Traditional Archery Discussions on the Leatherwall


Hunting disguise

Messages posted to thread:
OsageOrangutan 18-Nov-23
Don T. Lewis 18-Nov-23
B.T. 18-Nov-23
S Quinton 18-Nov-23
George D. Stout 18-Nov-23
Lowcountry 18-Nov-23
Red Beastmaster 18-Nov-23
Scoop 18-Nov-23
Corax_latrans 18-Nov-23
Jed Gitchel 18-Nov-23
reddogge 18-Nov-23
buster v davenport 18-Nov-23
olddogrib 18-Nov-23
Batman 18-Nov-23
cobra 18-Nov-23
Red Beastmaster 18-Nov-23
Lastmohecken 18-Nov-23
Mechanic 19-Nov-23
CritterGitter62 19-Nov-23
George D. Stout 19-Nov-23
Corax_latrans 19-Nov-23
Scoop 19-Nov-23
Corax_latrans 19-Nov-23
PhantomWolf 20-Nov-23
Harleywriter 20-Nov-23
Tool maker 20-Nov-23
Bob J 20-Nov-23
Corax_latrans 20-Nov-23
Mike E 20-Nov-23
Corax_latrans 20-Nov-23
Stickmark 22-Nov-23
Tool maker 22-Nov-23
OsageOrangutan 22-Nov-23
selstickbow 22-Nov-23
From: OsageOrangutan
Date: 18-Nov-23




Potential danger to oneself aside, has any one ever doned the came and hide of deer as indigenous hunters are pictured having done in order to stalk in close to deer and get an arrow ‘em?

From: Don T. Lewis
Date: 18-Nov-23




When I first started bow hunting. I made a hair on with tail back quiver from a doe I shot with the bow. And I had a few hunters say to me. Are you crazy carrying that in the woods with you? This is Jersey you’re going to get shot. So I stopped bringing that home made deer skin back quiver hunting with me. A lot of guys get their deer just wearing plaid. Just saying…

From: B.T.
Date: 18-Nov-23




Wear tan clothes, less hair.

From: S Quinton
Date: 18-Nov-23




My favorite disguise is to wear hiker clothing. Deer are afraid of folks in camo for a good reason.

From: George D. Stout
Date: 18-Nov-23




No.

From: Lowcountry
Date: 18-Nov-23




Haven’t done it personally (and would not do it where I hunt) but I’ve seen and read of guys wearing deer “hats” (hats with deer ears) while hunting some remote alaskan or Canadian island. I gathered that it was limited draw and they were the only hunters there.

From: Red Beastmaster
Date: 18-Nov-23




Suicide

From: Scoop Professional Bowhunters Society - Associate Member
Date: 18-Nov-23




Yeah, I was thinking of the moose hats I've seen. I did know an ardent goose hunter who wore a goose hat. It didn't hurt anything, and may have helped keep them from flaring, but I wouldn't wear one. It looked goofy and and just wasn't right. A couple of times I used my bow on top my head to wag in a bull moose. It sure helped, but a tennis racket would have probably done the same thing.

From: Corax_latrans
Date: 18-Nov-23




There’s the “be the decoy” hat option; there’s a guy on Bowsite who has killed 40-odd Elk personally and guided many others successfully, and he’s a big fan.

In an archery-only unit/season, you would think you should be perfectly safe doing that, but I will admit that crossbows worry me a lot more than compounds do….

From: Jed Gitchel
Date: 18-Nov-23




I heard a story last year about a guy who dressed up in a big foot costume and ran through some public land. He was d.o.a when they brought him to the hospital.

From: reddogge
Date: 18-Nov-23




Only if I had a death wish.

From: buster v davenport
Date: 18-Nov-23




Not only modern day hunters make mistakes. When Herman Lehmann from Texas was a captive of Apache Indians, he told of an antelope hunt that went wrong. One of the Indians dressed as a decoy in an antelope suit. Another Indian that was unaware of the proceedings up an shot the "decoy", killing him. Other members of the band were all in favor of killing the perpetrator but the dead man's family talked them out of it.

Outdoor Life had an article about a guy getting shot while deer hunting in an all brown suit. He was laying in a patch of goldenrod and got shot thru both hind cheeks with a 30.06. Asked why he dressed that way, he said someone had told him that was the thing to do. bvd

From: olddogrib
Date: 18-Nov-23




Don't tell Frisky!

