Buckmasters Magazine

Going Solo

Going Solo

By P.J. Reilly

Hunting with friends is great, but there are benefits to going alone.

The forecast was a bowhunter’s dream: clear, cold, high-pressure system firmly settled in, and no wind.

I’d recently seen a marked uptick in scrape and rub activity, so there was nothing that was going to keep me out of my Pennsylvania treestand that morning.

The night before, a buddy sent me a text message asking if I wanted to hunt with him in the morning. I replied, “No. I’m flying solo tomorrow.”

So I was alone when I pulled into my usual parking spot at a wooded property where I have permission to hunt. I dressed in silence behind the tailgate, grabbed my bow, clicked on my head lamp and started across the field.

The scrape that’s made every year in one corner of the field was fresh. A thin layer of frost covered everything on the ground except the center of that scrape and the leaves and grass that had been pawed out of it. A buck had been there less than an hour earlier. I gave the bare dirt a squirt of buck lure and walked toward my stand.

When I reached the spot where my trail enters the woods, a deer snorted. I saw at least three tails bounding away into the darkness, but deer spooked when it’s pitch dark rarely go far.

After crossing a stream, I crept the last 100 yards to my hanging stand as quietly as possible.

The platform was high up a walnut tree smack in the middle of some open timber that connected two thickets. Uphill, about 100 yards away, was a field. The stream flowed 80 yards to my back. It’s a perfect funnel the area’s bucks like to use when the rut kicks into high gear.

I climbed aboard and sat down to wait for sunrise. Being alone in the woods this time of day in November is awesome. If God created a more peaceful place on Earth, I haven’t found it.

Birds started to chirp, and squirrels began to make their rounds as the faintest hint of light filtered through the trees. Steady footsteps on crunchy leaves let me know a deer was approaching. It was light enough to see the outline, but dark enough that I had trouble telling if it was a buck or a doe, even though it stopped right under my tree.

Finally, I was able to make out part of an antler, but I had no idea how big it was. Then, the deer left.

About two hours later, I heard something to my right that sounded like a buck grunt. When I heard it again with now-alert ears, I was certain. Shortly afterward, a doe broke out of the thicket and bounded up the hill with a buck hot on her tail. He looked like a good one, with a wide, white rack.

The buck dogged that doe all over the woods around me until both deer eventually ended up 10 yards from the base of my tree. My arrow cut through that 10-pointer like a hot knife through butter. I watched him drop 70 yards from the spot where I nailed him. No tracking required.

MAN vs. DEER

When gun season’s in, I like hunting with the boys. We scatter out across a property to our favorite stands, keep in touch via radios, put on little pushes for each other and help out when someone gets a deer. Hunting with the gang is fun, safe and productive.

In archery season, however, I’m a loner. I prefer hunting weekday mornings when the rest of the world is at work. Conversely, I often stay home on Saturdays when I know there will be competition in the woods. Bowhunting buddies call me all the time and ask me to join them, or if they can join me. I almost always opt to go solo.

I like my odds when it’s just me against the deer, one on one. No distractions. No extra scent trails through the area I’m hunting, and no extra noise or movement. Sure, a stranger could roll in and mess up my hunt, but I have no control over that.

True, you and a buddy can hunt your 1,000-acre lease at the same time and not interfere with each other. The properties I hunt aren’t that big. Some are 10 acres; some are 200. It’s entirely possible that a buddy could spook a buck that would have ended up under my stand before nightfall.

Going SoloWhen only the stick-and-string crowd is chasing deer, the woods are quiet, the hunters are few, and I feel like I’m actually hunting deer going about their natural business in the woods. It’s why calling and using scents are so effective. The deer are doing what they’d be doing whether I’m there or not.

So my goal in going solo is to minimize potential disturbances. During gun season, all I’m trying to do is intercept a deer that somebody else spooked, so why not hunt with buddies?

SAFETY FIRST

If you decide to go into the woods by yourself, recognize that there is some danger involved and plan accordingly. Always let someone know where you’re going and when you expect to return.

