Silliest thing you ever took deer hunting

[Tirod]

Checking the deer equipment list, and there's always more than I need. Looking over two dozen on the net, they pretty much all have some common sense essentials.

Over the years they change, the basics remain the same, but there have been some ridiculous things dragged out in the woods from time to time. Maybe it's just perspective - but their it is, you dragged it all the way out there and in the clear light of day, what were you thinking?

One pair of hunters passed me in the woods with all their gear in a wheelbarrow. I have a rep for too much stuff, this? Still, if they got a deer, it wouldn't be hard to get it back.

Goes with my search for a pull along golf bag cart. Maybe not. I've dragged out deer the hard way. Nearly gave it up. Four hours for less than a mile. It's why I have a roll up kids plastic sled with rope in the pack as a skid.

Made a one legged seat last year, half inch plywood that connects to a 3" PVC leg by a closet flange. Screws in the seat fit the keyholes. Needs more foam and it's getting it. Stuff fits inside the leg. This year, a 5x6 piece of camo gear bag canvas with waterproof backing as a blind and rain shelter. It can help as part of the drag if needed.

Something I rarely see mentioned is a perforated metal coffee can with some charcoal briquettes. Light one at a time on cold days, under a seat or in a tree stand, they keep you warm.

Rather than a saw, maybe a tomahawk for clearing lanes of fire - and processing. It's a thought.

Don't usually take it all, just what fits that days weather conditions. Like a lot of guys, it's been 85 or 25 on a November afternoon. You never know until just before.

 

[rcmodel]

I was always more for traveling light.
Never took much more then a gun, a knife, a compass, maybe some binoculars, and whatever I was wearing, depending on the season.

Possibly the stupidest thing I ever saw a deer hunter pack up in a tree blind in November around here was two cases of Budweiser 3.2% beer.
Over a mile from the nearest road or trail.

And then leave 48 aluminum cans under his tree stand at the end of the season.

I have to assume he was freely peeing out of his tree stand while consuming 48 cans of beer during the season.
So, did he get a deer?
Or did every deer in Kansas make a wide detour around the area at the first whiff of all that human urine??

Or did he get so drunk he fell and killed himself?
(I never found a body, so probably not.)

I cleaned up his beer can mess and packed them all out later that winter.
I also tore down his tree stand and destroyed it too!!

rc

 

[Arkansas Paul]

I travel as light as possible hunting. Of course some don't consider what I do hunting. We go and get into large box stands with windows and propane heaters, overlooking food plots baited with corn. I can climb down from my stand and be at the campfire within 15 minutes so no need to take a lot of crap with me. It's just gun, binoculars, some drinks and iPhone.

Possibly the stupidest thing I ever saw a deer hunter pack up in a tree blind in November around here was two cases of Budweiser 3.2% beer.

Yeah that's pretty stupid. There's plenty of beer drinking going on at our camp, but its around the fire when the hunt is over, not in the darn stand with a loaded firearm. That's plain dumb.

 

[BodySnatcher]

...a woman.

 

[Patocazador]

Dumbest thing I ever brought (one time) .. a tree umbrella that went part way around the tree. I thought it would shade me or keep me dry. Despite the trouble attaching the stupid thing above my climbing stand, the thing almost poked my eyes out and kept me from standing and looking anywhere except straight ahead.

Smartest thing is a pocket fold-up hammock to stretch between 2 trees for a midday nap .. and a GPS.

 

[brainwake]

...a woman.

It just depends on the woman. My wife is a straight up deer killer. She scores every year completely on her own.

 

[bainter1212]

...a woman.

A woman who hunts deer, or is willing to trudge on out to the woods and learn, is a prize catch IMO.

If I could get my wife to try hunting, I would start to doubt reality, like maybe I was dreaming or something.

 

[Arkansas Paul]

...a woman.

Well personally, I'd much rather my wife share my camper with me than a sweaty, hairy guy but hey, to each his own.

 

[V-fib]

during gun season i use ear plugs but the type i use are north sonic II plugs which block loud sounds but allow you to hear normal sounds.
for long days in a blind I bring reading material and have recently been bringing my Zune with over 3000 songs on it from classical to metal. i have headphones on and set the vol. at 1 or 2.
The other night I was listening and "for whom the bell tolls" by metallica happened to be playing right at dusk and I though how appropriate but alas no deer

 

[CoRoMo]

These silly things...

There's just no need whatsoever.

