When the surgeon told me last summer that I had cancer, the first thing I asked him was whether or not I could be in my stand for the November Rifle Opener. He said I undoubtedly could. He was true to his word. Last season, I shot a respectable buck from my treestand at a site we call Campground. It is the 8th deer we have taken from that stand in 21 seasons. It is by no means the best venue we have, but it is the place I want to be on the Rifle Opener. It has accounted for several of the camp records. I thought I would describe it to you in detail.
Early History
Everything starts in September of 2001. I had just acquired the property in southwest Bracken County, Kentucky and I was hurrying around looking for places to hang treestands. I followed a well-defined track down into a ravine and found a sheltered bottomland formed by three gullies merging. There was deer sign everywhere. I set up a stand in a tree overlooking the bottom and made several attempts at hunting there the first season. However, I never saw deer. At the end of season, I was carrying the stand out when I noticed the remains of another stand near the top.
I have used a method I call Briar Archeology to find good places for hunting deer before.
Old shreds of treestands are one of the signs I use. You have to figure that way back when those stands were in use the deer population was a fraction of what it is today. Somebody had to work hard to determine that was a place worth hunting. I made a mental note of this place and went on.
It took two years before I was back at that spot reconsidering it. I had been having good luck elsewhere on the property, but I wanted to expand my horizons. In the meanwhile, about 100 yards from that site, I had found a grove of old oak trees with an open grassy glade beneath on level ground. We had adopted this as the family’s campsite. I had built a fire pit and a picnic table. On our camping trips there, I was amazed at how many deer we saw walking through the periphery of our campsite. Over time, I realized this was a major deer highway and was looking for a way to exploit it.
Description
The stand at Campground is on the south edge of a point, roughly facing north. The back side of the stand overlooks the flowage that eventually forms Soggy Bottom Creek. Just to the west is another ravine we call Left Leg Creek. To the east is the family campground, which sits on flat ground overlooking a saddle. To the north of the stand is a long narrow pasture. The stand sits about 20 yards from the end of the pasture inside the treeline. A road runs from the campground past the stand, just inside the treeline, and continues east down the hill into Soggy Bottom. I have taken the topo of the general area and added a few extra labels. The Campground Stand is the red star.
Deer Movement
Deer come from everywhere. Soggy Bottom is a protected bedding area. Deer come from there and move up the Soggy Bottom Creek behind the stand or angle their way up the hill and come out into the pasture at a gap in the fence in front of the stand. Deer also move up and down the road.
The saddle near the campground provides an easy way for the deer to move from one side of a big ridge to the other. Once on the west side, they follow the creek behind the stand into Soggy Bottom. There is also a lot of movement up and down Left Leg Creek. The head of this creek has a thicket of cedars and another cedar thicket lies just 100 yards from the stand on the east side of the Left Leg Ravine.
The pasture out in front of the stand contains The Garden of Stone. I have discussed this in detail here:
It is an anonymous piece of pasture about the size of a tennis court. It is an absolute deer magnet in the late season. We have managed to take nearly 30 deer from it in 13 seasons.
The Stand Itself
In 2003, I mounted Hunter’s View buddy stand at Campground for the first time. The idea was that it would hold Mooseboy and me. That idea only lasted a few years. The stand had a 300 lb capacity, and very quickly we both grew to exceed the weight rating. It makes for a roomy one-man affair. All told, I believe we have mounted three different stands at this location, swapping them out every 5 years or so for painting and rehab. What is there now was purchased from Sportsmansguide.com several years ago. I believe it was one of their GuideGear stands.
The stand has a shooting rail. I keep a camouflage skirt attached to the rail that does a pretty good job of concealing the hunter up to his shoulders.
The stand sits on the north side of a medium-sized oak. The 15-foot height gives a great view of the Soggy Bottom Creek. The east side of Left Leg Creek and the Garden of Stone.
The Salt Lick
At about the same time I was thinking about a stand at Campground, I also started a salt lick close by. I have been dumping a bag of rock salt a year into that muddy hole since 2003. A few years later I set up a trail camera. The lick is by far the most popular one on the property as it is a handy to the Soggy Bottom crew. I have visited the lick in early April and had doe stand their ground and challenge me.
Does it affect the hunting at the stand? Perhaps if I was hunting the earliest part of bow season, it would. However visits to the stand start to wane by September 1. I can truthfully say I have never seen a deer visit the lick during Rifle Season. What it does do is give me a good idea of the size and health of the herd. It also gives me some decent eye candy. About 90% of the visits I record on the camera are nocturnal. At best, it habituates the doe to travel the trails that lead to the stand, but they were doing that anyways.
So Why Campground?
I make sure I am stationed at Campground for every Rifle Opener. This is a ritual I have been observing since 2003. If you do a little digging in the camp’s log, you will see the following facts:
1) The chances of a hunter filling a buck tag in a given season diminish dramatically if the deer is not taken before 1000 ET of the Rifle Opener.
2) The Campground stand has accounted for 6 bucks in 18 seasons, including the current camp record (2007) as well as the previous one (2003)
3) Campground has accounted for more bucks taken before 0700 on the Opener than any other stand.
But why?
If you look at all that is going on at Campground, you may begin to see the magic. For one thing, it affords the hunter a 100+ yard view for most of its 360 degree view. That is rare for a stand in otherwise deep woods. It gives the hunter an excellent view of the western exit from the saddle as well as a decent view of everything coming in and out of the thickets along Left Leg Creek.
Probably the real magic is that the deer use the are just in front of the stand as a staging area before moving out into the pasture. There is a hole in the fence just in front of the stand. The deer come up from their beds at Soggy Bottom and loiter in the glade in front of the stand and then move out into The Garden of Stone.
Perhaps the only downside to the stand is that there is so darn much going on. A hunter has to keep his head on a swivel. Even with a prevailing wind that usually blows favorably out of the southwest and up into the pasture, deer still come from all directions. I will be watching intently for movement down on the creek, and be surprised by a deer moving along the old road leading to the campground.
Is that all? Come on, Shaman!
Okay, you want to know the real reason I station myself at that stand on the Rifle Opener?
There is every reason in the world for me to pick a different stand. The biggest is that Campground is about as far from camp as you can get on the property. I leave well before the others; fully kitted, I have to allow a half hour to get back to that stand. The rest of the crew is posted twenty minutes sooner than me.
The reason I go there is this is the spot where the previous 20 seasons of largely fruitless effort really began to pay off. Up until I put that buddy stand up in 2003, successful deer hunting was something that happened to other people. Sure, I had taken some nice deer, but I had always felt like a blind squirrel. Campground was the place where it all came together. This was when folks started to take notice of my writing about my hunts.
This was where Mooseboy and I used to sit together all cramped up. This was where he got his first doe and his first buck.
In 2006, I had my run-in with Hubert D. Buck.
In 2007, under very similar circumstances to 2003, the camp record walked up to the stand. Lightning struck again.
In the early 2010s, I had Lorelei helping me.
And I can’t tell you how many times a herd of doe has come pounding up the creek, and I could barely breathe until I was sure there was not a big buck chasing them, or had a silent monster slip through the cedars and never give me a decent shot.
Sitting in that stand with my Savage 99 gives me the feeling that lightning is going to strike yet again. There is a moment every November when I am strapped in and fully settled and the light is beginning to come up and I hear the distant rumble of the neighbors’ ATVs that I realize this is it.
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