stalk

Lynx Stalks an American Wigeon

Joe_Cermele — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:28:20 -0500

Photo Gallery: Stalking a Hartebeest

fieldandstream-editor — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 09:00:00 -0500

Master Class: How to hunt late-season whitetails

fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 04:20:00 -0500

Hunting from a Stand

Driving Deer

Game Plan: Late-Season Still Hunt

fieldandstream-editor — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 04:15:00 -0500

Start out in the morning, paralleling feeding areas. Deer often leave food sources early this time of year, so be in place at sunup.

Work inside the timber along fields, or through creekbottoms and around clear-cuts. When you have scouted well, you'll know where deer want to go next.

Work your way to bedding areas, like thick patches of cover, or remote ridgetops.

Check bed sites close to the food first, since deer are reluctant to move far now.

To get there, you want to cut through the corridors that the deer use to travel.

If you find a trail, walk it. Remember, deer like to take the shortest, easiest route, just like you do, so try the most logical paths.

Once you reach the bedding areas, your job gets more difficult.

Use your binoculars a lot; you're going to need all the help you can get to spot deer before they spot you.

Take your time, and try to get above the bedding areas. This makes spying deer easier.

Walk just below ridgetops, taking care not to skylight yourself. If you come to a saddle, peek over the ridge to check the other side.

Don't rush. If you can hunt only one or two bedding areas before it's time to head back to the travel corridors, fine. It's more important to hunt right than to cover every possibility. But move quickly through open woods barren of sign.

In the afternoon, head back to travel corridors and feeding areas. An oak stand with acorns still on the ground is a great spot.

Pay special attention to staging zones, the places in the timber where deer mill around before heading into an exposed food source.

How to Stalk With Smoke

fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 04:10:00 -0500

When you're stalking or still-hunting, even the slightest puff of air can take your scent to the animal you're after. But it's very difficult to determine the precise direction of a light breeze.

This simple tool helps you solve the problem, and you can make one in less than a minute. Just place 4 or 5 tablespoons of fine white ash from a campfire into a small porous burlap bag, such as a tobacco pouch (the kind that's sold for roll-your-own cigarettes). When you want to know what the wind is doing, just remove the bag from your pocket and give it a quick shake. A puff of "smoke" will sift out into the air and show exactly, not approximately, what the air is doing, even when you can't detect any wind movement at all. To keep your pocket clean, store the pouch in a sandwich bag. -Sam Fadala

How to Stalk With Smoke

fieldandstream-editor — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 04:10:00 -0500

When you're stalking or still-hunting, even the slightest puff of air can take your scent to the animal you're after. But it's very difficult to determine the precise direction of a light breeze.

Still Shots: 17 Tips for Late-Season Stalking

fieldandstream-editor — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 04:05:00 -0500

Everyone who's read a hunting magazine knows the two rules of still-hunting: First, go as slow as possible, and then go slower; and second, always hunt with the wind in your face. A good still-hunter has mastered these concepts but also knows how and when to break them.

It's true that your best hope of defeating a buck's defenses is to go slow. You must walk super quietly, in a way that minimizes the chances a deer will see you. The standard practice of taking a step or two and then stopping to look for 30 seconds works. It makes it harder for deer to detect you, and you also have a better chance of spotting movement-the drop of a head, the flick of an ear, the lift of a hoof-if you are motionless. When you do it properly, you may cover 100 yards in an hour. It's effective, but in reality, you can't spend all day at this pace. Go faster in areas with little deer sign, such as wide open hardwoods. If you start seeing sign-or worse, a whitetail's bounding flag-put on the brakes.

Every still-hunter loves a headwind, but the hunting route that makes the most sense may not provide that. A breeze perpendicular to your direction also works well, especially around bedding areas, as deer often lie down facing the wind. At some point, you may not be able to avoid having the breeze at your back in order to get to a location you want to hunt. The trick is to allow that to happen only when you're in barren areas, and to move along quickly.

17 Still-Hunting Tips

1| A light rain or snow is perfect for still-hunting. The precipitation helps hide your sound, scent, and motion, and deer activity often seems to increase in this kind of weather. Windy days are good too; the swaying branches and howling gusts also disguise your presence, but deer won't be moving as much. Look for them in hollows and on the lee sides of hills.

2| follow deer tracks you come across in the snow during a still-hunt-even if they are old. The idea is not to target that particular buck but simply to let the trail take you to areas where deer travel and feed. I've discovered some of my most productive hunting spots by letting deer lead me to them.

