Share your hunting tips

One thing that was touched upon lightly is your sent.. there are a great many ways to mask the smell of "Human"... I'm not going to go it that but I will say this, don't shower with Irish Spring soap...

A good gardener will tell you one trick to keep deer out of your garden is to hang a sock with a bar of Irish Spring soap around your garden... something about the smell keeps them away, not just deer either rabbits don't like the smell either...

Say well away from the scented soaps off all kinds,that includes laundry soaps too... better to stink and hunt than go for a long lonely walk in the woods

[edit on 21-11-2009 by DaddyBare]

Well people can have n number of strategies for safeguarding themselves while in wilderness. But I personally like the concept of survival knives. It is interesting to know that its origin dates back to ages. Military units generally issue some type of survival knife to pilots in the event they land up in an unsafe environment. Hunters, hikers, and outdoor sport enthusiasts use survival knives. Some survival knives are heavy-bladed and thick; others are lightweight or fold in order to save weight and bulk as part of a larger survival kit. Their functions often include serving as a hunting knife.

Survival Knives

another thing about scents- you want to use a cover scent that is local in the area.
i.e. don't use a pine scent in an apple orchard and vice versa.
also never use skunk (not just because of the smell) but skunk scent raises an alarm to other animals as they only spray when in danger.
fox urine works well if you can handle the smell.
i still think the best cover scent is just leaves and soil from where you are going to be hunting.

and in a reply to myself- i just saw on the local news a boy was shot yesterday -while setting traps with his dad- by a turkey hunter who just fired into the brush because he heard noise and thought it was a turkey. if you are that stupid and ignorant and need a frigging turkey that badly i'll go buy you one just to keep you out of the f###ing woods.
news station is wnep16 from scranton/wilkes barre www.wnep16.com i believe
edit to add it is just www.wnep.com

[edit on 24-11-2009 by bigfoot1212]

Originally posted by bigfoot1212a turkey hunter who just fired into the brush because he heard noise

I remember when I was a kid and it was drilled into me never get anywhere near that trigger unless you know the complete path of that bullet from the moment it leaves your gun to the thing that is going to stop its flight.

I also remember thinking that advice was funny as hell because how friggin stupid do you have to be to let bullets fly willy-nilly. That's as stupid as pressing on your cars accelerator while not bothering to look in the direction your car is going.

Imagine my shock and amazement through the years as I realized just how stupid people are.

Many days I feel like the only caretaker in a complex of mental patient housing.

One of my favorite authors has a nice writeup of the FIVE gun safety rules:

Primary Safety Rules

* In a tradition that was probably started by Jeff Cooper, most defensive firearms instructors teach some version of the first four rules for handling and operating firearms:

1. All guns are always loaded.
- Probably more people who have been shot unintentionally were shot with "unloaded" firearms than with any other kind.

2. Don't let the muzzle of the gun cross anything you're not prepared to shoot.
- At conventional handgun ranges, if your gun isn't pointed at a person or object, you can't shoot that person or object.

- Keep in mind that if the gun is pointed at an upward angle and it discharges, the bullet may travel a very long distance and strike a person or object you may not even see.

- Similarly, many walls may not stop bullets, so rounds fired at walls may penetrate and strike a person or object on the other side.

3. Keep your finger out of the trigger guard, up on the frame of the gun, until the sights are on target and you're prepared to shoot.

- Tradition places this rule as rule three; if I were starting fresh, I think I'd make it rule one.

- Firearms do not discharge on their own. If, in the heat of battle or in total brain fade, you inadvertently point a firearm at someone you don't intend to shoot, they can't get shot if your finger is not inside the trigger guard.

- Most guns are designed to be fired by a finger on a trigger. They are more natural to grasp that way, so the finger tends to drift there under stress. While a single-action pistol would seem more vulnerable to rule three violations, American police officers racked up countless unintended discharges in decades of using double-action revolvers, so it is essential to follow rule three regardless of the type of gun you're handling.

4. Always be sure of your target and what's beyond it.

- The first part of this rule is absolute: you must always identify your target.

- The second part of this rule is relative: in a sporting or training environment there is no justification for not knowing what is beyond your target. In a deadly encounter you may be forced to fire in circumstances where you may not even be able to see what is beyond your target. All the more reason to select ammunition which is not likely to exit its original target.

5. Maintain control of your gun.

- Attorneys Michael Anthony and Robert Brown have researched civil litigation involving firearms and found that most successful lawsuits against gun owners involve incidents where someone other than the owner has accessed and misused the gun.

- As a result, I have accepted their suggestion and now teach this fifth basic rule of firearms safety.

- Make sure that you keep the gun within your control when you carry it. Guns in purses and other means of off-body carry are difficult to control, as are guns being shown to friends, stashed between couch cushions, placed in desk drawers, etc.

- When you must store a gun that you are not carrying, take reasonable steps to limit access by unauthorized users. If you must simply disable it with a lock, a cable lock is preferable to a trigger lock - most trigger locks violate Rule Three.

- A caveat to this rule concerns dropped guns. Modern handguns are designed not to fire when dropped and people have shot themselves trying to catch guns that have slipped from their hands. If you do momentarily lose control of a firearm, let it fall to the ground.

Because we do actually unload firearms and also place them out of our immediate control from time to time, a corollary of Rule One and Rule Five, the condition check, is also worth learning:

Whenever you pick up a firearm that has been out of your control, even if only for an instant, open the action to determine that it is in the condition in which you want it, loaded or unloaded.

A "click" when you expect a "bang!" can be as deadly as a "bang!" when you expect a "click."

