Thursday, February 21, 2008
Find The Holes In Heavy Cover
The fog finally disappeared last fall after nearly three days of ground-hugging pea soup that drifted and snaked its way through heavy cover. Drifting fog has a nasty habit of changing the looks of whatever the deer hunter can see, and seeing anything can be a challenge.
I took a break from some of my usual haunts and tried a new spot in some cedars. I set up near a small clearing on a ridge within 50 yards of the thickest part of the swamp.
It looked like a natural but it brought to mind many other hunts in similar cover. It meant finding holes through thick cover, and then determining where a shot is possible and where it isnā??t.
My stand was in a cluster of saplings with a thick cedar at my back. Some low brush grew up in front of me to a height of several feet. I settled back, leaned my back against the pine tree, and surveyed my surroundings.
An opening lay in front of me, and a heavily wooded ridge curved from behind me, around my left side, straightened out in front of my position, and curved around to my right. The deer often came from the dense swamp behind me and followed the ridge from left to right and crossed through the 20-yard-wide clearing.
Look for the holes was a recurring thought. Don’t expect a decent buck to walk openly through the clearing; look for him to ease around the stand. Find the holes, the openings where a bow shot would be possible.
Openings are common in most woods but this was close-in hunting. It was important to look for a small opening in the timber where a shot might be taken, but it also involved looking at the brush between me and the dark timber behind it.
There’s a hole, I thought. It’s two feet wide and a foot high near me but only a foot square in the woods. I found another hole, an opening 25 yards away where the ground sloped up to the ridge. It would offer an opening one-and-a-half feet in diameter should a buck pass through it. Still another was where a birch had toppled into another birch, and hung up about four feet off the ground. A deer that passed through that area would be framed in white at 15 yards.
The first 20 minutes were spent finding the holes. It then became important to memorize their locations, and check each area out with binoculars to make certain that no tiny twigs would be in the way of my arrow. Two of the spots were eliminated because of unseen twigs or branches that were revealed once the binoculars were used.
I found all the holes that could offer a possible shooting lane. I’ve seen some shooting lanes that hunters cut that look like the spokes on a bicycle wheel, and I’ve found that deer dislike crossing such openings. If they do cross, the hunter has only a split second to aim and shoot.
My idea of an opening or hole, if you will, is just large enough to thread a carefully aimed arrow through to nail a deer. It takes a calm hand.
That night’s hunt was a great night to be outdoors. There wasn’t a deer heard or seen, but somehow it didn’t matter. It was a night of hole finding, and it’s good practice for future hunts. Keep hole-hunting in mind the next time you hunt in really thick cover.
Heavy cover is where good bucks travel, and it takes patience to accurately shoot an arrow through a small hole. It’s where 3-D archery ranges, with targets at various distances through cover, can help make a bow hunter a much better shot.