I am planning to hunt wild hogs, deer, coyotes late summer/fall with #50 Samick Sage, Easton St Epic arrows, 105 gr Muzzy Phantom broadheads, and a Ghillie suit. I have friends/family with places to hunt here in central Texas. I plan to hunt from the ground, the suit is well underway and I shoot and bowfit a lot. Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks Gang!
Study your hunting area and learn the travel patterns and the terrain. Find the water and the food sources and hunt them.
practice, practice, practice
Patience and use the wind to your advantage
QuoteOriginally posted by okla bearclaw:
Patience and use the wind to your advantage
X2
Good luck, and pick a spot!
Learn proper shot angles and shot placement.
MAP
Learn proper shot angles and shot placement.
MAP
Make decisions that will minimize the chances you will miss or wound.
Realize that responsible follow-up of a poor shot will cost you many hours or even a day or more of hunting time.
Have your gear tuned, your proficiency practiced, and your decisions perfected to the point that you expect a quick kill every time you drop the string.
Have fun learning from your quarry.
Keep the wind in your face, move like your in slow motion, and keep the wind in your face. Did I mention the wind? Most of all treat every hunting outing like a class room and learn every time you go to class......oh yea, have fun doing it!
I'm going to change things up a bit. The most important thing is to have FUN! This is an adventure and whether or not you put a tag on anything should have zero impact on having FUN.
Believe me...killing isn't hard. After the first couple the rest come rather easy. To many sportsman put to much pressure on themselves to produce and it takes the fun right out of it.
I agree with the advice given above Remember, just keep these few items foremost in mind:
PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE
WIND, WIND, WIND
PICK A SPOT, PICK A SPOT, PICK A SPOT
LEARN, LEARN,LEARN
FUN, FUN, FUN
PICTURES, PICTURES, PICTURES
All great advice and I have nothing more profound to add other than your mercy for that animal comes from your practice of that shot.
Try to learn that there is much more to the whole game than dragging out a deer. Allowing yourself the joys of dreaming, preparing, participating, and remembering your hunt, of little things (and even not so little things) that happen while out there. Smell the roses and see the sights along the way. They can all be a grand part of your time in the woods.
ChuckC
Welcome from Kentucky!
What's your total arrow weight?
All good advice here, but for me the hardest part is dialing in the deer's travel patterns and then setting up close enough to get a shot. Scout hard, but not hard enough to spook the deer and change their habits.
105 grain muzzy phantom?...If so, I'd opt for a little more hardware. 125 grain at least, 150 even better.
Only other advice....have fun. :readit:
Beat me to it Terry...
above X2
...X10 on the fun part!
:thumbsup:
QuoteOriginally posted by Shedrock:
QuoteOriginally posted by okla bearclaw:
Patience and use the wind to your advantage
X2
Good luck, and pick a spot! [/b]
X2!
1) Believe
Critters may not necessarilly be attracted to optimism, but they are surely repelled by pesimism. I tend to get distracted by the empty half of the glass. Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself to hunt in the moment. Pretend that it doesn't matter that I am not seeing fresh sign or that I got a late start or that the wind was wrong for my carefully laid plan or that someone else was hunting "my" area. :banghead: Just pretend to be nieve about all the reasons why your hunt won't work and believe that there just may be a critter right-over-there. After all, it makes a better story to tell about a sneaky close encounter that you didn't expect than to have to say that you kicked up a couple of deer while stomping back to your truck feeling sorry for yourself about not seeing any deer... uh, or so I've heard. :rolleyes:
2) Keep the clue phone handy.
If you happen to see critters where you didn't expect to see them, don't assume that they are lost. Pay attention. Last year, we carefully planned out the perfect spots for my sons and I on our annual campout. We sat them the first night and saw nothing until getting to the truck where we kicked up some does at dark right by the intersection of 2 roads, next to the motorcycle trail where everyone parks and drives through. A small game hunter stopped to jaw a bit and said he also saw those deer there the week before. So, I clued him in on the house-cat-sized squirrels we saw in return for his advice. The next night we were hunting there just 60 yards from the truck and the deer came in right on schedule... I'll plead the 5th after that :dunno: .... So, be ready to change when the evidence suggests it, even if it doesn't make a lot of sense. Later, we found an apple tree that they were attracted to across the road, which is why they were hanging out there every night.
Good luck, and like everyone else says HAVE FUN.