From: Batman
Date: 18-Nov-23




Former co-worker almost plastered a guy running around in buckskin colored clothing during deer season. When co-worker double checked, and figured out the object was a human, He supposedly went down and read the guy the RIOT ACT. Best advice?? Do NOT look like a deer when You are out in the woods! Just Sayin'

From: cobra
Date: 18-Nov-23




That is the LAST thing I would do at any time of year. Behind my house there is a wealth of bears, two were taken off the property this year alone between 400-550lbs. Too many people go into the woods armed with a crossbow or firearm confident that they can make "the long or fringe shot." Lastly, don't think for a second that there may not be people in the Great Outdoors that do not share your ethics or respect for the law re: seasons, legal hours of hunting, ethical shot placement, and so forth. My daughter rides horses, my friends have bird dogs, and I ask them all to wear an orange hat and place orange panels on the flanks of their animals each year. It's too bad that things need to be considered like this, but I know it's a possibility.

From: Red Beastmaster
Date: 18-Nov-23




I had a buddy who had white fletched arrows in his bow quiver. He walked out of the woods at dusk to find a guy in the field pointing his in line ML at him. The ML hunter was very sorry and said he was positive Mike was a deer but was waiting to see if he was a buck or doe!

I've never used white on an arrow since then.

From: Lastmohecken
Date: 18-Nov-23




Yep, during the gun seasons, I would not want to look like a deer. You just never know, who might be out there with you, and how much experience they might have or not have. And Buck fever can cause someone, usually someone very new at the game to shoot at what they think is a deer.

And they you have fools (or shall I say the strangest people) who show up out of the blue. I was on stand in a tree, a couple of days ago, watching a field crossing, during gun season. And about a hundred yards away, I hear the brush cracking, just like several deer have done in past in the exact same place, and out steps a man, big ol boy with long hair, and beard, and a walking staff, and no flame orange at all on him. He is stepping onto a county road, but he was trespassing across our private ground to get there. I never seen him before in my life.

He turned and started walking down the county road. I thought about hollering at him, but I let it go, and watched him walk down the road and to where, I don't know.

From: Mechanic
Date: 19-Nov-23




Deathwish, unless it’s your property and you are sure that no one else is there.

From: CritterGitter62
Date: 19-Nov-23




Considering I once had a bowhunter point his compound at me while I was walking out of the woods with a full size mag flashlight and a treestand on my shoulders, I would say no, please don't become a statistic.

From: George D. Stout
Date: 19-Nov-23




Hey, no law against being stupid, but it can be problematic if you get in with the wrong company.

From: Corax_latrans
Date: 19-Nov-23




I dunno, fellas…

I think there are people who will shoot at ANYTHING, and there are people who won’t shoot at any animal until they’re 100% as to age, sex, points on the rack, shot angle, exit wound location and safety of their backstop.

I recall passing up an opportunity one time — 15 yards maybe, while packing the .45/70 — because a group of people’s were out walking their dogs… and honestly, they probably drove that deer right to me….

I held off mostly because I was concerned about startling the landowner’s family, but turned out they were just trespassing, so maybe I should have dumped that one. Everything was perfectly safe, but I’m pretty sure it would have gotten their attention to the fact that they were trespassing onto hunted, private property during a firearms season….. Since they obviously hadn’t given that any consideration….

From: Scoop Professional Bowhunters Society - Associate Member
Date: 19-Nov-23




Some of the safety comments above are well taken. I am a survivor, I guess, of being mistaken for a buck mule deer in my younger days. A person, not a close friend, was bowhunting with me up a nice draw that lead to water about a half-mile in. We decided to split up and I told the other hunter to wait for 15 minutes as I would go ahead and then turn up the steep sidehill with thin pines and parallel the trail along the bottom and maybe we could get something moving between us.

Just a short time later, as I had gone ahead a couple of hundred yards and up the hill about 40 yards, there must have been a sound. When I turned to look behind and downhill, what I saw was the hunting companion releasing his arrow out of his recurve, which flew in the slowest of motion directly towards my face. It clipped the smallest of twigs off some brush between us and dove directly at my feet into the dirt on the trail. I remember the fletching be white and the spirals, of all things.

After some moments of frozen silence, I grabbed his arrow and headed down to have a reckoning. When I closed to him, he was stuttering that he swore I was a buck and was incohorent and had to be sat down before he passed out.

I was in my late teens and he was probably 21. He went back to camp and could barely walk and carry his bow. He truly, in his mind, believed I was a deer. My clothing would likely have been a camo shirt, Jones hat, and Levis, with a hip quiver full of yellow and red fletched arrows. The hunter was not too experienced and had likely only taken a couple of deer with a rifle. And we also had never hunted before or again with each other and what friendship we had seemed to slip away.

So the occasions when I think of that moment, it makes me not shutter, but to be more thankful for every moment of every experience every day--even the bads one, if that makes sense.

I apologize for the length of this, and it was also posted once several years ago on this site. The take-homes: Don't take anything for granted, even who you hunt with, and we all should be more thankful for what and where we are at in this life.

