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.

On the ground or in the air. Both work & it depends on you.

It's an eternal question that is always being contemplated by bow hunters. Which is best: hunting on the ground or up in an elevated coop or tree stand.

An elevated coop or a tree stand wins me over every time. I like the increased visibility that hunting from a tree provides, and I'm not bothered by height except in a high wind. After many years of experience, my preference is for a stand at about 15 feet. Going higher can increase the chance of a fatal fall.

Many hunters prefer hunting from a cedar or pine tree, and if I have a choice, it's one or the other for me. However, I often hunt from maple trees. There are a lot of maples on my property, and my first decision is where is the best stand location?

Personal preference plays a big role on how you bow hunt for deer.

If a cedar or pine offers the best spot to ambush a moving buck, that's where I will hunt. However, if the key area to ambush a whitetail is from a maple tree, you'll find me up one of them. Trees make little difference to me but location, as with real estate, is everything.

Some stands are permanent wood platforms and others are more confined. Some are ladder stands, and others are fixed-position stands that I reach by going up limbs or tree steps. It makes little difference to me: I go where the deer want to go.

It doesn't take much room to shoot a deer from a tree providing the stand is properly positioned and downwind of the deer travel route. The trees on my land are there to provide possible stand locations, and although it's not legal on state or federal land, I nail or use sturdy screws to hold my permanent tree stands in place.

I have a few places where a big stand isn't feasible, and some of them are no more than two halves of a sheet of marine plywood painted gray or dark brown. A narrow platform just big enough to sit down on is nailed to the tree, the two side panels are nailed or screwed into place and a narrow piece of plywood serves as a roof. These stands are narrow at the end where people enter the stand and slightly wider where they will sit or stand to shoot.

Deer seldom pay attention to them, and they are very productive if the hunter can sit still. They are not made for a claustrophobic person, however.

All of my stands, at home and elsewhere that I hunt, are strategically placed, and some designs are unlike any I've seen before. Some stand outside in the rain and snow, and we check them two or three times each year to determine if they are still reliable and safe.

Any stand that is no longer safe is torn down. I'm not a risk-taker, and if I won't hunt from a stand, no one else will hunt there. Such stands are quickly slated for demolition.

Take down any unsafe tree stand.

Hunting from a tree stand appeals to me. It's possible to see deer come from many different routes, and it allows hunters to study the animals as they approach the area. Some deer dash right in, others come cautiously and slow, and a few wise old does and big bucks often try to slip in on the downwind side to check for potential danger.

Some hunters dislike shooting down at an angle toward a deer. It is a part of hunting that must be practiced, and years ago, I would get with someone else and take turns on the ground. One would position a target at varying distances and angles, and the person in the tree would shoot a dozen arrows. He would climb down and we would change jobs. Frequent practice at shooting from a tree stand makes handling these shots as routine as ground-level shots.

Tell your friends, neighbors and relatives about my weblog. I plan to do this for a long time, and am willing to share my knowledge of what works and why it works for me. Do them a favor and give them my weblog address.

I'm a realist. Ground blind hunting can be very productive, especially in places where almost everyone hunts from a tree. I've preached the use of safety harnesses when hunting from an elevated position, but there are still people who feel wearing a "sissy" harness isn't for them. A doctor friend of my buddy learned a sad lesson this fall he fell and broke both legs, and was very luck it wasn't his back or neck.

Let's face it: some people are NOT meant to hunt from high places.

For such people, it's my personal recommendation to hunt from a ground blind. Believe me, I've been in and out of ground blinds and pit blinds all of my life, and have yet to see anyone get busted up by falling out of a ground blind.

Use the same logic when choosing a ground blind location. The proper spot is everything, and it must be downwind of where deer travel. It's possible to make a ground blind almost air-tight by installing slide-open windows. The glass can be covered with camo cloth or painted to eliminate the shine, and a motionless hunter is nearly impossible to see when sitting in a darkened hunting coop with the walls painted dark brown or black.

I favor ground blinds in windy weather or when it is cold, rainy or snowing. Properly positioned, a ground blind can blend in with root-wads of fallen trees, against a backdrop of standing corn or in an oak forest.

Everyone has their own likes or dislikes. Whether you hunt from a tree or from the ground, just remember to have the wind in your face, don't move until its time to shoot, and when you shoot, shoot once and shoot straight. And don't miss.

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.

Fall or winter, draw on a buck when he is occupied with feeding. Be patient.

It's a common problem for most deer hunters. They find themselves in unfamiliar territory, and begin trying to puzzle out where to hunt. Which tree will best suit their needs.

