Story by Tom Claycomb III

There are a lot of ways to hunt but today we’re going to talk about still/hunting.  I’d have to say that cats are the master still hunters. You may call it stealth hunting.

I’m also going to briefly include spotting/stalking which is different in that you set up and spot something and then move in. However, if you’re still hunting and spot an animal 200 yards off across a mountain then you’re going to have to plan a stalk.

If your deer hunting spot is only 50 acres you may not be familiar with still hunting. If you walk around too much, you’re going to run all of your deer off into your neighbor’s land and he’ll shoot them. Or you may hunt in super thick timber in East Texas. If you’re on the ground you can’t see a few yards so it would sound nuts to walk around because you’d spook everything before you ever saw it.

So why would you want to still hunt?  For a lot of reasons. Maybe you’re a short-range weapon hunting and are limited to 40 to100 yard shots. For instance, if you’re archery hunting, black powder hunting, hunting with the new Umarex .50 cal. air gun, the new Umarex Air Saber, a pistol, shotgun with slugs or a crossbow the effective killing range is limited.

When hunting with any of the short-range weapons you need to be a lot closer to your prey than when you’re using your trusty ol’ .30-06. You also need to be even more careful when using most of them when shooting through brush or grass. It seems an arrow will deflect if it happens to hit a common house fly when zipping towards your target.

If you’re a bow hunter you can relate to what the famous archer Fred Bear said years ago, “The chances of your arrow hitting a ¼ inch branch that is front of the buck that you’re shooting at is directly proportional to the size of his rack”.

When I started bow hunting back in the early ‘80s bow hunting was not very popular. We didn’t have all of the cool broadheads, releases, cover scents, calls or the quality of bows that are now available. It drives me nuts when I write a bow hunting articles about a hunt 40 years ago and some young nimrod writes in telling me how he has never wounded a deer. Come see me Junior and I’ll suit you up with a bow from 40 years ago and let’s see if we can’t humble you a bit.

Fast forward 40-plus years and suddenly bow hunting is the rage, heck, even your wife’s vegan hairdresser is probably a bow hunter. Movies like the Hunger games increased the popularity exponentially as well.

Since bow hunting wasn’t as popular back in the day, there weren’t that many customers in that realm. So not hardly any manufacturers invested in helpful products for the archery hunter. But today, my how things have changed.

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