Forgot to link him:

~spwenger's Defensive Use of Firearms

[edit on 11/24/09 by emsed1]

[edit on 11/24/09 by emsed1]

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


lmao
and i like the analogy with the car too.
it is amazing how stupid people can be.
unfortunately i live in the poconos and we get all kinds of dumb new yawkers and joyseites who come here thinking they are the bomb because suddenly they are allowed to use a gun legally.
rifle season for deer opens monday- stores will be packed with people buying rifles all weekend.
how can you go out and never have shot your gun?
i've heard of people going back to the gun store saying that the store sighted it in but they can't hit anything.
YEAH THAT ISCALLED BORESIGHTING YOU MORON
and people who buy a 300 weatherby to kill a deer?
what are we in africa after elephants?

I have done sport shooting for years but I have never hunted. If the SHTF living here in the midwest I think it would be inevitable.

Without sounding too naive - can someone share the basics of 'how' to hunt?

I assume, like shooting, it's not something you can read about and just go do, but I don't have the first clue about how to hunt.

My primary long guns are an SKS in 7.62x39 that is a wonderful firearm. I love shooting it and take good care of it. I believe the 7.62 x 39 ballistics are similar to .30-'30 so am I right in thinking this would be a good deer/brush gun out to 100 yds or so? (I grew up in Texas where hunting was a way of life with rifle, but here in IL you can only hunt deer with shotguns and slugs)

Where do you aim the gun? Behind the shoulder?

More importantly how do you field dress game, and what are things to be careful of?

Thanks a lot!

One more quick post from Stephen Wenger's newsletter that came today. There has been an ongoing debate about bear hunting which I thought was interesting:

Let’s Wrap Up the Bear Thing: More responses from list members:

1. You are spot on, their skulls are almost impenetrable, especially from the front. I have heard of large cal. rifle bullets "running" across the skull with the only effect being a slightly dazed, really, REALLY pissed off bear! Best CNS shots are either directly into the roof of the mouth as they frequently roar in a charge, or, what I was referring to the upper shoulder/ hump shot from the side after the bear was turned, along the backbone, which pretty much shuts down their movements, even if you just take out their rear legs, it slows them down enough to give you a chance to get far enough away to carefully take them out. Another technique that reportedly works, (I knew an agent who survived a big brown bear attack doing this), is to climb a treeand then shoot down into the bear as it climbs up behind you. They do climb fast, too, but it exposes their spine when they "hunch" up to move up. Don, the gentleman I know, took out the brown bear with a .38 revolver by shooting it in the spine. I recommend a much larger caliber, but he did walk away from the attack and in my opinion, any bear attack you walk away from is a good one, sorta like landing a plane.

2. If you look up a picture of a bear skull on the web, you will see that there is very little above the eye sockets, as is the case with most 4-legged predators. With the fur and ears, there is a misleading appearance of more above the eyes than is truly there. I think the best head shot would be to aim right for the nose, if head on… As far as getting off the X (assuming that means lateral movement), I'm not sure that it would not be a waste of time. Often, in the mountains, one is on a steep hillside or might have movement hampered by brush or logs. Unlike someone shooting at you, the bear has to get right up to you to do any damage. My strategy is to get low, so the shots are more straight on, and just hold and fire until the last second. Then, if it's not working at that point, a dodge to the side can't hurt.

3. When I was in Kodiak (back in the dark ages - 1965-1968) a friend showed me a photograph that had been taken on a bear hunt. The photo showed the head of the dead bear with someone parting the fur to better see the 220 grain 30-06 bullet with approx 1 inch of the rear end of the bullet showing stuck in the skull. The bullet hit and mushroomed and didn't penetrate the skull. It was factory ammo, with the shot taken at approx 50 yards. I later became friends with the native who had shot the bear, and learned that what they normally did was to shoot the bear in the pelvic area and break down his hind legs so he couldn't charge. (Sound familiar?) And then take their time and kill the bear.

4. There's a considerable difference between North American bears and mountain lions. Usually (always not always) lions give up readily when shot with anything. Cat hunters who tree lions with dogs usually carry and shoot treed cats with a .22. The cats usually (not always) just fall out of the tree and die (or die and fall out of the tree). Note: There are plenty of stories about a .22-shot mountain lion falling out of its tree into and ravaging the pack of dogs that treed it, but they're not the usual stories. Bears, on the other hand, are exceptionally vital and tough. They don't give up easily. If distance and armament are adequate, the safest rule is to first break both front shoulders. It is said that a bear with its heart blown out can still travel 100 yards and kill the shooter. Yes, bears' skulls are thick, and a frontal shot on a bear's skull will often bounce off. However, an old Alaskan guide once told me that most any centerfire round to a bear's head will knock the bear down for seconds, giving the shooter moments-only to adjust position and put another into the ear - a thinly-protected route to the brain.

Pushing Deer.

This is a strategy for deer hunting. It is pretty straight forward (more like duh territory) but seeing how it wasn't mentioned I guess I'll do the honors.

At least three hunters are needed to pull this off effectively.

Basically you find a narrow tree line. You will need two brush shooters and a long rifleman. Basically the rifleman posts up along the exit line while the two brush shooters (aka iron sight rifle like a 30-30 or even an assault rifle in some states.) walk both sides of the tree line. The idea is to push the animal to the exit area for the rifleman.

If it doesn't work with the first area, rinse and repeat. I've used this technique many times and always have luck when I use it.

reply to post by emsed1


there is know way to explain"how"to hunt unless you go with someone who knows how and they teach you.
1st thing is know your quarry and it habits/food sources.
read back thru the thread over scents and everything else contributed-being still,walking quietly etc..
as for the sks yes it does have the ballistics of a 30/30(which has probably killed more deer in the us than any other cartridge) i have an ak47 and i love it too but in pa we are not allowed to hunt with automatics with the exception of shotguns