PUBLIC LAND ETIQUETTE
By MICHAEL KIRBY/ Slowbow
I thought my ear drums would pop. My heart had been hammering in them for an eternity. Well, at least five or six minutes. It was just getting light enough to see when the two and a half year-old eight point materialized out of nowhere on the oak flat I was perched above. He was now feeding calmly on the mast at about thirty yards. My bow was resting upright on the seat of my stand, arrow nocked, release attached. His angle of movement would shortly bring him by me at twenty some yards.
It was my intent to take him. He didn’t have a massive rack, and the tines were kind of short. But it did sweep out to the tips of his ears. I may have let him pass elsewhere, but this was a hard hunted public hunting area. Here, he was a really good deer. One of the better ones I’d seen for several years on this area.
The bucks head snapped up and looked in my direction, his white tail leveled with his back in alarm. A dull thud, then two barely audible bounds later, he stood at the edge of the thick cover bordering the open woods. Almost as quickly as he had appeared, he melted back into that cover, never to be seen again. A quirk wind gust? Scent I had left on the ground? Had he seen me?
I soon became aware of what the buck had known all along. Heavy footfalls, then hushed whispering betrayed the two hunters hurrying in to set up on the same oak flat I was watching. Almost as soon as they stopped and began to take their stands off their backs, they spotted me. Quickly apologizing for their intrusion, they retreated back over the hill the way they had come, none the wiser as to what had just transpired. Yes, I was sort of angry. But this was public land, and the two had done the right thing. It was just an accident of timing that they had shown up when they did.
Public lands are becoming increasingly crowded. The economy is down, lease prices climbing. Private land is lost to development, or already occupied with other hunters. Many times, it is the only option if one wishes to hunt. In what seems to be an increasingly hurried and rude world, sometimes the guidelines for polite conduct seem to be forgotten. Yet these rules still exist, even for public land hunters. Observing them can help all those using an area have a more enjoyable experience in the outdoors.
You hurry to your stand site on a perfect morning. You’ve scouted hard, the sign is good and fresh. The winds right. You arrive, lean your stand against your carefully chosen tree, and notice a flashlight shining on you from forty yards out. Trust me. That hunter isn’t trying to help light the area so you can set up more quickly. This is not a signal that he wants you to climb up and spend the morning in the nearby tree with him. He got up, had his coffee, and got there before you.
This is an invitation for you to find somewhere else to hunt today.