From: Corax_latrans
Date: 19-Nov-23




That’s scary stuff, to be sure…

But I’m seriously trying to recall a report of an “accidental” shooting by a bowhunter, and drawing a complete blank. The one that I do recall turned out to be a little more complicated… the guy who launched the arrow was apparently having a little fling with the wife of the guy who stopped it…. Which explained bow a guy in a tree stand just happened to be in the flight path of an arrow which had reportedly skipped off of a rock…..

So maybe there have been actual accidents, but apart from Scoop’s report, I don’t know of any….

I know Lawdy was involved in one real horror story, but I think that was a Rifle Hunter involved….

From: PhantomWolf
Date: 20-Nov-23




Definitely some scary situations! Fortunately I've never actually seen another hunter back in the woods of MA, VT, ME, PA and NH years ago, bow hunting or rifle/shotgun hunting. Unusual I guess.

Now, living where I do here in Maine, it's been the same. Really a lot of woods and all. I just moved my tree seat from my neighbor's 235 acres to another neighbor's 7 acres, but bordered by vast woods. I'll finished the rifle season there.

From: Harleywriter
Date: 20-Nov-23




In my newspaper days I wrote several stories about idiots shooting people: in one case a hunter sitting on a rock at the edge of a FS road and smoking a cigarette was shot by a rifle “Hunter”; another case near Yellowstone a “Hunter” shot into an orange tent because he “was sure” it was a bear. Killed one of those in the tent. Finally, about 15 years ago one of the hunter ed teachers took his rifle to class to show the kids. Yep… the fing idiot pulled the trigger and blew a hole in the classroom ceiling scared hell out of a bunch of students.

And in the tiny sitting room in the Nebraska farm house where my dad grew up, there was a huge chunk gone from the doorway frame. It was left to remind us all about the time my uncle Gene walked into the room with my grandma’s .410 Iver johnson. He pointed at nothing in particular and boom! Somehow missed all of the other five people in the room.

From: Tool maker
Date: 20-Nov-23




I would try it during the archery season. Gun season no

From: Bob J
Date: 20-Nov-23




"I would try it during the archery season. Gun season no"

Some idiots with compounds think they can shoot accurately out to 100yds. Those idiots are also the ones will shoot the "Brown it's down" or the "Drop check" drop it then check to see if it's a legal animal. If it's not they just walk away. They'd likely walk away too if they discovered it was human they just dropped.

ANd with all the bad news we'll likely never hear of those "Hunting ACCIDENTS" on local news. Not accidents just reckless use of deadly weapons.

From: Corax_latrans
Date: 20-Nov-23




“In my newspaper days I wrote several stories about idiots shooting people…”

But not a one of your examples involved archery….

I won’t lie — the infusion of inexperienced bowhunters cashing in on the crossbow loophole is a real concern to me. Even though they’re required to take bowhunter ed like everyone else. Something about scopes, triggers, and —worst of all, probably— marketing campaigns which emphasize the idea that if you’re a REAL bad-ass, you’ll be able to kill from long range, rather than getting close.

From: Mike E
Date: 20-Nov-23




Look at it like this,,don't make it easy for dumb people to do dumb things. Dressing up like a deer in deer season is not a good idea. I won't turkey hunt unless I'm in a blind with an orange flag of some sort on top of it.

Won't sit against a tree in head to toe camo trying to call in a bird with a turkey call. The degree of desperation I see and hear in some folks in trying to get an animal, be it deer, turkey or whatever is actually frightening sometimes and would be otherwise funny if it wasn't so pathetic.

From: Corax_latrans
Date: 20-Nov-23




Pathetic is hilarious. Tragic not so much.

From: Stickmark
Date: 22-Nov-23




One approach that mimics acting like a deer is to crawl on hands and knees, with bow atop the head.

I have crawled to with in 40 yards, 50 yards, 60 yards, of deer in Arizona. Numerous times. Trick is to first parallel them, "feeding" into grass, brush. You flip your hand behind your rear, like a tail. move the bow and head same time, and the sunlight reflects off the bow like antlers. All tranquil, lazy movements.

I mention this because you can do this in non-deer colors. I will most likely never kill a deer doing this, but it has been surprising effective to getting closer.

Mike E said it, though: people get ego driven desperate to kill, and no way I want to be in fur. I wore khaki on a rifle hunt, desert mt wilderness (rifle), and this thread has me not wanting to repeat that. Long range shooting is a thing out here.

From: Tool maker
Date: 22-Nov-23




Bob j, you forgot if it flys it dies.

From: OsageOrangutan
Date: 22-Nov-23




That is interesting about the bow-on-the-head thing.

From: selstickbow
Date: 22-Nov-23




good / SCARY thoughts & stories above. I prefer the Johnny Carson mask. avoid the Dick Cheney / Bobby Knight masks.......





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