My deer lease is in central Texas (Lampasas county) and the first thing that popped into my head when reading your post was: you may find a ghillie suit to be too hot, especially late summer and early fall. I use an ASAT leafy suit (breathable mesh) and once the temps are in the 80s or higher, it starts to be a bit uncomfortable, even with just a t-shirt on underneath. It will probably still be in the 80s or even 90s when bow season opens. Just something to think about.
When using a ghillie / leafy suit, be sure to have something behind you that lets you blend into it. You can't rely on the suit 100% to conceal you. If you sit still, you'll have deer walk right up to you. But at some point you have to shoot, which segues into:
Work on drawing your bow with as little noticeable movement as possible. Even though you're wearing a ghillie, you still need to hide this type of movement or you'll get busted, so find natural cover that has 'shooting lanes' (I carry a pair of garden clippers with me at all times for trimming small limbs).
And as already mentioned, treat each outing as a learning experience. Everytime I make a mistake, I make a note of it as soon as possible (sometimes on my phone immediately, other times back in camp). I re-read those notes frequently until they're ingrained.
Looking at my phone, I still have some that I haven't transferred to a notebook. Here's one:
"Trim ALL firing lanes." I missed an opportunity on a huge 6-pt last season when the one 'lane' I didn't trim happened to be right where he ended up standing (I still remember sitting down and evaluating my shooting lanes and thinking, "Oh, nothing will ever come from THAT direction" /facepalm); I was eventually busted when I got impatient and tried to move to a spot where I might have a shot.
Stay positive. Don't give up. Things will go wrong and you will blow it many times (I still do that after 20+ years of hunting). Your attitude can make or break a hunting season. It's already been said, but have fun! Stick to that.
play the wind, be patient, practice, pick a small hair in the kill zone, enjoy the whole hunt, not just the Kill.
All of the above but remember to enjoy the hunt, not just the kill,BEST OF LUCK!!!
If you don`t expect to kill something from your "spot" you have not scouted enough.RC
I do just walk and stalk hunting. The number 1 lesson I learned? You can NEVER walk slow enough!
Try walking barefoot. It really slows you down, keeps you quiet, ensures you LOOK before put your feet down, AND most imprtantly slows you down.
Also spend more time LOOKING and LISTENING than moving.
No sense to keep repeating the good advice given so far, but I would like to add one important thing to help you become a better hunter; keep a journal of every scouting or hunting trip in the woods, note wind direction at that time of day, where the sun is at,# of game(even those your not hunting)seen, lay of land, access to spot, and the list can be as long as you want, you don't need a fancy journal just keep NOTES OF EVERYTHING!!
Forgot to say. Practice shooting wearing the ghillie. You'll be amazed how often leafy stuff on the inside of the arm ends up interfering with the string on a shot.
Hey Guys, Thanks a lot for the big response and all the good advice, I appreciate it. When I bag something y'all will never hear the end of it haha. Also, when I finish the suit I will post pics and how I built it. Cheers
QuoteOriginally posted by Huntingnut:
Stay positive. Don't give up. Things will go wrong and you will blow it many times (I still do that after 20+ years of hunting). Your attitude can make or break a hunting season. It's already been said, but have fun! Stick to that.
x2 - except for the 20+ years part.
To me there is a big difference between being optimistic and setting your expectations too high or in the wrong place. First year bowhunting is a whole lot of learning and fun. The harder you work the sweeter it will be.
Good luck :thumbsup:
All the equipment stuff is secondary, and often just plain meaningless, technique and skill are everything. We focus way too much on the type of equipment. Try to hook up with folks who groundhunt-if you want to ground hunt. Read books and watch videos about stalking, playing the wind etc. It takes lots of time and practice to be able to close the last 20 yards on an animal without being detected-you can practice that anytime, even in the off season.
Since you are hunting in TX I won't get into how to find deer as it typically is not hard. My advice is to make sure you have shot the broad heads you plan to use out of your bow ahead of time to make sure they shoot with your field points. Second if you plan to use a bow mounted quiver shoot with it on to see what it does to your groups. These are the two biggest mistakes I run across at deer camp each bow season. I have seen a lot of frustrated hunters scratching their head as to why their bow was shooting perfect all week and then they show up to camp and it is grouping 8" off center at 20 yards. In every case I can point out one of those 2 items and it solves their problems. Granted these are wheel shooters but the same applies to us. These guys put their bow quivers on 2-3 weekends a year and run by cabela's the day before the hunt and buy the latest/greatest broad head they saw on tv. As far as actual hunting advice, how to hunt, I will let you figure that out. Learning how to outwit your prey is the fun part.