But one year when my brother and I were packed in about four miles or more from the nearest road, on an October elk hunt, he decides to hike back out for a shower and to eat dinner in the camper with our folks. At sundown, he hikes -four or five miles- back in -up hill in hard country- a casserole dish that mom had made a blueberry cobbler in. Now... don't get me wrong; I was happy to eat that cobbler and it hit the spot like nothing else that night. But had I been in his shoes, there's no way on this earth that I'd have lugged that full glass pan of cobbler up those hills to that backcountry camp. I can't believe he did that.

 

[Tirod]

Yes, I've seen the beer cans. On public land, most permanent stands disappeared years ago. They were outlawed because guys were beating railroad spikes into the trees for steps. In those days it was all untreated lumber and large nails, you could never trust them season to season. Since they wanted to sell the timber, the spikes and nails had to stop.

Some guy hauled out a chrome dinette chair and had it 18 feet up. It was there for 20 years or more. That was a '70's tree stand.

These days I see the woods full of marker tape everywhere. I get around just fine without it, or needing a flashlight either. It's funny to watch folks busting brush with a 500 lumen light getting to their stand. It's been reported bucks start sneaking off just hearing car doors slam, how much more some searchlight beaming hundreds of yards on opening morning.

It doesn't make public land hunting easy.

 

[Arkansas Paul]

^ Every time I complain about paying $525 a year to be in a good lease with locked gates, I hear stories like that and then I don't mind paying it. There is something to be said for knowing dead level certain that your spot is your spot and the hard work you put in planting food plots and the hundreds of dollars in corn you use will benefit you and not some other yahoo who just happens along.

 

[627PCFan]

my first year of hunting on public land at 430 am with a flashlight trying to follow those markers my buddy had put out for me the day before....got me lost on nearly 3,000 acres. If Im going big woods hunting, I google earth the crap out of it and use a GPS.

 

[Beach Nut]

My problem when I go deer hunting is not that the things I carry are silly but
it is that I carry too much with me sometimes. The poet William Blake once
said "Too much is better than not enough" and I agree with that philosophy.
However, after a hunting trip where I had to walk over a mile with a backpack
that weighed in excess of sixty pounds last weekend, sometimes being a
minimalist is not such a bad idea.

I carried four deer calls, four cans of scent, field glasses, two bleat cans,
a Bowie with a fourteen inch blade, a .44 Magnum Taurus Raging Bull
(that was a lot of the extra weight but I was in bear country) two books,
a sixpack of diet soda, some snack crackers and peanuts, a bag of Acorn
Rage, extra gloves, a facemask, a extra hat, marking tape, a flashlight,
a multitool, a rope with drag handle, cover spray for my clothes, camo
makeup, a two way radio, a emergency first aid kit, a pillow, a light folding
chair and toilet paper.

This coming weekend me and a friend are going to be hunting the same
spot, he spotted a twelve pointer and he is chomping at the bit to get
back out there. I also saw a couple of does but I passed them up hoping
there was a buck trailing them since the rut is in. I do believe I am going
to see what I can do to lighten things up however, it is hard jumping over
small creeks and canals with sixty pounds attached to your back.

 

[Arkansas Paul]

I carried four deer calls, four cans of scent, field glasses, two bleat cans,
a Bowie with a fourteen inch blade, a .44 Magnum Taurus Raging Bull
(that was a lot of the extra weight but I was in bear country) two books,
a sixpack of diet soda, some snack crackers and peanuts, a bag of Acorn
Rage, extra gloves, a facemask, a extra hat, marking tape, a flashlight,
a multitool, a rope with drag handle, cover spray for my clothes, camo
makeup, a two way radio, a emergency first aid kit, a pillow, a light folding
chair and toilet paper.

I do believe I am going
to see what I can do to lighten things up however, it is hard jumping over
small creeks and canals with sixty pounds attached to your back.

1. 4 calls, 4 scents and 2 bleat calls seems a bit excessive. I'm not saying calls don't work, but you could thin that out a little.
2. Why do you need a Bowie with a 14 inch blade? Are you blazing a new trail or hunting in uncharted wilderness? Seriously, I would ditch that. A small blade skinning knife will do just about anything you need to do in the woods. If you're needing to clear trails or shooting lanes, that should have been done weeks before season.
3. I'd leave the six pack of sodas. They weigh a lot and make you pee in the stand, scaring away that big 12 point you're talking about.
4. Camo makeup can be applied in the truck and that's where I'd leave it.
5. If you have cell phone signal where you're hunting, I'd ditch the two way radio too.
6. Why in the hell do you need a pillow?
7. Are you hunting in a blind? If you are, leave the chair in it.

