Sunday, September 20, 2009
Bowhunting kinks happen early
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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The 25-foot-high perch in the oak tree was a pretty good vantage point for the whitetail hot spot.
The deer were there, too, scurrying around eating acorns on the ridge above, about 100 yards away. Because of the thick leaves on the trees, the deer were constantly in and out of view.
But that was actually good. It meant they couldn't see me slapping at the hordes of mosquitoes buzzing around my face.
Oh, the joys of a early-season bowhunting.
I was with my buddy David Brugh on a small tract of woods within the Christiansburg limits.
Though I was going to be armed only with a video camera, I had been eager to get back into the woods for this urban archery adventure.
We started seeing deer immediately.
But then the mosquitoes arrived and the fun factor dimmed considerably.
It was my fault.
I had forgotten my mesh face mask and never got around to buying a Thermacell, a bug repeller several friends swear by.
It was also my fault that I forgot my headlamp, resulting later in a clumsy stumble through the dark woods back to the car.
But better now than later.
Early-season hunts are like the NFL preseason. You want to do well, but the real goal is to shake off the rust.
And being able to do that during the urban archery season is even better than doing it during the first days of the regular archery season, which opens Oct. 3.
In the deer hunting hierarchy, the urban archery season is a pretty low key affair.
Only antlerless deer are legal.
That doesn't mean it's easy, necessarily. But it does take some of the pressure off because there's a level of comfort knowing that a mistake won't cost you a trophy buck.
More than 20 localities in Virginia offer urban archery seasons, so many hunters can take advantage of that pre-season opportunity.
For those who can't or don't, the first few regular season hunts will have to do.
Those hunts can be fairly low-pressure, too.
Bowhunters kill a few big bucks in early October. But most early-season opportunities will be for does, so that's when you want to work out the kinks.
And there will be kinks for most of us.
Mosquitoes have haunted me before.
Always, my most recent deer hunt before a first bowhunt of the season will have taken place late during the previous season. Pesky bugs weren't an issue, so bug protection gear was not in my pack and has not made it back in there.
There's really no excuse for forgetting a light, except disorganization.
Because most of us keep our gear in our packs, and in designated scent-proof tubs, it usually takes just a couple hunts or two to get the stuff in place and keep it there.
The key is to get it there to start out with.
And the best way to do that is probably a written checklist, something I've used but, clearly, wasn't using before that recent urban archery excursion.
Develop the list by visualizing a hunt, from start to finish. Then make sure to give yourself plenty of time to gather the equipment and supplies. And don't wait until you're trying to get out the door.
In the worst case you won't be able to find something at all.
Even in the best case you'll probably have to do some scrambling, which can mean a late arrival to the stand and the unnecessary stress that will cause.
No one wants to experience the horror of getting halfway to their hunting ground for their first hunt of the year only to realize they've left their quiver and arrows at home.
I speak from experience.
You'd think I would have learned my lesson that time.
But I guess you never stop learning.
