Pre-Hunting season Tips

[musketman]

Hunting season is just around the corner, squirrel starts next month in Ohio...

With that in mind, post your hunting tips...

Tip: Watch for dry leaves during the early dry season, muzzleloaders can, and do start fires...

Tip: Always make sure of your target, the woods are more densely covered during the early fall, be sure what's beyond your target as well...

Tip: As with all guns, assume your muzzleloader is loaded, if you leave it loaded over night, tag it as loaded... Just because "YOU" know it's loaded doesn't mean everyone else does...

 

Always, always let someone know where you are going camp as well as the general area your going to hunt and when you will be back. Don

 

[roundball]

Agree totally...I use a 3-ring notebook with type written directions to the 1/10th of a mile from my driveway to each place that I park at each location I hunt.
Then from where I park, I list explicit compass directions, landmarks, and # of paces to them, that ultimately lead right to the trees that my stands are in...all paced off and mapped out before the season starts.

As I'm headed out to hunt, I open the notebook, clip the page open for where I'm going, and also leave a message on the answering machine for where I'm going. And since I hunt alone 99% of the time, I always carry a cellphone for emergencies and am lucky that everywhere I hunt there's excellent antenna coverage...so we use a two hour rule...if I haven't at least called within two hours of the time I'm due back, or two hours after dark, they know to release the hounds!

 

Here's but two reason why you guys are right on the money about letting someone know exactly where you are.
#1) Young hunter, in his 30's, good shape, (you know how we were at that age, 'cept musketman who ain't never been in good shape! :crackup
Young guy, married, baby at home, goes out in archery season, promptly falls trying to climb in his tree stand. His fall is stopped by the large crotch of a big branch and trunk, breaking his ribs and wedging him into the crotch some 15 feet off the ground. He's stuck, lungs punctured, bleeding out his nose and mouth and MUST get outa that tree.
(I know this guy, it's a true story) He somehow fights the pain and wiggles himself free, passes out from pain, wakes up at dark on the ground with skeeters eating him alive with a BROKEN back from the last fall!
Now he can't walk the measely 100 yards to his car and he'll die before morning.
Wife thinks "he's pretty late, must be checking in a deer". Nope. She finally calls his brother who organizes friends, NOT ONE knows where he hunts, but by shear luck a guy finds our victims car at the end of an oil well lane and he gets recued at about 1 am.
The recovery took two years!!!
I always wear a harness, the body, not waist type.
#2 Middle aged guy like most of us. In pretty darned good shape..like me. :agree: :RO: :what:
He falls from his stand, no harness, right about dusk and breaks HIS back. He can't walk, skeeters driving him made, pain is awefull, passes in and out. NO ONE knows where he is either.
Finally his son, called my Momma, finds Dad by more luck than design. Trouble is the son is ALONE and can't, don't dare, move Dad. So son has to find his car, drive to a phone, wait by the phone leaving Dad alone again till EMT's arrive and can follow the boy through the woods.
He will never climb a stand again. He can't, he's disabled.
TELL someone where you go. EXACTLY! and WEAR the harness!

 

[doverdog]

On a much less serious note, and this may be an amazing concept for some of you, but PRACTICE. Don't use paper bullseye targets but use something similar to what you are going to hunt. Use a cardboard cutout of a deer. Place painted apples on a stick to simulate squirrel heads. Stuff like that. Shoot from the positions you will be using in the field. Get away from the black dots and sandbags and duplicate field conditions.

 

[Stumpkiller]

PRACTICE . . . and duplicate field conditions.

AMEN! Get out and kill some stumps!

Learning (and remembering) to pick a spot on an animal is as important as tiny groups. Bambi's don't come with orange dots on their kill zones. Rollin a coffee can with offhand shots in the woods at estimated & various distances is far better hunting practice than shooting paper circles from a bench at known yardages over a mowed range. That's for initial sighting in, load development and target practice, not hunting practice.

Take your deer rifle squirrel hunting in the early fall, or woodchuck hunting all summer. If you're scoring on squirrels you'll do well with deer. You'll eventually teach yourself how to use cover, judge when to shot (also very important instead of just "how" to shoot) and get in some pre-season scouting for places to return to for deer season.