3| Look for water. Creekbottoms are great places to still-hunt. Deer often follow the watercourses, and the trails you find parallel to the creek make ideal routes. The water can hide your sound, and cover and food attract deer.

4| Let yourself get lost. Successful still-hunting takes all your attention-analyzing everything you see, stalking with extreme care. You can't do it if you're constantly worried about where you are. Set your GPS and then lose yourself in the hunt.

5| Still-hunting is one of the best ways to learn a piece of land, because you're covering ground and doing it at a pace and with a level of concentration that forces you to spot tracks, droppings, rubs, and bedding areas. So keep a map with you, and make notes as you go. I carry a digital camera and snap photos of interesting sign and promising spots. It only takes a few seconds, and when I get home the images remind me of what I saw. I've found great bowhunting stands and other still-hunting routes this way.

6| Grouse hunters often hit several productive covers in one morning. You can do the same thing if you have a few places to hunt close to one another. Sneak through the brushy bottom next to a field on one farm. Get in the truck and hit a winding creekbottom nearby. This allows you to focus on the best spots in multiple sites.

7| Maintaining a razor-sharp focus may be the most critical skill in still-hunting. Get distracted and sloppy for a few steps, and you can undo two hours of careful work. If you feel your mind wandering and find yyourself going too quickly, take a stand. Eat a sandwich. In 20 minutes, you'll be ready to start again.

8| Don't avoid dense vegetation. "That's too thick to still-hunt" is something you hear often in deer camp. But if it holds deer, why not give it a shot? You probably just need a different approach. Focus on small cover, just a couple of acres, and really work it over. Spend a lot of time looking, squatting to see under the brush, even crawling. Go very, very slowly.

9| Before you step into the woods, take the sling off your rifle and stick it in your pack. You'll want it when you drag the buck off the mountain, but if you use it before then, you won't be bringing anything home. Shots are quick in still-hunting, and keeping the rifle slung over your shoulder is the best way to miss.

10| Stop next to cover. It's one of still-hunting's golden rules. Having a tree next to you when you're not moving helps hide you from deer, and it also gives you a rest in case you need to shoot offhand.

11| Good binoculars are a still-hunter's best friend. Use them often to pick apart the terrain in front of you. If something seems even slightly off, glass it. Wear them on a harness that holds them snug against your chest so they won't swing when you duck under brush. Bring them to your eyes slowly.

12| Get a gillie suit. I used to laugh at hunters who wore them. Then I tried one on the recommendation of a friend who successfully still-hunts with a bow. This leafy camouflage outfit hides the two visual clues that I think are the main things that spook deer: the flat, wide-eyed predator's face, and the upright, two-legged silhouette of a man. The very first time I wore one, I crept within bow range of a feeding doe.

13| To walk quietly, wear boots that fit tightly, with solid support and a thin sole. You need to be able to feel sticks and other debris under your foot before you bring your entire weight down. Put your heel down first, slowly rolling onto the ball of your foot. Gradually increase the pressure, and find another place to step if you feel something underneath.

14| No matter how hard you try not to, you will snap a branch underfoot. When it happens, just wait a full minute before proceeding. Deer will forget about the noise if you give them enough time. If conditions force me to make a ruckus going through a particular spot, I'll blow a series of grunts on my call, hoping to fool deer into thinking the noise was caused by one of them.

15| You'll try to find a rest before you shoot at a deer, of course, but when you're still-hunting, most shots are offhand. There is no shortcut to getting good at this. You must practice before the season. Make it a rule that for every round you fire from a bench or rest, you fire two offhand. Shots will most likely be close, so don't set your variable scope any higher than 4X.

16| There's no need to dress as warmly as you would for a day of late-season stand hunting. You'll perspire in bulky clothes, which also make it harder for you to move quietly. I wear a synthetic base layer under a medium-weight wool jacket and pants. Nothing is quieter than wool.

17| wear a fanny pack to bring lunch, water, a survival kit, and extra clothes. A backpack is too noisy for still-hunting; it always ends up raking across branches or brush. I prefer a fanny pack's lower profile. A model with shoulder straps supports the load better and is more comfortable to wear all day.

How-to: Hunt Ducks on a Beaverpond

fieldandstream-editor — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 04:05:00 -0500

Beaver-pond ducks are right there, overhead and in your face. Whether it's a sedge-rimmed Alberta pond or a Georgia slough choked with catbrier, pocket water that has been created by beaver, nature's most impressive engineers, provides intimate, up-close-and-personal duck hunting.

