When Only One Treestand Will Do

© By Othmar Vohringer

Before I followed my heart and moved to British Columbia, I owned many different treestands. At last count I had 24 hang-on models, 2 climbing stands and 3 ladder stands. By the time hunting season rolled around I had most of the stands in place and ready to hunt, keeping the two climbers as “run-and-gun” stands. Over the years I got a lot of practice setting up stands and with that became quite fast (and safe) at it too. It seldom took me more than ten minutes to set up an average hang-on-stand.

By now you may ask; “Why own and use so many stands?” The answer to that is quite simple really. I scout for the perfect location to ambush a deer with bow or rifle and not the perfect tree for my stand. The perfect ambush location may not always mean that there is a perfect tree to hang the stand too. To accommodate whatever shape and form a given tree was I had a treestand for it to fit. However, when I moved to Canada the expense to ship all the stands seemed nothing short of ridiculous. There would have been also additional fees, quite a hefty ones too, for "bulkiness" and "import" fees. I decided to leave all my stands with a good friend of mine back in Illinois.

Watch Out For Deer Crossing Road Signs

 © By Othmar Vohringer

Hunting Tip Of the Week:

Deer crossing signs alert drivers to be careful of deer crossing the street. Usually such signs are posted where over the years several deer/vehicle accidents have occurred.

For hunters these sign have an additional meaning. It means that the stretches of road where such signs are set up are traditional deer travel corridors. Such places are a good starting point to look what’s on either side of the road that makes the deer cross on that particular place. It is not uncommon to find some type of food source and structure that are hot deer magnets.

Before you run off and start scouting make sure it is not private land, if it is, get permission before you set foot onto the property. Over the years I had good luck discovering deer hunting hotspots by starting to scout at deer crossing road signs. While some of these traditional deer crossings are active all year others may just be used by the deer at specific times of the year. In any case, the areas near a deer crossing road sign are always worth a closer look.