Flat open ground, need some ideas

[Soonerlongbow]

I’ve always been a guy that hunted timber, be it in hilly terrain or in the Western OK prairies. The family farm (also here in the western side) is interspersed with trees and open grassland so it’s mostly familiar to me. It’s provided me with years of hunting with all weapons. While my new area is mostly flood planes and creeks, there’s several thousand acres of open rolling prairie.
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Before the lake was impounded it was rolling prairie cattle land with most trees being only along old fence rows. There are sporadic old farm ponds. I’ve been watching one area about 3mins from my house that borders a camp ground so it provided easy access to watch throughout the summer. It’s got two of the aforementioned ponds and a couple old fence lines.
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It’s betw two roads and the lake & has one single high point that’s been used as a gravel pit so half the mound is dug out almost pond like.
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To me the obvious play is to hide on the mound and glass the area, fence rows and sporadic pockets of trees for bedded animals. One problem is across the street is more of the same and they bed over there too and cross the road nearly at the point of this mound.
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Here’s one catch, this “grassland” is chock full of prickly pears, both old and live. So even if you find a bedded deer making a stalk is problematic at best. I actually had a spine go through my snake boots into my foot.
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So maybe I just needed to talk this out to war game it a bit. Any ideas?

[M60gunner]

You may need to get the “inserts” for your boots made from ballistic material. Kind we had in our jungle boots to keep nails from foot traps impaling our foot. Maybe find them at an old surplus store.

[ChuckC]

Use a Ghillie suit and natural ground blinds.  You would be surprised how well they work.

[Soonerlongbow]

Actually the needle went through the side into my instep. Never thought of ballistic insoles. Do have a ghillie and a Ghost Blind (its AWESOME).

[Michael Arnette]

Man wish I could help but I'm on the eastern side of the state...totally different ball game I suppose.

[bowslinger]

Are a bale blind or stack of hay bales possible?  Otherwise, maybe brush in a pop-up blind with local grass.  One thing I have never tried but have read is digging shallow pit blinds that would let you hide. Not sure you are allowed to but a shallow pit blind with a few hay bales might work.

[Soonerlongbow]

Well I tried that spot again and got so close I couldn’t hardly stand it! I did sit on the mound and just before sunset a group of does appeared out thin air like they always seem to do. Problem was they were 260yds away across waist high open dry grass and I’m on the side of an exposed hill.

Good news is my ghillie was working perfectly in the Oklahoma wind & they were feeding towards an area that put a small group of trees between us. As soon as they hit the trees I was able to make my way off the mound and into a small drainage that is hidden from view unless you get right inside it. I used this to make my way all the up to the pond I suspected they would come to drink from. When I got there I tried to relocate the group and saw that my plan was working. The lead doe was looked to be taking them around the corner right to me. I’d cut 230yds off.

I got to the edge of the pond and stood near a small mesquite bush to blend in with the ghillie. After several minutes I began to wonder if they’d gone around because they never showed. When I popped back around to look they hadn’t budged at all except maybe a little closer straight at me rather than around the corner as I’d expected. Go figure right? 40-45 was down to 35ish.

Well, long story short, the wind was parallel between us but because of the lay of the land it started to swirl a bit. This actually looked like it might help at first because it was blowing S-N, my right to left, up the hill then back down onto her. So she thought it was coming from up above. She really wanted to swing around the corner of the pond but eventually caught me looking at her and the jig was up.

While I’ve done some minor spot and stalk before, usually just bumped into a deer and tried to make it into range (usually rifle) this was my first truly open ground spot and stalk that had pretty much planned out that way to begin with. It was an absolute blast!