Or not. Just as often, beaver-pond birds are as skittish as day-old goats, ignoring your finest decoys and settling just out of range or across the swamp. The bottom line: Killing ducks in beaver ponds and swamps can come very, very easily. Or be pretty close to impossible.

The good thing is you don't have to have a boat, a dog, or a pickup truck's worth of decoys to give it a shot. But you might need to change a few of your tactics to make the adjustment from hunting ducks over open water. Here's how.

Table of Contents

[NEXT "Tactics Overview"]

Tactics Overview

Before daylight
You'll have to navigate creek channels, beaver dams, and boot-sucking mud, so give yourself plenty of time for the often difficult hump in to a beaver pond. If there's any chance at all for ice-up, add a half hour, minimum, and bring a portable spotlight. You may need to find open water. If your pond is part of a chain of beaver impoundments along a long creek or watershed (and most of them are), you may be faced with too much of a good thing. In these situations the ducks frequently have plenty of options, so you must scout carefully to pin down the exact pocket where they want to be. If you haven't scouted, find a point or a clump of shrubs near both open water and more heavily vegetated pocket water. Place a spread of decoys in each spot.

Concealment is critical. Hide your blinds well with deadfall. Hunters without them should try to disappear in the brush and weeds. Carry small pruning shears to trim away overhanging limbs or briers that will snag your coat sleeve as you turn to fire a highball at a cruising flock. Finding firm footing in beaver ponds is difficult, so stomp around and get your feet in good shooting position now. Before dawn breaks, decide on who calls the shots and who takes the low bird.

The magic hour
Beaver-pond birds can come very early, especially if you're targeting wood ducks. Know precisely when legal hours begin. If ducks land in the decoys too early, stay still. If they stick around for a few minutes, you'll double your setup's drawing power. In low-light conditions, beaver ponds toss up tricky shooting challenges. A maze of overhanging branches and tree trunks creates distracting backgrounds. The ducks seem to come from everywhere-or out of nowhere. It's back to Wingshooting 101: Pick one bird. Get the gun barrel moving. Kill it. Find another.

Waiting it out
Some of my favorite beaver ponds are resting sites that don't come alive until long past dawn. Plan ahead to hang around for the midmorning, or even noon, mallard flights. This is when patience and discipline are virtues. Try not to horse around during the slow periods. If you're hunting with a buddy, sit at angles and watch each other's backs for ducks slipping in quietly. Adding movement to your decoys can pay big dividends during the waiting hours. Use jerk cords to impart eye-catching ripples to the water.

It's inevitable that some birds will land on the other side of the pond or swamp. Jump-shooting such finicky fowl can be very productive, but leave one person in the blind to cover theecoys or work on the birds that flare as you stalk. And don't pass up good shots. This is one of the most frequent mistakes I make. It's true that most beaver-pond shots will be close, but late in the season ducks are overly cautious even about the seemingly safe environs of pocket water. You don't have to wait for them to get in your face. Know your range and be honest about your shooting ability, but don't hesitate to shoot birds that come within those parameters.

TIP: One really dirty trick
Beaver-pond ducks are notorious for always landing where you and your decoys aren't. Vent your frustration by hanging a few aluminum pie pans on trees located in the pond's far corners, away from your setup. They might be just enough of a deterrent to steer birds to your blind. Make sure to remove these sneaky scarecrows on your way out. [NEXT "Tactics Overview"]

The Usual Suspects
These five ducks love beaver ponds. Here's how to bring them home:

Wood Duck
Woodies react unpredictably to decoys. Sometimes dekes pull them in; other times the birds ignore them. At first light, be posted along the pond's creek channel, the most common route for these early fliers to take.

Mallard
Greenheads go where other greenheads went. If more than two flights of mallards snub your set for some other corner of the swamp, move your decoys swiftly.

Black duck
These will circle a beaver pond endlessly, then turn away for no apparent reason. If the birds are slow to commit, wait until they drop below 35 yards, and take them as they pass overhead with wings spread and vitals showing.

Gadwall
Population numbers are up, so toss three to five gadwall decoys-or mallard hens-in a cluster near the shore side of your decoy spread to convince "gray ducks" to pitch in.

