Richey with a nice buck taken with a Thompson-Center Contender.

Over the years, I've seen people do some of the dumbest things while sitting in an elevated coop or a tree stand or while hunting from a ground blind. Mfost are funny but some could have been deadly.

The reason I write about some of these is there are always lessons that can be learned. Benefit now from these mistakes of other hunters.

One time I had a new hunter sitting in a ground blind. It had a sliding Plexiglas window in that coop, and when I dropped him off, I suggested he keep the window closed until a deer got close enough for a shot, and then silently slide it open, draw, aim and shoot.

It pays to remember and pay attention to advice.

He did some of it right and failed on other parts. He saw a small 8-point walking toward him, and he waited until the deer stopped, quartering-away at 12 yards, and he drew back and shot.

C-r-a-c-k! He'd forgotten to slide the Plexiglas window open, and shattered it. The buck obviously disappeared, and probably never walked past that blind again.

Another time, another guy was sitting in a ground blind with a sliding wooden window. He saw a buck and doe coming, and when the doe walked past the window, he waited for the buck to pass, and he shot. His arrow struck the sliding portion of the wood window frame, glanced off it, missed the buck entirely but the ricochet nailed the doe in the heart. It was a great trick shot, and a killing hit on the wrong deer.

Then there was a time when another hunter drew down on a doe, studied the animal as it walked in front of him and stopped. He held his draw until she started to turn, and he aimed for the heart and lung area. He made a great hit, but again, on the wrong deer.

A doe fawn, standing out of sight, darted in next to its mother, and saved her life. This mistake has often happened to several hunter friends, and it is the result of tunnel vision on the target animal and not watching to see what other nearby deer were doing. The venison was really tender, I heard.

Once, during the December bow season, a bow hunter was sitting in a pine tree near an alder run. He'd shot several bucks over the years from that tree, and sat out in hopes of seeing another one. The air temperature was about 10 above, and a strong north wind was blowing.

Toughing out a cold day with low wind-chill figures isn't fun.

He toughed it out until shooting time ended. He lowered his bow to the ground, shrugged his shoulders several times to restore circulation, and rubbed his hands together. He'd lost most of the feeling in his hands and feet, and tried to get warm and limbered up before starting down.

He took the first two steps, and then one of his feet slipped on a snow-covered ladder step. He had three contact points -- two hands and one foot  -- but all were too cold to respond when his foot slipped. He knew he was going down, and pushed himself away from the tree and tumbled eight feet off tree limbs and into the snow. He wasn't hurt from the fall but was a bit disoriented for a moment until he figured out what had happened. Anytime a hunter can walk away from a tree stand fall is indeed lucky.

Then there was the gent who felt nature calling. He looked around, didn't see anyone, so he gave the tree trunk a good shower below him. That had been one of my best tree stands, and after he told me about his aerial spray job, I enjoyed it so much I let him hunt the same stand the next day. He never saw a deer but I doubt if the object lesson resonated with him.

Another time a hunter was in that same tree, and it was a cold day, and suddenly a nice buck appeared. He normally had a 60-pound draw weight, but had forgotten to crank it down a bit to compensate for the cold, still muscles and bulky clothing.

A buck came walking slowly by. Our hero started his draw, and the arrow fell off the rest. He was shooting with fingers at the time, and the extra effort to draw the weight when cold and over-dressed, caused him to roll the bow string. It flipped the arrow off the rest and it fell, tinkling, to the ground as the buck looked up at the sound.

The buck stared upward, and the hunter didn't move, and eventually it went back to its business of checking an old scrape. He nocked another arrow, tried drawing on the buck again, and again the arrow rolled off the rest and tumbled off branches to the ground.

The tinkling arrows bouncing off tree limbs scared off this buck.

The hunter, sat and stared at the curious buck, but finally common sense apparently set in and the deer raced off through the snow as the hunter looked down at the red nocks standing upright in the snow.