Many hunters take a wild flying guess based on minimal input from gazing at trails, and pick a spot. Often, it may look good but in reality, it is a hurry-up and poor guess that will never pay off.

Having said that, we can answer the question of choosing the right tree. I prefer a spot where two or more trails come together to form a main trail. I prefer a cedar tree if possible, but will settle for any tree that fits my needs providing it has some cover (tree branches, leaves, etc.) to break up the hunter's silhouette. It also needs at least two ways to gain access to the tree, and two ways out once the hunting day is done.

It sounds fairly simple but it involves much more thinking than guessing.

I personally prefer deer to approach my stand from behind, and if possible since I'm right-handed, I want the deer coming from behind and on my left side. It enables me to shoot sitting down, and offers both broadside and quartering-away shots, the ones a bow hunter should consider. I don't want the deer coming head-on at me, and I don't want the deer crossing from left to right or right to left in front of me.

Knowing where to hunt is always better than guessing. Knowing comes from a constant familiarity with the area being hunted. Let's put it another way: We travel to Alabama in mid-January when the rut is in full swing, and we hunt on private club land.

Someone acts as a guide, and will drive us to a stand where deer are known to pass, and with some luck, we shoot a buck. If we don't shoot a buck, it means that none were seen, none were of the size we wanted or a buck did show up but didn't offer a chance for an accurate shot. If we see no bucks, one must wonder if it's a good spot. Try to be discreet in asking a guide if the area usually produces bucks. Ask that question firmly, and the guide may question whether you are questioning his judgment. It never pays off to question a guide too strongly. He can make it happen where you won't see a nice buck. Tread softly with this line of questioning.

We will hunt again in the evening, and will be placed in a key location where we should see deer. No one can always make deer move to the hunter, and no one can guarantee that a hunter can and will sit still or see a buck. Guides have a responsibility to try to put their hunters in the best spot, but no one can guarantee that an earlier hunter didn't spook game away.

If we should hunt this way, with others telling us where to hunt, it's a wise move to pay close attention to the terrain in which we hunt. There are always things that offer subtle clues about each location and whether deer are using the area. Look for tracks, rubs, scrapes, feeding or bedding areas, and ask questions in a whisper. Pick a guide's brain because you are paying him to hopefull teach you something about picking tree stand locations.

Look for deer sign. Ask yourself if this looks like good deer country.

Deer often will be found in fringe cover, that area between thick heavy cover and open land. Of course, a ground blind or tree stand may be located anywhere in-between, and it's up to the hunter to learn why one spot is better than another. If hunting in Alabama,, as we suggested at the beginning, you will probably be hunting palmetto swamps near a creek or river., Be sure your stand is high enough to enable you to look over the palmettos because you can't look through them. A deer can move through the ground foliage but it does make some noise so be prepared to listen and look in all directions without moving too much.

One of my favorite spots is on a low hillside near thick cover with heavy cover on three sides with open land on one side. The prevailing wind should blow down through the open cover, and the stand can be cross-wind to approaching deer.

The only way a deer can pick up a hunter's scent here is when the person climbs into or out of the stand. The stand must be high enough on this small hill to blow scent over the surrounding thick cover.

One thing hunters must do is look at terrain the way a deer would look at it. Where is the food source? Where are the key bedding areas? Which trails connect those two key locations? How can deer, especially the larger bucks, travel back and forth without being on trails? I try to stay at least 50 yards back in cover away from the field edge.

Other key factors include:

• How does the wind blow in each location, and does it swirl backwards when hitting a woodline?
• How can a hunter get into and out of the area without bumping into deer?
• Does the hunting area have two or three way to enter and exit to avoid traveling the same route time after time?
• Have a choice of where to enter or leave the stand can help prevent bucks from patterning you.
• Know how to get in and out without spooking deer.

More chances are lost by running into a deer that for any other reason.

Which type of stand is best suited to that area? Which would work best: a ground blind, pit blind, tree stand or elevated coop? How high is high enough for elevated stands?

I've found that a tree stand elevation of 15 to 18 feet is usually high enough under most circumstances. I've got one stand that is close to 30 feet in the air, and it is a consistent producer but steep-angle shots are not a good bet when a hunter must make up his mind in a hurry, and take a quick well-aimed shot.

Many of my stands are at 14-15 feet. That places a standing bow hunter at roughly 20 feet in the air. A stand at 18 feet puts the hunter has roughly 24 feet. Each stand has special requirements, and hunters must solve these problems long before the season opens. Match stand height to the best natural features of a tree.

Hunters will have far better success if they know why a hunting location is the best spot. Guessing implies that one is trusting to luck or fate. With a guess, the hunter will have a 50-50 chance of guessing right.

