agree that the pressure from the gun season will move the deer a lot more, so a tree stand is a good choice.
I've heard of enough people shooting a gun at "where I figured the deer was" after seeing a flash of white.
Makes me never want to use white feathers in my quiver.
I gave up gun hunting years ago. I only hunt with my bow. I do wear an orange hat in gun season.
Here in Idaho we have archery season then any weapon season(rifle season) witch is 90% of the hunting season. Basically if I want to deer hunt its with my bow during rifle season.
We can't do it in IL, but i do in Indiana from time to time. Dad shot a god one last year with his Bob Lee over in indiana on the opening of fire arms season.
(http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l87/adeeden/dad092.jpg)
Please excuse the poor picture!
QuoteOriginally posted by Zradix:
I've heard of enough people shooting a gun at "where I figured the deer was" after seeing a flash of white.
Makes me never want to use white feathers in my quiver.
That's actually not a bad idea! I like to hunt with a flintlock during our PA rifle season and I like to dress in 18th century clothing... walnut-hull-dyed linen is too close to the color of a deer :eek: to be safe IMHO, so I usually wear a gray wool shirt with an orange wool waistcoat over it. I also never have anything white on.
Depending on the circumstances and where I'm hunting, I'll use either the flintlock or a bow during firearms season.
Yes, I do! We have Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) deer eradication seasons (doesn't that sound awful?) here in southern Wisconsin and the WDNR has experimented with a number of gun deer seasons that coincide with the archery season (hate it!). I always elect to take my bow but have to wear blaze orange to legally hunt (hate it!). Keep the faith and do it the hard way though, the reward is always the greatest!
Kris
I will be out this season with my recurve and arrows, but we must wear 400 sq inches of blaze orange above the waste. Will be pretty much hunting on private property, even though the bigger deer are out west of town, and so will the gun hunters.
I dress warm in cold weather, and am not concerned about camo, but got to wear that vest.
I'll hunt the last part of the muley rifle season with a bow. My 8 year old daughter is going with me for the first part, so stalking and stillhunting is out.
I been hunting cow elk since the 2nd with my bow. It's been tough but I like to hunt with a bow.
Not an option in Il., wouldn't anyway I hunt with my flintlock during gun season.
Bow only, but stay away from crowded or rifle areas and wear orange (required or not)
I also will only stand hunt (I prefer to still hunt when I can) and stay out dark to dark when I can. Rifle guys will push deer sometimes trudging out to the car at 10am and back in at 3pm so I want to be there when it's quiet and the deer feel like they can move around if they have a need to.
Echo the no white!
I use my bow all season, UNLESS, it's get close to the end of season and I have not got enough for the freezer. Then the boom stick comes out for some long range action. If I'm haveing a good bow season, (IE: 4 or 5 deer) then the gun never sees any action.
Got this guy during the first week of firearms season a number of years ago. It seems to me that the hunting starts to pick up about the time the muzzle loaders hit the woods....early Nov.
(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a322/Arrowworks/BillsDeerWEB.jpg)
I am 100% trad bow only for deer! And darn proud of it. I have been known to shoot the occasional squirrel or rabbit with my 22 when checking traps in the winter, but that is it . . . doves with my old single shot 12 gauge.
In some ways I like sharing the woods with gun hunters, but in other ways I do not. Sure it pushes the deer around, but it also pressures them and it is much harder to get closer! Not to mention that darn carrot on my head:(
I was out today trying to find some deer, it instead turned out to be a pretty eventful grouse outing, and it is muzzleloader season!
Rich, I've been doing it for the last 10 years or so. Never taken one during that time, but there is some self satisfaction in having bucks close by that would be chip shots with guns but still out of our trad range. Sounds strange and maybe it's not that way for everybody but it is for me. I've seen a lot of rutting activity that I would've never seen had I been gun hunting. It's been a learning experience for sure. That said, I wish they'd let us use our archery tags in Nov as well for does.
Always....never take anything but the ol' recurve regardless of the season.
QuoteOriginally posted by Bill Carlsen:
Got this guy during the first week of firearms season a number of years ago. It seems to me that the hunting starts to pick up about the time the muzzle loaders hit the woods....early Nov.
(http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a322/Arrowworks/BillsDeerWEB.jpg)
Bill I always wondered about that deer in your avatar.That was a state record yes?Where'd you get that hog anyways and what year?
QuoteOriginally posted by VTer:
That said, I wish they'd let us use our archery tags in Nov as well for does.
I'm with you on that one Greg. :thumbsup:
I think I'll def give the bow some woods time this year and leave the .308 in the house.
QuoteOriginally posted by adeeden:
We can't do it in IL, but i do in Indiana from time to time. Dad shot a god one last year with his Bob Lee over in indiana on the opening of fire arms season.
(http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l87/adeeden/dad092.jpg)
Please excuse the poor picture!
Awesome buck! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
I don't even own a deer gun any more. Sold it son I can't be tempted
The satisfaction of taking a bow killed deer to the locker plant in rifle season is worth about 40 points Boone and Crockett.