I've had a ground blind with a low door-way. A sign tells people to watch their heads, but one person managed to smack his head going into the blind. And, to add insult to past injury, banged his head when he left. He no longer  sits in that stand.

Deer hunting is mighty serious business for most of us, but some of these things are a bit too funny to ignore. And it's a wise and good-natured hunter who can laugh and benefit from his mistakes.

And to prove that I'm not immune to doing dumb things, it was me that banged his head twice on the door-way. It still makes my head hurt to think about it.

Pat Madigan unhooks a big brookie.

What’s in a name? Much can depend on how anglers and hunters use the name to communicate with other sportsmen. Names can and do play an important role in how we feel and think about the outdoors. And, in many cases, how we choose our next adventure.

They may remind us of a favorite trout pool with mist rising off it or a secret woodcock covert where white splashings cover bracken ferns, and names often play a major part in identifying where we fish or hunt.

Mind you, I’ve been banging around the outdoors for more than 60 years. During that time I’ve learned something about a good many places and things, and it’s fun to talk about these different spots to like-minded sportsmen who share our special name codes. Of course, other folks may have developed their own names to confuse other anglers or hunters.

The Platte River has long been one of my favorite salmon and trout streams. I guided anglers on it and other streams in our northern counties for 10 years, and have fished it for more than 50 years.

The Platte has many local  names that help anglers pinpoint specific locations. For instance, the old Rope Hole, just upstream from the mouth, was the first spot salmon and steelhead would pause on their way upstream to spawn. It was known by this name by many anglers.

The Hole Where It Never Rains was a hotspot until the outlaws began going under the M-22 Bridge to snag fish. The conservation officers also knew where this spot was, but few people had the knack of fishing it.

The trick to fishing this spot was to wait until broad daylight. Any fish in the hole at dawn would stay there. Those people who went under the bridge in the dark would spook the fish upstream or down. The hole would be empty of fish at dawn if anglers tried fishing at night.

There was the Goose Pasture (also called the Goose Grounds), a campground on the upper Platte River off Goose Road. It was always good in the old days when more fish were available than anglers.

There was the Swimming Hole in Honor, the Doctor’s Hole and the Nurse’s Hole, all upstream from Honor. Two favorite spots years ago were the Grades. There were two: the Upper Grade between Haze Road and US-31 and the Lower Grade, downstream from Haze Road. These grades were where an old logging train once crossed the river. Some of the old pilings still remain but the only thing they are noted for now are gravel bars for spring and fall spawning fish.

Think about it. Two anglers in a restaurant are talking about where to fish over bacon and eggs, and one would be heading for the Rope Hole while the other was heading for the Upper Grade. Few other anglers would know what or where they were talking about.

My Home Stream was the Sturgeon River in Cheboygan County between Wolverine and Indian River. I began fishing it at the tender age of 11, and spent every summer camping there to escape the downstate pollen that affected my hay fever. It too is rich in angling history and place names that were, in some cases, rather odd.

I can close my eyes, and think of The Snow Hole, and the spot instantly comes into sharp focus and in full color. The river flows downstream, dropping into a deep hole in front of the old Snow Cabin, and then it makes a sharp 90-degree bend to the left. It then splits into two current flows as it goes around a tiny island before both threads of current connect again.

Nothing much has changed there. It’s the hard bending left turn that send screwball canoers and tubers headlong into the island bushes.

My late twin brother George and I laid claim to the Snow Hole while others who fished the Sturgeon had their favorite spots. The Sturgeon is a wild and free-flowing stream, and it holds steelhead and brown trout.

It also holds the ashes of my twin  brother and of a very fine gentleman and good friend named Russ Bengel. He donated large sums of money to Ducks Unlimited, and loved the river like he loved life itself. One day when my last fishing trip has been taken, and my last hunt has ended, my ashes will mingle with theirs in my beloved Snow Hole.

