Is Stealthy Worth It?

I’ve sort have gone full circle over 25 years. I started out blundering through the forest and not minding where I walked. I still saw deer whenever I went out. Then I became stealthy and started pussy-footing. I still saw deer. Then I went and got ultra-stealthy and started walking like a deer.

I’m not going to say I’m back to blundering, but I’m a lot less careful than I was back twenty years ago. Why? I’ve had just way too many times where I screwed up, missed the trail and fumbled around, dropped gear from my stand, and generally horsed things up– only to have a deer come by and bury its nose in the leaves and start eating right in front of my stand. There have been just too many times that I’ve walked up on deer when I wasn’t hunting and not paying attention.

Back in 2003, I shot a nice buck on opening morning about 10 minutes into season. 0900 saw me down in a ravine trying to heave the carcass out. I had 3 sets of deer — about 10 individuals all told walk right up on me. In 2007 I shot another nice buck in the first half-hour of season from the same stand. I was delayed getting down to retrieve the carcass by four bucks that came out at the sound of the shot and hung out under my stand. This was the same stand my son had shot another buck just a few weeks before.

For all my efforts at sneakiness in years past, I cannot reconcile them to my experiences. After a quarter century in the woods, I have to admit that deer still surprise me more from their lapses of awareness than anything else.

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