 

[Beach Nut]

The Bowie did come in handy for clearing brush and limbs, this area is
not one that we regularly hunt and it served it's purpose. It will stay at
home next time. The pillow is something I use to give my back a little
relief and since I do not have a tree stand set up there, the chair comes
in handy. I left it behind the ground blind I set up there last week.

You are right about some of the other stuff, it will be staying at home
this weekend. This is a new spot that I hadn't hunted before last Saturday
and we went out there after some of my family who own this land had
given me some good reports about what they had seen this year. It
has potential but I can only see myself hunting it maybe two to three
times a year since it is a hour plus drive from the house and I have another
spot that I know like the back of my hand and have prepared less than
fifteen minutes away.

I have a bad habit of letting things accumulate in my backpack, tackle box,
etc. I believe I will thin the herd out, so to speak and take what works
best on this trip.

 

[Tirod]

Sounds like one of my typical load outs in the day. I can't do that anymore.

All the tools, back ups, and doubled supplies sound rational, but it's just one day, usually a single lunchtime meal and maybe two snacks. Gorp is your friend. If anything breaks, so be it - which is why I try to keep the hunting weapon versatile.

Large knife? Maybe compound pruners would be more compact and lighter. We tend to get a view we are assaulting the wilderness, but a gardener or caretakers perspective might suit better. We are rearranging the decor in a deer's house, the light touch alarms them less.

Anybody take a sleeping bag? I've taken a German Army patrol sack with arms and a zipper at the knees. You look like a big green Barney but it did keep my feet warmer that year. I've since learned it's better to keep moving when it's that cold, deer need to be kicked out of their cover. If you are cold and uncomfortable, they are, too. Mammals share the same discomforts, use it against them.

 

[AKElroy]

I have a deer lease with a well stocked travel trailer, so I will go over actual blind gear. In the 4x8 box blind, I have a small wooden box with a few bottled waters, toilet paper, a few rounds of .308 & .30-30, leather gloves (to use as shooting rests on the metal window frames, so as not to scratch the rifles), surgical gloves in case I shoot one too big to load by myself without parting it out, some inexpensive but surprisingly bright bushnell 12x50 binocs, bug repellant, and a quality LED flashlight.

All I carry to the blind is the rifle, cell phone, leatherman waive, Gerber folder w/ gut hook, case stockman and zippo lighter in the pocket. Both my blinds are a couple of miles from camp, so I keep a 1992 Suzuki samurai parked there year round. I usually park a few hundred yards from the blind, and walk in quiet an hour before first light.

In the Sammy, I keep some "hard use" gloves for loading animals, some rope for dragging big boars to the boneyard, spare batteries for the game cams.

Ooh.....just re-read the OP. The silliest thing I've taken into the blind? The wife. Not that she is silly, but taking her while still expecting to actually hunt was.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

A woman who hunts deer, or is willing to trudge on out to the woods and learn, is a prize catch IMO.

OF COURSE, but the modifiers in the sentence are "...hunts deer" and "... willing...to learn". In my case it was a girlfriend, and she just couldn't get the part about sitting still and being quiet, and that it might take all day before the deer came by if ever...

Didn't marry that one. Dodged a huge bullet.

LD

 

[Patocazador]

It seems one has to dodge a lot of bullets before catching a good one.
IT'S LIKE THE LOTTERY: there are many more losers than winners.

 

[Bwana John]

My Labrador Retriever.

 

[Liberty1776]

A full belt pack of survival gear and food.

As we only hunt local farms, it finally seemed a little excessive. Now that I'm the far side of 60, I've gone back to my gun, and 4 other things that fit in my pockets. Ammo, knife, lighter and mini-flashlight, and one that doesn't - a roll-up plastic toboggan that I'll use if I ever get a deer again. (to drag it out on) And I can sit on it and stay dry otherwise. Has a sling to carry over my shoulder, and weighs about a pound. Dat's it...

 

[PapaG]

A couple of times, my gun.

 

[swampcrawler]

^most of the time in my case.

 

[Robert]

My rifle. Elk only exists in Estes Park and in the minds of weary hunters. I firmly believe them to be mythical anmals.