I think Fred Bear (the hunter to whom the quote in the title of this article is attributed) would agree with me: time spent in the woods is never wasted. I can, however, tell you that in my hunting career, I spent way too much time sitting in a tree with no real chance of seeing a target animal. While this time was not completely wasted, I could have been much more efficient. I had no idea if my target animal was remotely close to where I was, and thus the term ‘hunting’ does not really apply to what I was doing; sitting and hoping is more accurate. As a former coach used to tell me: hope is not a strategy.
Some people may have time in their stage of life to spend lots of time in the woods. That is a fantastic place in which to find oneself, and maybe one day that will be my situation as well. As my life got more and more full with admittedly higher priorities, I realized I could not justify taking time away from those priorities to sit and hope in a tree. The acronym of my old strategy of ‘sit, hope in tree’ was indicative of the number of encounters I had. I had to make a change.
I decided to define specifically what process I would need to follow to accomplish my hunting goals. Ultimately, I needed to get more shot attempts per number of times in the woods. I encourage you to do the same exercise. I looked at a whole archery season and counted how many times I went into the woods. I then looked at the number of times I actually had a shot at a target animal. That year during archery season, the number was zero. Failure is a great teacher.
Since ‘zero’ told me what I already suspected of my hunting prowess, I widened my view to number of times I had actually laid eyes on a target animal. There was one time out of the entirety of archery season that I saw a target animal. One is better than zero, but still pretty abysmal.
I widened my view even farther out to look at camera data from the season and counted how many times I would have had an opportunity to see a target animal in daylight. The number came to three. In addition to the realization I’m going to outline in the rest of this article, it also led me to realize I needed more properties to hunt.
My Top Rule For Going to Hunt
The problem that hit me over the head was that I needed to be much more selective about when I was actually going into the woods. I needed a way to filter out the number of times I would get skunked. I decided to implement the Fred Bear rule that is the namesake of this article: hunt where the deer actually are, not where you imagine them to be. After consuming a bunch of hunting content and relying on old strategies of ‘this is where we’ve always hunted’, I had some ideas of where deer should theoretically should be. The only problem was that deer weren’t actually there.
This led me to my top rule when deciding when to hunt: do I know there are deer in the area? I cannot overemphasize the word ‘know’. How do I actually know there are deer in the area? Visual confirmation. I needed visual confirmation that a target deer was in the area I wanted to hunt. I also put a timeframe on this rule of 24 hours. So, within the last 24 hours, did I have visual confirmation of a target deer in the area I wanted to hunt? If the answer was ‘no’, then I did not hunt.
Scout More Than You Hunt
This flipped my hunting process on its head. Now, instead of just guessing at where deer might be, I gathered hard intel if I had an open window in my schedule. I had to justify to myself that it was actually worth spending time away from something else and in the woods. This led me to begin to scout more than I hunted.
First and foremost, cellular trail cameras play a big role in this process. I used to have to go out and physically check trail cameras prior to a possible hunt to check my recent intel. While the fact that I still laid ground scent where I wanted to hunt, what ended up being a much bigger problem for a basic hunter was the simple fact that I did not have enough time to actually travel to all of my camera spots. This left gaps in my scouting information and even if I happened to check a camera on Tuesday for a hunt on Friday (since that was my only window), the data from Tuesday was basically useless.
Enter cellular trail cameras. Now information gets sent directly to me, which is a complete game-changer. It is recent and actionable intel. I understand there is some debate as to the role they play in the ‘fair chase’ debate, but I’m firmly in the camp of using them. They don’t kill the deer for you; you still have to be knowledgeable about deer movement and scouting. Not to mention the fact that knowing where a deer is and killing a deer are two significantly different parts of a hunting story. Any potential spot I will want to hunt this year will have a cellular trail camera or two in the area.
Trail cameras are not the end-all in my scouting process as they certainly can miss a lot of activity. Another way to determine if my target deer is in an area I can hunt is to simply put eyes on the deer myself. This can be done through driving past a field at a certain time of day while out running errands, or actually sneaking out to a spot where you can glass. I use this tactic more with does than I do bucks because does are definitely more habit-driven than the bucks I hunt. Instead of committing multiple hours to an ‘observation hunt’, I spend 10 minutes close to dark to see what’s going on.
There may also be instances in which I may not be 100% positive a target deer is in an area I want to hunt 24 hours before, but I have a good opening and I want to take advantage. In this case, I look for the freshest sign possible. This may not guarantee that a target deer has been in the area within the last 24 hours, but if you can read the sign effectively, you can get pretty close.
The first and best way to determine recent sign is scouting after a rain storm. Fresh tracks show up like a neon sign when compared to those that have been pounded by rain. The edges will be more crisp and defined. The same thing goes for scrapes; if it looks like new scratch marks have been made in the ground and the scrape smells strongly of urine after a rain storm, there’s a good chance a deer has been in the area since that rainstorm. Weeping rubs are another indicator of recent sign – if it looks like sap is coming out of a rub that was made, that means it was made recently.
Increased Info Leads to Increased Confidence
I killed my buck this past year following this 24-hour strategy. It was early November, and the stars aligned for me to take an entire day off of work to go hunt. I had no obligations for the entire day (a phenomenon that may only happen once or twice during an entire hunting season). I had some pictures of a buck in an area that were 2-4 days old. I knew the scrape over which I hung my camera was seeing activity. So while it wasn’t within my 24-hour rule, I readied my gear the preceding night ready to head to that spot.
When I awoke early the next morning to get ready to leave, I had cell cam pictures from late in the evening of a nice buck randomly running through a completely different property. The only reason a nice buck would be running through this property in the middle of the night was either pressure (unlikely) or chasing a hot doe; regardless, he was there just hours before. Following my 24-hour rule, I switched my plans and made for this new property.
I had a feeling of supreme confidence as I climbed up my tree and settled in thirty minutes before daylight. A confidence I never experienced when my hunting strategy was Sit, Hope In Tree. By 7:30 that morning I had heard chasing and grunting in the brush. I had a couple of smaller bucks cruise through. I ended up arrowing a different buck by 9:30 that morning. I’ll tell that story in detail another time but my biggest takeaway was that old Fred Bear got one thing right: hunt where the deer actually are.