Of course, this also means a 50-50 chance of guessing wrong. There is nothing worse than a stand that requires hours of effort and time to prepare only to learn it is not in the right spot.

This year, don't guess. Know where the hotspots are long before the season opens. Doing so beats guessing every time.

This beagle just retrieved a snowshoe hare for the hunter.

Hunting snowshoe hares is a hoot. What's not to like about it?

Well, we get to stand in thick cedars, Christmas tree plantations, juniper thickets or pines, and try to guess when and where the satchel-footed ghost hare will appear next.

All we need is some snow, We got another seven or eight inches of snow between yesterday afternoon and last night. We have more than enough snow for hunting the white hares. Sometimes, as has been true for several years, hares are conspicuous by their absense. They can be hard to find.

We can have snow fall off tree boughs and find its way down our neck, and when the snow gets deep, we get to wander around in this heavy cover and hope we don't fall down. Going down is easy, but climbing back to a vertical position can be difficult in deep powdery snow.

Hares are no longer plentiful in the northern Lower Peninsula.

There is the added bonus of listening to a some deep-throated beagles in full cry as they weave their way through heavy cover. Sometimes the hounds are sight trailing the swamp ghost, but most often the dogs are 100 yards or farther behind the hare.

Mind you, I've stalked snowshoe hared and run them with hounds, and there is one major requirement. I've even hunted them with a bow. All one needs a fresh hare track to follow.

Those tracks seem to be getting far less common in many areas. Twenty to 25 years ago, all we had to do was look for the thickest cover in northern counties and there would be tracks everywhere.

That's not so anymore. Some of my buddies have gone looking for hare tracks in all the right places, and if they find tracks, most of them are cottontails. It's a proven fact that cottontails are moving farther north every year.

We can blame the hare scarcity on new housing developments. We can blame it on clearing some land and planting bushes and shrubs around our house. There is predation by bobcats, coyotes, fox, hawks, and owls. People and our inroads into what once was ideal hare habitat must assume some blame, and the other cause is snowies are cyclic by nature.

Folks, if snowshoe hares are cyclic, then their cycle is close to hitting rock bottom, especially in the northern Lower Peninsula. There are still more hares in the U.P., but their numbers are slowly dropping as well.

Hares are cyclic, and heavily preyed upon by avian and land predators.

Yeah, I know,air and land predators take some of the the white animals but there is nothing sportsmen can do about that. The Fish & Wildlife Service has protected birds of prey for many years, and those who kill one of these birds and get caught, are severely punished.

So, what's a hare hunter to do? Well, they can easily find cottontail rabbits in most Lower Peninsula areas. Or ... they can do as some guys I know do.

They go hunting snowshoe hares. They scout for habitat that still holds some hares and go hunting. Unlike conventional wisdom dictates, they either go for the enjoyment of listening to hound music and leave the firearms home or they forget to load the shotgun.

They give the running hares a free pass. They give the dogs a good workout as the hare runs an egg-shaped oval before returning to the area where he was initially jumped. The hunters may let the white hare make two or three circles, catch up the hounds, and head for another location.

This way they have the thrill of listening to bawls, bellers, chattering, chops, howls, yelps and other words used to describe the voice of each individual hound.

Hunt the hares but limit the kill to keep hound interest high.

You see, hunting snowshoe hares is a good bit like hunting spring wild turkeys. The kill of a gobbler or a hare is anticlimactic. It's the sounds of the hunt, the dogs trailing the scent in full cry or the gobbler roaring back at the hen-talking hunter. Seeing the hare or a turkey is a major part of the hunt, and since hares are getting to the point of low numbers, taking the pooch out for a run may have to be enough fun.

Sure, the hound owner wants to kill the occasional hare to keep his dogs interest at a high level, but it doesn't have to happen on every hunt. If turkey hunters killed every turkey they saw, there soon wouldn't be any gobblers left to hunt or the birds would stop coming to the call.

It's much the same way with snowshoe hares. Maybe we'll just have to be content to listen to hound music. On many days, standing knee-deep in snow in a cedar swamp and drinking in the sounds of hounds on a hot track, has to be good enough.

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.

The CDS system described below works and I feel safe in tree stands.

A short history on my four falls from a tree stand.

Follow the detailed instructs rather than the abbreviated ones here.

Peace of mind is as simple as using this safety harness while in a tree.

A buck like the one on the right was my goal today.

The northwest corner of the Lower Peninsula has a shortage of deer.

Is a return to limited baiting on tap for next year. It does draw more hunters.