The Sturgeon is filled with names. Take the White Road Bridge. One might figure the bridge to be painted white, but it was painted red. Go figure. It was easy to throw people off our track if we mentioned going to fish the Five Sisters Hole.

It wasn’t a hole, but a smooth run along the opposite bank, and at the head of the run were five aspen trees growing from a single trunk. The Rain Hole was immediately downstream, and it always paid off with a good fish just before a rain.

You know how it is before a rain. You can smell it on the air. We would race off to the Rain Hole, and if we beat the rain, it always delivered a nice steelhead. It was one of the surest bets on the Sturgeon River.

Then there were the Meadows  pools, the Clay Hole, Yontz’s Hole, Eddie’s Pool, Railroad Bridge and many others. Knowing the whereabouts of these named locations gave some anglers a heads-up on others who were out of the loop.

Rog Kerby admires a nice buck.

Names also applied to hunting, and nowhere was it more pronounced than with grouse or woodcock coverts. Upland bird hunters were more close-mouthed than mushroom pickers and trout fishermen, and the names they gave to each of their favorite coverts were known only to them and two or three close friends who had been sworn to secrecy.

A good friend always starts hunting at the Church covert. This bit of tag alder swale was noted for late October woodcock, and among those of us who knew its location, we kept it a secret for many years. Actually, the secret didn’t come out until the aspen and tag alders grew too high, and it became useless habitat for migrating birds.

The Caboose covert was on private land where I had permission to hunt, and was surrounded by 40 acres of aspen and bracken fern bordered by an old pasture on one side, a road on the other, and the edge of a damp cedar swamp. It produced wonderful grouse and woodcock hunting for many years, and its name was derived from a train caboose sitting in the woods. Don’t ask me why, or how it got there, but it stood for many years. A few of us were allowed to hunt the area for birds, and we flushed more than one grouse from under the caboose.

Then there were key grouse hotspots such as the Grape Arbor Run, the Split Rail Fence, and Old Baldy. The area 20 feet below Old Baldy was grown up to a smorgasbord of grouse foods, and it held plenty of birds until wild turkeys moved in and took over. They used Old Baldy’s sand to dust in, and the grouse moved out.

Another spot that always comes to mind even though shooting grouse has become more difficult in recent years. I called it Dave’s Double, in reference to one of those memorable days when the shooting gods smiled and two grouse flushed. I took the farthest one first, and then swung on the closer bird, and he fell in a puff of feathers. It was my first double on ruffed grouse, and the spot deserved a special name.

In fact, such locations are named for a variety of reasons. Some make sense while others do not, but there it is. We accept such things, and when the whim strikes, we name another location.

Many such spots are meaningless except to us, and then only because something caused them to stand out in our memory. Naming our hotspots is as much a part of fishing and hunting as carrying a rod and reel or toting a shotgun into the woods.

And lest you think all such places are good, I’ll close with one where I won’t be when the deer season closes on Jan. 1. I won’t be in the Willow Tree stand. I tried it once, the wind kicked up, and the willow blew six feet in one direction in a gust, and six feet back. A nice 8-pointer showed up, and I came to full draw and couldn’t keep the sight on the deer.

I gave up and climbed down. Later that night, part of the willow tree broke off and fell to the ground. It smashed up my stand but I was long gone by then, and much wiser for the experience.

One way to save tree stands and ladders is to use climbers.

My ultimate goal is, and always has been, to be ready for bow season by September 1.

That means I have a full month for my hunting areas to settle down before I crawl into a tree stand or ground blind.

My fall food plots are planted, and there is a fairly lush green growth. We needed a rain bad, and last week the plots got a nourishing drink. Even more rain would be good to keep it growing.

What we don’t need is any more 90-degree weather. It’s time some cooloer weather and some more rain.

Deer are moving through the food plots, and after tomorrow, there will be nothing left to do but bide our time. Some long-distance scouting can be done but I don’t plan to spend any time walking through my hunting areas.