Teal
Often flying in dense, erratically moving flocks, teal are notoriously difficult to hit. Shoot them like doves: Move that gun barrel fast, pull the trigger as you block out the bird, and keep swinging. [NEXT " Strategies, Illustrated "]

Strategies, Illustrated

Click Here to see three illustrated strategies

Hunting a beaver pond starts with finding the right one. Young ponds and flooded swamps are a hunter's best bet, because rich, flooded soils produce a flush of edible plants, from duckweed to wild rice. If your favorite pond seems to be drawing fewer ducks, look up and down the watershed for places where beavers have recently migrated. Even older ponds, however, can produce a fine duck shoot. The surrounding trees produce more and more mast as they grow, a wood duck bonanza. As a beaver pond ages, it also tends to expand as the beavers add to the dam. The deeper waters stay ice-free longer and can be a late-winter magnet when surrounding spots freeze up.

Always scout in the morning, not the evening. An older beaver pond or swamp that fills with ducks roosting at sunset might be empty of birds just a few minutes past legal shooting light as they depart for distant feeding grounds. [NEXT " The Gear You Need "]

Gear for the Pond Hunter
It takes good stuff to get you through a morning of mud and swamp goo, not to mention the half-mile bramble hike to the open water

Hat Trick
The only animal that likes beaver water better than ducks is the mosquito. Protect yourself with this nifty Face Mask Hat with an integral full-coverage facemask made from Buzz Off material. $25; 800-785-8268; drakewaterfowl.com.

Field Decoys
Place a few feeding and preening decoys on a beaver dam or mudflat to boost your spread's drawing power. G&H Decoys' field mallards are stackable shells with adjustable, removable heads for maximum realism that takes up minimum space. $100 for six; 800-443-3269; ghdecoys.com.

Muck Chair
The Surf n' Swamp Seat has a 14-inch seat top that's stable and comfy, and the telescoping leg adjusts from 36 to 56 inches long. You'll never sit in mud again. $50; 310-617-3577; surfnswamp.com.

Rough, Tough Waders
For my money, the old-school three-ply canvas and rubber waders offer the best balance of toughness, relative light weight, and comfort. The ones from LaCrosse are just right for long slogs to distant swamps mined with dagger-sharp beaver sticks. $110; 800-323-2668; lacrossefootwear.com.

Small-Water Call
Since beaver-pond hunters need their birds close and closer, they should learn to blow a really nice swamp call. The Rich-N-Tone Quackhead Timber produces a softer, nasal call that won't blast birds out of smaller waters. $25; 888-768-2255; rntcalls.com.

TIP
Negotiating beaver ponds means wading waters up to your suspender clips. To keep gear dry, I use portage sacks made for canoe campers. They come with shoulder straps and are large enough to swallow four decoys, a bucket seat, and a separate dry bag for spare clothing. Look for them at paddling stores or seallinegear.com. inner coil spring holds the back upright and open, and it fits more than two dozen standard decoys-plenty for beaver-pond gunning. $40; 866-521-5012; drakewaterfowl.com.

How-to: Hunt Ducks on a Beaverpond

fieldandstream-editor — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 04:05:00 -0500

Table of Contents

[NEXT "Tactics Overview"]

Tactics Overview

The Usual Suspects
These five ducks love beaver ponds. Here's how to bring them home:

Mallard
Greenheads go where other greenheads went. If more than two flights of mallards snub your set for some other corner of the swamp, move your decoys swiftly.

Gadwall
Population numbers are up, so toss three to five gadwall decoys-or mallard hens-in a cluster near the shore side of your decoy spread to convince "gray ducks" to pitch in.

Strategies, Illustrated

Click Here to see three illustrated strategies

Gear for the Pond Hunter
It takes good stuff to get you through a morning of mud and swamp goo, not to mention the half-mile bramble hike to the open water

How-to: Hunt Ducks on a Beaverpond

fieldandstream-editor — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 04:05:00 -0500

Table of Contents

[NEXT "Tactics Overview"]

Tactics Overview

The Usual Suspects
These five ducks love beaver ponds. Here's how to bring them home:

Mallard
Greenheads go where other greenheads went. If more than two flights of mallards snub your set for some other corner of the swamp, move your decoys swiftly.

Gadwall
Population numbers are up, so toss three to five gadwall decoys-or mallard hens-in a cluster near the shore side of your decoy spread to convince "gray ducks" to pitch in.

Strategies, Illustrated

Click Here to see three illustrated strategies

Gear for the Pond Hunter
It takes good stuff to get you through a morning of mud and swamp goo, not to mention the half-mile bramble hike to the open water