Another Beast Article this time JoeRE

[WV Bowhunter]

Great article!!

[tbunao]

Great article Joe! Great questions Andy!

I agree with the above, this DIY series is good!

[stash59]

Great job guys!!!!!

[Hawthorne]

Liked the article. Your a gentleman and a scholar joere!

[briar]

Awesome article. Joe has personally helped me and it means a lot for one hunter to help another!!

[Dewey]

Awesome article. Joe has personally helped me and it means a lot for one hunter to help another!!

Agree. Joe was no doubt the secret to my success in hill country last year. Between listening to his podcast, reading his journal and answering my questions on hunting the hills he helped more than he will ever know.

[seazofcheeze]

I like "the professor" nickname. Great read, but what else would a guy expect from Joe and Andy in the same article.

[Jackson Marsh]

Great interview!

Thanks Andy and Joe!

[mainebowhunter]

nice joe! Fun stuff!

[Dhurtubise]

What a wonderful portrait. Great line-up of bucks and generous info. That mess of bunnies look like a bunch of work!

Well done Ridgerunner and JoeRe.

[Mibowfreak]

Another great DIY article. Im really digging these!!!!

Thanks for putting these together guys.

[JoeRE]

Great interview!
Joe, thanks for sharing your deer hunting knowledge with us even though it increases your exposure to "hunters" that may want to "piggy back" off your success. Hopefully this hasn't been too big of an issue for you.

I have a question for you on mobile hunting..
When do you choose to sit on the ground, and when do you choose to hunt out of your saddle or stand? I ask this because I personally only hunt from the ground when I am forced to by having no huntable trees. In most of your kill pictures I see huntable trees in the back ground, yet most of your big buck kills have been from the ground. So what situation do you hunt from the ground even though there are stand trees to pick from?

Thanks Klemz. Yea, I hunt from the ground more than just where I am "forced" to. Basically anywhere I think I can get away with it. But also a lot of my setups are near trees I could climb but the trees are just not in the right spot. Maybe the trees are a few yards too far away from a travel route or if the wind is quartering toward the buck the trees just are not right. So I pick a spot on the ground if there is a good one - I want good back cover, not skylined, and see a buck coming about 50 yards out so I can make small movements ahead of time and be ready to shoot. If I have those things and the element of complete surprise the deer is in trouble. If any one of those things is missing, a ground setup is a no-go.

There are still a lot of spots I climb trees - 60-70% of my bow hunts are from a tree. But I have noticed the trend that I mentioned in the article - a disproportionate number of my big bucks have been taken off the ground. For instance both the bow bucks I killed in 2015 were in spots I could not have set up in a tree. The early season 175" 10 pointer was following a thick field edge and he was bedded so close to where I had to set up due to property lines that I do not think I could have climbed a tree on the field edge. He was within 150 yards, I did not know exactly which bed he was in (1 of 3), the wind was quartering toward him, and he had line of sight as well once I would have been 10+ feet up in the air. So I sat in my weedy milo field and stuck him. I remember him and his buddy the compact 10 pointer scanning that field edge as they walked down it - but he never really looked out into the milo field I was sitting in. No predator could be in the milo! I was more exposed than I would have liked with my head sticking up but I was in a clump of horse weeds, with weeds tied to my hat. If he had ANY clue a hunter would be around he could have probably still picked me off.

The second bow buck I shot on the ground was late November. He was inside an old clear cut behind a late fawn in heat when I shot him. There were no trees inside there bigger than 6" in diameter. I could have set up in a big tree outside the edge of the thick stuff - but could not have shot more than 10 yards into it from an elevated position. No trimming allowed on public land and even if it was, I wasn't going to do it. I would have needed to cut a huge number of saplings to shoot. But at ground level, below the canopy of all those young trees, it was more open. Still thick, if he hadn't stopped at the right spot the story might have ended differently - but he did.

When gun hunting I rarely use a stand. Just don't see the need unless visibility is an issue. If I am 100-200 yards back from the deer movement the sight, sound, and smell margin of error is so much greater.

As I have said before, depends a lot on terrain too. If you are hunting swamps with near zero visibility at ground level obviously climbing something is a lot more important no doubt about that.

What a wonderful portrait. Great line-up of bucks and generous info. That mess of bunnies look like a bunch of work!
Well done Ridgerunner and JoeRe.

Thanks - those are coyote pelts but maybe you knew that and were kidding . Most of the pelts were half froze because I dug them out of the freezer for the pic that is why they are are scrunched up. I didn't want to damage the fur by completely thawing and refreezing. I got a total of 15 this past fall/winter. Since the fur market is poor I am using a bunch of them to stitch a 100% coyote fur parka, will see how it turns out. I want to kill a big buck wearing it, but its going to have to be below freezing or I will sweat to death

[Nocturnal]

I alway enjoy these diy hunter articles.

[Ridgerunner7]

Thanks again Joe, you're the man!

[KLEMZ]

Great answer on my ground hunting question....thanks Joe! I will start keeping that option in mind more than I have in the past.