We’ve got deer spotted, tree stands are up, our coops are almost all ready, and all I need to do is spend a few hours putting chicken wire around the bottom of the coops to prevent porcupines and other critters from chewing holes in the wood.

Two ground blinds are complete set in place. The fencing around the bottom has be in place, and the coops are locked. Are locks necessary? To my way of thinking, I’m beginning to believe my father was right.

“Locks keep honest people honest,” he used to say. “If you don’t lock things up, and exercise certain precautions, given the opportunity to steal something, some people will take advantage of it.”

I’ve had people take advantage of me when they thought that leaving coops unlocked was fine. So, in the past I’ve had people climb into my coops to hunt when I can’t get away for one reason or another. I’d find the coop doors unlatched and blowing in the breeze, a larger shooting window cut to their liking, and a chair stolen

Another time I spent two days fixing up tree stamds. I went to one stand, and some fool had stolen the bottom two sections of the ladder stand. The seat and foot rest was still attached to the tree with a good chain and a heavy-duty lock.

Now I stand the sections together, duct tape the chain to the ladder, and lock it. The cost of two good padlocks for the ladder section and another lock and chain for the seat is certainly cheaper than replacing a complete tree stand.

I once had an excellent tree stand, and the deer always came from behind me and on my left side to present a perfect broadside or quartering away shot. The person who would occasionally sneak into my tree stand always left his signature behind.

He was left-handed. He would try to reposition the stand so it was easier for a left-hander to shoot from. The stand was in a cedar tree, and I had fine boughs conveniently placed to break up my outline. Those boughs were tied with twine to suit me.

I went to this tree early one morning, and waded into the cedar swamp and hid. My presence kept the deer from moving that morning, and right about daylight I heard brush cracking as he walked to the tree.

I let him set there, and both of us could hear deer giving the area a wide berth. I snuck up behind the stand, and pulled out the two lower ladder sections. The guy looked down at me, and yelled “What do you think you are doing?” 

I said I knew what I was doing. I was making it difficult for him to get down.

He was in my tree, I was on the ground with two ladder sections, and he’s whining about how he’s going to get down. So we had us a little heart-to-heart chat.

“You’ve been hunting my stand illegally for a week or more, and we’re going to settle this now. You either agree to quit sneaking in on my leased property , and stay away from this area, or I’ll call the cops right now. It’s a long ways to the ground, and too far to jump, so either agree to stay away or I’ll press charges.

“You’ll still be up the tree when the police come. Then we will have a chat with the landowner. What’s it going to be?”

He quickly agreed that he wouldn’t come back. OK, I said “Toss me your wallet, with driver’s license and hunting license so I can make a few notes in case I find you’ve been hunting my spot.”

He whined and carried on but I convinced him the two ladder sections wouldn’t be replaced until he complied. I added that while he was at it, he could lower down his bow on my haul rope.

I asked him if he was the one who was hunting out of my blinds. He said he just hunted the tree stand, which was obviously difficult to deny. I took notes, learned he lived nearby, and threatened to walk away.

He gave in, complied with all my wishes, and I asked if he was going to be aggressive when he came down. I didn’t want to fight him, but I wanted him to realize the errors of his ways.

“No, no more hassles,” he said “I’ll leave and won’t be back.”

So that episode ended peacefully, but I’d learned my lesson as well Ladders and tree stands were chained together, and to the tree, and I never lost anything again.

It’s a shame that everything needs to be locked up, but I have a great deal of equity in my food plots, coops and tree stands. All of the work and time is for my satisfaction, and having fools ruining my hunting isn’t something I feel like going through again.

Mr. Nice Guy doesn’t live and hunt here anymore.

East-wind stands must be properly placed for them to work.

It's certainly not an original idea. Many hunters, myself included, have long toyed with the notion of having two stands for each hunting spot. One for the prevailing wind direction and another that would work well for most other winds.