Most of the deer I have taken over the years have been with a wheeler, I am now hunting strictly Trad. while it's bow season.
I guess I have been lucky as all of the deer I have taken through the years with a shot gun or rifle, or muzzle loader, were within 35 yds. I guess as I am getting older I am getting more picky since I don't shoot little deer anymore. Even with Trad. it has to be a big doe or a big buck.
When it gets real cold, I worry that I won't be able to draw the bow. So I will probably firearm hunt again, but archery season is always the best time.
I was just thinking of going bow through gun season:)
Those guys with the guns scare me around here.
We don't have designated bow seasons for black bears or caribou and I'm usually guiding for caribou during moose bow season, then hunting moose during deer bow season...so, I almost always hunt with my longbow during general firearm seasons.
No problem for me, except for the mandatory, artificial, unnatural, obtrusive, ugly, bureaucratic city slicker, fluorescent orange clown suit.
QuoteOriginally posted by vtmtnman:
Thinking of giving it a go this year...anyone else leave the boom stick home?(If it's legal in your state)
Only legal to hunt with registered firearms here and for some strange reason I do not seem to have any registered firearms. I know I used to have some firearms, but I guess I must have got rid of them.
With any luck I will not need to bowhunt during gun season because I will have arrowed both a muley and a whitetail. Bow season here ends on October 31 and I just lined up my third and fourth places to hunt where no other bow hunters are allowed. Altogether I have pretty much private access to over 2000 acres of private land.
One of the great advantages to being back in my home town after a 40 year absence.
Heading out to one of those places in about an hour and the landowner is going to show me where the deer are!
I understand that you are probably wondering why I had not scouted these spots earlier. I was ill for a long time and did not expect to hunt at all this fall. Still even with a relatively short time available I will spend a lot more time scouting than I will hunting. The mule deer around here in particular are not very people shy and if I do not educate them they should be a lot easier to shoot when the right conditions arise.
If I happen to get a whitetail it will be icing on the cake.
I just heard from a farmer friend that there is a rumour that a number of wolves have been released in our area to help cull the deer herd.
DDave
Yes I do ,have done it for years . I always see some bucks but only take one about every 5 years. Last year was my biggest buck ever.
(http://i391.photobucket.com/albums/oo359/luckyjack123/10PT-09-2.jpg)
Got three more tags for does, two whitetails and a muley so I will be bow hunting during rifle season.
DDave
Never miss a chance to bowhunt during gun season. Gun hunters tend to move around more and kick up more deer and ya just never know...I wear red plaid and this year crown dipped my arrows in flo orange with AMG flo orange feathers for visibility. This buck was taken a few years ago...
(http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a281/sf1oak/scan0001-5.jpg)
I shot a big doe in 2008 during the late M/L season with a bow on my own property. You must wear orange though same as the gun hunters by law in MD AND the deer goes on the M/L tag.
Here in Washington State there are separate seasons for archery, muzzleloader, and modern firearms. Since I purchase an archery tag every year I cannot hunt deer or elk during the muzzleloader or modern firearms seasons.
My practice is to let the modern firearms hunters have the woods to themselves for their two weeks or so. But I do continue to hunt for grouse during the muzzleloader seasons.
Great deer Joe and Jack. :thumbsup:
I think I'm ready to give it a try this year.
Those are awesome deers Jack and Joe. Yes I bowhunt too during rifle season. Just another way too get more time in bowhunting. I'm about always working the first week but every day is another chance.
QuoteOriginally posted by Kris:
Yes, I do! We have Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) deer eradication seasons (doesn't that sound awful?) here in southern Wisconsin and the WDNR has experimented with a number of gun deer seasons that coincide with the archery season (hate it!). I always elect to take my bow but have to wear blaze orange to legally hunt (hate it!). Keep the faith and do it the hard way though, the reward is always the greatest!
Kris
Still not as bad as rampant CWD. It is getting quite bad here in Alberta as well. Guess most of the eastern border area zones are at risk.
I used to work for a fellow in Saskatoon who hunted a long the CWD areas there. They are gun hunters and they often put their best shooter up on a ridge and then pushed the deer to a trail below him. He only averaged 4 rounds per kill. Hate to think what their poorest shooter averaged. One of the wives sat up on the hill with him one day and counted 450 deer go past.
One time they shot 36 mule deer bucks in a day, 12 hunters with 3 tags each.
DDave
I am going to start my hunting today in the local cafe. Give the early morning road hunters some time to do their thing before I head out. And of course the landowners where I hunt will be in for breakfast.
My big quandry is always whether to hunt mule deer or whitetails. I still have tags for both.
DDave
This is the 14th consecutive year I have bow hunted only. I hunt on private land, so the gun hunters don't seem to cause any changes in deer activity where I hunt. Even though I own the property, and nobody else has permission to hunt it, I still am extremely cautious and always wear the orange vest.