Hunting from the ground opinions

[Pegen]

my best experience is to camo/cover my legs and my face more than my torso and arms. I personally feel that the standup silhouette of our legs, along with movement is the dead giveaway to a deer's eyesight. I've hunted with shaggie pants, a face mask, and a simple plaid shirt and had excellent results.

[**DONOTDELETE**]

Originally posted by lpcjon2:
Sal thats the one.Was it Terry or you that put it up on the other thread.

That was from Terry Green

[Chris Shelton]

you mean there is another way???  I hunt probably 90% public land, so the most efficient way to hunt is from the ground. I really need to take a picture of what I hunt with, I think a lot of you guys would be surprised how  . . . "primitive" my clothing is, it ain't plaid but it might as well be. I use "natural cover" but none of it resembles a blind, maybe a large tree as a backstop never on top of a hill, and when I say hill I mean rugged mountains, so there is always a tree and solid wall of earth basically behind me.  Another good reason treestands just don't fit, for critters looking up the mountains everything in a tree will be noticeable, looking downhill it would be perfect, but the majority of my deer come from downhill.

[Buckwheaties]

It's usually hot where I hunt (TX and S.CAL) I like a stool with good back cover also. Been thinking about a leafy suit, good for heat and bugs. Has anyone had luck with one of these? I 'm sure that the gilli's are better for concealment but not an option in the hot. Also camo on the hands and face is a must.

The best tree stand I have ever had was a small pellet that someone tried to tie in a tree and it must not have worked. In Iowa wooded hills there lots of little gullies. The deer quite often funnel around these.  I wedged that pallet, I spelled it different, at the head of one those little gullies and put stool on it.  It worked great until some jerk put a tree stand above my stool.  Around here tree stands are about the same as no trespassing signs when they are put on public woods.  I tried hunting out of one last year, but it was stolen, now I am going to stay on the ground and hunt anywhere I feel like.  Using natural blinds allows us to always play the wind.  If it is nothing more than a strap on tree seat with my back against a large tree, so be it.  It is just more fun when I feel free and portable.

[bmb]

i hunt 100% on the ground. i have had success with pop ups and natural blinds. although i prefer just making a natural blind. and i really love hunting standing corn, talk about being able to ambush!

[swamp donkey]

I hunt the ground mostly so I use natural or mostly natural blinds and try to disturb the area as little as possible. For example one of my blinds I built this year is back under a canopy of old vines and tree branches. I'm back in the dark and just needed a small piece of camo netting(about 3 ft long) to completely hide me. In most of mine I use no man made materials.

[J-dog]

I am exclusively ground pounding this yr - due to having my Lab accompany me on my hunts.

Also though I think back to when I began bowhunting and I was almost exclusively a ground pounder, though it was out of being broke and no other equipment, no idea what I was doing - in my early teens. I saw alot of deer hunting like that. Also I like to move a bit to different locals. spending a couple hours at each.

J

[HB3]

The ground blinds are like a tree stand, some places work great and some don't. I have some spots I hunt every year where I can put up my ground blind and hunt it that day. My favorite has 2 large oaks in front I slide it up against and it is thick brush behind me. I can hunt this spot first day and let the deer get used to the other blinds that are not so well hidden. I just open 1 window and have found they really help with scent. I have had deer cross at 5 yards down wind and not smell me  numerous times. I think you several methods to be effective.

[Bowwild]

In the early 80's I hunted near Lysite, Wyoming. I built ground blinds out of sagebrush along the edge of irrigated alfalfa fields. Killed lots of mulies and one antelope doing this. It worked great. Of course there weren't any pop-up blinds then.

I use pop-ups for turkey for convenience and because they work extremely well for these birds. It blows me away that such a wary bird completely ignores (most of the time) ground blinds that brushed in at all. I have only hunted in a pop-up for white-tails once and that was a long-established rig in Texas.

My buddy brushed in a blind for his granddaughter.  When no one was in that blind I watched deer walk by it and look very warily at it even though it had been there for weeks.

I'm planning to try to take a white-tail from a pop-up this year although I'll be in the trees most of the time. I'll use the pop-up instead of natural cover because 1) I have them. 2)I have fall turkeys in mind more than deer when I'm doing this.

[Cyclic-Rivers]

Ground is more fun plain and simple,. It requires more thought and is more rewarding when game is spotted. Plus its hard to fall far when you fall asleep.

[jacobsladder]

Just another thought.....someone mentioned about not disturbing too much of the area around you... i hunted a ridge full of scrub oaks one fall in  michigan......I moved along the ridge to find a nice ambush site to sit... i stopped and looked back behind me and noticed some smaller brushy oaks i could sit in and have good back cover...About an hour later a nice buck ambled down the ridge directly towards me...i was expecting a 10 yd broadside shot... Unfortunately, he picked up my scent from where i originally stopped to pick out a spot to sit.....long story short.....Do not leave any scent outside of your comfortable shooting range....this buck hung up at about 25yds...sniffed the bushes where i stood ...looked right thru me , turned and walked the opposite way.

[LongStick64]

I get ASAT camo material and make myself a poncho. I try and find a big tree to sit against. One year I had an eight point whitetail bed down 10 feet from me. What a treat that was. Couldn't pull off the shot but it was still hunting and it proved to me that I can get as close as I need to on the ground.