I've thought about it at great length, and have pretty much decided that the most problematic wind is from the northeast, east and southeast. Such winds can stall deer travel.

Would a stand for a prevailing westerly-northwesterly wind, and one for an easterly wind work? What are the pros and cons?

Is the two-stand idea adaptable for most deer hunting?

It probably would work if  the cover (meaning trees for tree stands) were available for those winds. The reason most of us never have put up stands for an east wind is that we never used to get as much of them as we have over the last 10 years.

I have a few places where I can go when an east wind blows. One is a pitblind at the base of a small hill, and an east wind blows right into the opening where bow shots are taken. Deer, as a general rule, do not approach from behind the pit blind, and it's very difficult for a deer to wind the hunter.

A couple of elevated coops are situated so an east wind isn't too bothersome, but many of my stands are placed strategically for the prevailing westerly wind direction.

However, going back to the plausibility of two stands for each hunting area. It could work, if the terrain features and available trees are present, but there is the additional cost of doing so.

Say we're hunting a big buck and we want to set up on him when the wind is out of the east, it can be done but it's not something one jumps into when we already have some stands out. If we could, that would mean building or buying many more stands.

The cost of buying or building more stands can become cost-prohibitive.

Most of our stands are permanent fixtures, especially elevated coops built into trees. If we were to do it at all locations, the woods would lose its good looks and begin looking like a scattering of urban tenements in the trees. That would spoil the aethetics of the hunting area.

What probably makes more sense than anything is to build four or five stands for use strictly on an east wind. That might mean two or three new stands along the western edge of our property where the likelihood of a deer catching the hunters scent would be minimal.

If two or three stands were positioned with the west fence line just a short distance away, the chance of a deer circling next to the fence and picking up human odor would be minimized.

The other alternative would be to build an air-tight coop with one shooting window strategically placed. If it was just large enough to shoot through, and could be opened without a sound, it would probably work.

Too many windows in a coop allow the hunter to be silhouetted against the light entering another window. And, the more windows there are, the more likely someone will try a shot at a circling buck or open the windows to look around. All this would do is distribute more human odor.

Fighting an east wind is becoming more prevalent. This could solve the problem.

Fighting the east wind is something bow hunters must put up with, and in some cases, we can do something about it. In other cases, the wind may beat us.We're putting our collective heads together this winter, and are trying to figure out how to beat the October east-wind problem. Will it be two blinds in one hunting spot or air-tight blinds with only one small shooting window?

Will it be one or two more pit blinds that back up to a hill? Will it be stands close to our line fence to keep deer from circling behind the hunters?

It may well be a combination of all of these things although having two blinds covering one hunting spot is not one of my favorite ideas. If one was an elevated coop and the other was a pitblind, it could work without cluttering up the skyline.

One thing is certain: whatever we do must be accomplished during the spring, or at the very latest, by June or early July. I like all changes to be made long in advance of the bow season.

This nice buck is checking his surroundings for danger before moving.

Why do people climb mountains? The answer is obvious. Because they are there.

The same analogy applies to deer hunters. Why do people switch stands methodically. The answer is because they can and should.

A lady bowhunter I know loves to sit in just one stand. She will hunt in it every day of the season if possible. She loves her stand, its location and she knew where the deer would come from to pass within her shooting range.

What's more: she shoots good bucks from that stand. It works for her but this method of hunting is not for me.

I want to know when and where bucks travel. Finding such areas is hard work.

I always want to know what lies ahead and around the next bend in the trail. Each day of deer hunting is a day of discovery for me, and that means moving around from one area to another.

It's not my nature to hunt the same stand two days in a row unless I feel a big buck will show. I watch deer on a daily basis, and know where the bigger bucks travel.

Some bucks get into lockstep with moving along the same trail but many big-antlered deer vary their travel routes and schedules. Young bucks can be patterned, and it's possible to predict with 95 percent accuracy what time the little buck will arrive. Nine times out of 10 they will show up within five minutes of when they are expected.