Carry a cell phone. If you’re going to change your plan, call or text someone and let them know. Also, it’s good to have that phone in case you run into trouble.

If you’re going super remote, carry some basic survival gear. An emergency space blanket, some matches or a lighter, a compass or GPS and enough food and water to get you through the night are a good start. Whether you’re on the other side of the mountain or down the road from your house, carry a loud whistle so you can signal for help if necessary.

Keep a basic first aid kit in your pack. Plenty of bowhunters cut themselves with broadheads or gutting knives every year. Since you’ll be on your own, you’ll have to take care of any injury until you get out of the woods.

In this day and age, I shouldn’t have to mention wearing a full-body safety harness for treestand hunters, but I’ll do it anyway. Any hunter who climbs a tree should wear a safety harness, regardless of whether you’re by yourself or with a crowd. And stay connected to your tree from the ground up to your stand and back down again.

For those who hunt from hanging stands, that’s going to mean installing a lifeline alongside your climbing sticks or tree steps. A lifeline is a rope strong enough to hold your weight that’s tied to the tree above your stand and around the base of the trunk. Attach the clip on your harness to a Prusik knot that you can slide up and down the rope. If you fall, the knot will grip the lifeline and keep you from hitting the ground.

PREPARE for SUCCESS

The goal of going solo is to kill a deer, so be prepared to deal with a carcass by yourself. No one’s going to be around to hold a big buck’s legs while you field-dress him. I always have a length of rope in my pack that serves as my field-dressing assistant. I tie one end to a front leg, run the rope around a tree and tie the other end to the hind leg on the same side of the body. This allows me to prop the deer on its back for easy, low-mess gutting.

Those of you who have dragged a 200-pound buck more than 10 feet through the woods know how difficult it is. Besides the weight, antlers, legs and hips get caught on branches, and your hands slip off whatever part of the carcass you grip. It’s a real drag.

I highly suspect it was a guy who liked to hunt alone who invented the big-wheel game cart. It will turn any back-breaking drag into a walk in the woods. If you’re going to hunt solo, get one.

After shooting that Pennsylvania 10-pointer last year, I field-dressed it, then, carrying my bow and my backpack, walked the half-mile or so back to my truck. I ditched all my hunting gear and retrieved my trusty Cabela’s Super Mag Hauler Game Cart. I lugged the cart back to the deer, slid it onto the cart and hauled it out.

The large wheels on those carts make it a snap to pull your deer over deadfalls and rocks, and to break through tall weeds. Pick your way around the nastiest stuff, and it’s a pretty easy chore to get a buck out of the woods by yourself.

During archery season, I attach a cargo rack to the hitch of my truck, and it stays there all the time. It’s a real back-saver if I bag a deer. When I was in my early 20s, lugging a 200-pound buck by myself from the ground up into the bed was a piece of cake. In my 40s now, if I tried that today I’d spend two days stuck in bed with a bad back. The cargo rack sits much lower to the ground than my tailgate. If I position my game cart properly, I can slide a deer right off the cart and onto the rack with ease.

For those who hunt remote areas, especially steep mountain country, you might be better off quartering your deer and hauling it out in pieces on your back. Get a good skinning knife, a meat-cutting knife, a bone saw, a basic frame pack and a few meat bags, and you’ll be ready to cut up the largest buck.

It’s entirely possible my buddies think I’m anti-social during bow season. As long as I keep punching tags by hunting alone, I’m okay with that. And, heck, when I’m bird-dogging for them in gun season because my buck tag is already filled, they’ll forgive me.

Read Recent Articles:

Food Plots with a Purpose: Do you want to grow bigger deer or attract them for hunting?

Rainy Days and Mondays ... Don’t always have to get you down.

The Outside-In Approach: How to hunt the entire season without burning out your best stands.

All in a Day’s Work: Awesome buck gives new meaning to the Eastern Shore’s scenic nickname.

This article was published in the September 2012 edition of Buckmasters Whitetail Magazine. Subscribe today to have Buckmasters delivered to your home.

Copyright 2024 by Buckmasters, Ltd.

Copyright 2020 by Buckmasters, Ltd