By John L. Moore
The young man knocked on my door just after daybreak and wanted to know if he could hunt antelope. He was new to hunting, he explained, and had been hunting with a couple of friends, but it had finally dawned on him that they were using him as a pack mule and bird dog.
I gave him a map of the ranch and drew out a plan. "Park here," I explained. "Then walk in this direction for about a mile, find a comfortable place and lie down and wait. Sooner or later, someone will send a herd of antelope your way. Just lie there and let them pass. The buck will be the last animal in the herd."
An hour after sunset, he was knocking again. "It worked just like you told me," he said, and he had a big old buck in the back of his truck to prove it.
I could tell he thought I was a genius or some sort of mystic, but his success was due to his patience, my experience and a strong dose of good fortune.
Another time, a 14-year-old Wisconsin girl came hunting with her uncles and a couple of cousins. She'd walked and stalked and waited and glassed for days, but did not get a shot. I learned she was a horse nut, so one morning I brought an extra saddle horse and told her family to leave her rifle and lunch at the corrals. She helped me work cattle that morning, and at noon, we returned to the corrals. I loaded the two horses in the trailer and left her alone with this suggestion. "Eat your lunch inside the corrals where you can't be seen," I said. "In an hour or so, an antelope is likely to show up."
She'd barely finished her sandwich when a young buck and doe appeared on the horizon. She snuck to a good vantage point, used a corral plank for a rest, and dropped the buck as it walked toward the corral.
Last fall, an outfitter friend from Canada came with two of his hometown buddies. The outfitter was lean and hard, conditioned by two months of packing wet bear hides out of the Ontario brush. The buddies were not lean and hard, and the older one, in particular, simply could not keep up. "There's a long loading chute at the corrals," I told him. "Get yourself a good book, a lunch and water, and sit in the chute as it were a tree stand." I even loaned him a book. By mid-afternoon, his buck was hanging from a corral post.
I'm no guru of antelope, but in those three cases, my advice worked because of years of experience. Experience not necessarily of hunting antelope, but by simply being around them. I'd spent enough hot summer days rebuilding those corrals, for example, to know that antelope are attracted to noise. Being curious creatures, they were drawn to the high, grassy flat to see what was going on.
Today, there is no end to new rifle calibers and premium bullets; and we are awash in the latest benefits of technology, from scopes with digital cameras to range-finders reaching 1,000 yards and GPS devices that can locate a postage stamp on a tree stump. If you watched the television commercials and read enough magazines, you could convince yourself that an active credit card can buy you success in the field.
Not necessarily so. While new inventions are helpful, nothing replaces time in the wild. Be it woods, breaks, swamp or mountain peak, the best answer is putting one's feet on the ground. Pre-season scouting for sheds, trails and beds is important for the obvious reasons, but scouting offers another advantage: It unlocks the "hunter within."
These days, most hunters live in a large town or city. Their survival instincts are tuned to traffic patterns, airport schedules, phone calls, fax machines and business meetings. Their "street smarts" tell them what neighborhoods to avoid, what time of day to hit the freeway and whether a client is going to buy or pass. They are predators in an asphalt jungle.
In cowboy parlance, it's said that a good cowboy doesn't think like a cowboy; he thinks like a cow. A good hunter learns not to think like a hunter, but to think like the game being pursued.
To think like a deer, you must spend time in their neighborhood.
The first step is seeing.
There is more to seeing than having good optics. One must learn the lay of the land and the food and protection it provides. Look through and not at the trees. Discern the subtle shades of green that indicate a brushy ravine has a water source. See the big picture first, then reduce it down to details. Eventually, the twitch of ears and the flaring of nostrils will be shown to you.
The next step is hearing.
It takes the average hunter several days to get the sounds of the city out of his mind and really begin to hear the music of the wild. Silence can be a terrible noise that takes a while to become accustomed to.
When seeing and hearing become acute, a hunter may have the chance to develop his sense of smell. Nothing is as exciting as detecting the musky odor of elk in black timber. Unless your eyes and ears are already developed, you may never have the chance.
Develop a soft touch. A gentle hand on a rock or tree limb can steady you and prevent a fall. It can also tell you how much pressure will cause a twig to snap or a pebble to roll downhill.
The greatest sense is the sixth one. It tells the coyote it is being watched even though eyes, ears and nose says it is alone. It is the voice that makes the big buck pause at a field edge and whispers warnings to bedded elk through the cawing of distant crows.
It's nothing mystical or New Age, and Lord save us from those who would make it so. It isn't about buying a book or a training video. It is about investing time in the wild until you conform to it rather than trying to force it to conform to you.
Time is a hard commodity to find nowadays. If you do not have the time to invest in learning the woods, find someone who has already paid the price and borrow their time.
-- John L. Moore
GunHunter Magazine - December 2005