Now, me, looking at the same scenery day after day takes its toll on my patience. It's much more fun, to my way of thinking, to sit in a different stand every day. It helps me avoid getting into a rut.

My hunting method allows me to move daily, play the wind and not get bored.

My preference is to mix up my hunting activities. One day a treestand will be picked, and the next day it may be a ground blind a mile away. The following day may be an elevated coop, and the next day I may choose a pit blind. This allows me to study different deer, try to pinpoint a big buck and his travel area, and it keeps me from getting bored.

A bored hunter is not an effective one. Move around, try different locations, and it keeps you hunting different areas. Switching hunting spots on a regular basis keeps hunters from being patterned by deer. I will seldom hunt the same spot twice in one week.

Each spot will feature bucks approaching from a new and different angle, and like other sportsmen, it's like learning a new stretch of river. Sometimes the new spots will not pay off, but other times they do.

It's impossible to know how good a hunting area can be if we don't hunt it. A great deal of thought goes into choosing locations for ground or tree stands, and that means someone must sit there and study deer patterns and travel routes under various wind directions.

I want to know everything there is to know about a certain location. There have been times where I've put in a stand, hunted it for a day or two, and pulled it out because something about it just didn't feel right.

Hunters, like many people, listen to gut feeling. They have hunches, and I'll look at it a few times, put a stand up, and know within 30 minutes of crawling into the stand that it isn't right. If it doesn't pass muster the first night, it won't be there the next.

It’s my intention to know  about every stand I hunt. It makes me effective.

I don't believe in moving stands just because it goes cold for a week or so. If it has a proven record, it stays in place for a season. I've seen a few stands be cold for most of a season, and then pick up toward the end as deer shift into their winter mode.

The December bow season is long gone, but these tips are meant to give hunters food for thought between now and when December rolls around again. If you are limited to 10 acres, there may only one or possibly two good spots to hunt. If so, switch back and forth. Twenty acres offers two or three spots, and 50 acres offers even more possible stand location choices.

My wife and I once leased 300 acres of deer habitat. It took us a year to learn how to hunt it. We studied travel routes for spring, summer, fall and winter, learned where deer bedded and where they fed.

Study deer movement during all four season, and sooner or later a hunter will put all the puzzle pieces together for one area. If he figures out one spot, it's then time to learn everything possible about another location.

That leased land is a case in point. We'd invite the occasional person  to hunt, and it was a big thrill for me to put a young bowhunter in a stand, and tell him: "A buck comes by here every day at 5:25 p.m., and he comes out of the far corner on the right."

I'd sit with him, and say: "Get ready. That buck will be here in five minutes."

Sure enough, the buck had been patterned so well that he would show up on time. It never ceased to amaze the adults or kids I worked with. People get that woods-savvy only be spending long hours in many locations. Do it right, and shooting a buck is pretty easy. Shooting a big buck is much more difficult, but that only increases the thrill of hunting a particular animal.

The key point here is not to get locked into hunting one spot day after day. Sooner or later the deer will pattern you, and that is not a good situation to find yourself in midway through a season ... unless you are my wife. It always seems to work for her.

One squeak will spook this buck. Make sure all stands are properly secured.

A detailed lists reduces the chance of forgetting a stand problem.

Check all blinds and stands in the spring to avoid autumn problems.

Make sure that all windows can be covered with a black cloth.

A pyramid pit blind like this one allows close, easy shots at ground level.

Don’t be afraid to try something new and different. Don’t get in a hunting rut.

Hunt a tree stand, ground blind, pop-up tent, elevated coop -- switch around.

Take different  paths in and out of a spot. Have at least two routes to choose from.

It’s not likely but some opening-day bucks may be out in the open.

Checking for fresh sign and being lucky helps when choosing a deer stand.