I am going to share with you my best kept secret about how to hunt public land successfully during the muzzleloader season and the modern rifle season.
It is a simple secret that works in any public land setting where there are a lot of roads.
Don’t go hunting early in the day.
On public lands such as the Green Ridge State Forest in Maryland or the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia, there are a good many roads allowing for hunter access. This secret does not work as well on wildlife management areas where access is limited. In those kinds of places, hunters going on to thousands of acres of land all start from just a few trailheads that allow automobile parking. Dan’s Mountain Wildlife Management Area in Allegany County is one such example.
So, instead of getting up hours before daylight, hiking with a headlamp into some remote spot and getting nothing, try this.
Wait until well after shooting light. During the firearms season it gets light about 7 a.m. so wait until 8 or 8:30 or 9 a.m. Drive the roads in the general area you want to hunt and look for parked vehicles. When you see a pickup in such and such a location, it is pretty easy to look at the lay of the land and any map of it and determine which way the hunter entered the woods on foot. You won’t be correct all of the time, but you will most of the time.
I wouldn’t start much later than 9 a.m. because a lot of hunters, especially young hunters, can’t sit still for very long and may end up cruising the woods. When that happens, all bets are off and you simply start looking for jumped deer.
The best-case scenario is one where you find a pickup truck at one hollow and then drive to the next hollow, maybe a half-mile away, and see another truck. The maneuver now is to park halfway between the two and climb straight up the face of the mountain, as quietly and as alertly as possible. Those hunters may have already pushed deer onto the face of the mountain and those deer will hang around a little rather than head back in the direction where they originally sensed danger.
This has worked for me and mine a number of times.
In the mid- to late-1990s, I can’t remember the exact year, a friend and I had hunted unsuccessfully in Allegany County during the late muzzleloader season. In fact, there wasn’t an early season in those days.
We made the decision to drive to the Savage River State Forest and hunt the hollows in Big Run. The scenario I just described played out perfectly and my hunting partner used his .54 caliber Lyman to shoot a very nice 6-pointer early in the day. A moving hunter had jumped it to him.
In fact, Jim Minogue, when we checked the buck at BJ’s Store, said it was the heaviest buck he checked in that year.
You might say that a hunter is better off going into the woods ultra early and reaching the locations I have described. That way, you might think, the other hunters who are entering via the obvious routes will jump the deer.
I have heard too many deer running away from me in the woods in the pre-dawn hours to believe that is the best method. Besides, a deer jumped in the daylight can offer you a shot, whereas a deer jumped in the dark offers you only a snort.
I hope you tag one.
Contact Michael A. Sawyers at msawyers@times-news.com.
Michael A Sawyers - Outdoors
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