I will limit my post to the OP's request.
1) You don't need a large crowd to do a drive..2 hunters can do a drive with surprising success.
2) Listen to the guys telling you that drivers are essentially still hunters, moving slowly , stopping often to listen, check the wind and watch for any movement.
3) Listen to the guys who said that knowledge of the terrain and deer habits in the hunt area dramatically increase the likelihood of success
4) A drive is a great way to hunt state game land and other large tracts where you simply cant spend enough time scouting to identify every trail, finger, scrape and rub and identify every productive white oak tree but you CAN study aerial photos, topo maps, etc and get a pretty good idea where deer are likely to funnel when they are moving .
5) A drive is a good mid-day hunt..when deer would normally start thinking about bedding down, a strange twig crack in the distance might just move them along slowly to a different area..just have your "sitters" stay in their stands or blinds and the "drivers" will move in due time toward the sitters.
6) Done properly, the sitters and drivers have roughly equal likelihood of having a deer walk by at close range.
7) with modern technology, texting with cell phones can dramatically improve your drive tactics and success because, e.g, you can alert the others if you see a deer in the distance and know generally what direction it is moving, if you come upon another hunter, if the creek is too deep to cross , if you encounter an unexpected fence or property boundary, etc.
8) A drive can be a good early archery season tactic, when rut isn't moving deer, or late season when the acorns, corn and beans are long gone.
9) Barking noises, banging limbs against tree trunks, whistling, etc, will almost never lead to good results..at best it makes deer move very quickly and keep moving for a long time.
10) Uncertain deer do not move in straight lines away from a perceived source of anxiety...they follow trail,terrain, etc, often at right angles and frequently circling to get downwind. Remember than when thinking about where the sitters might be located and where drivers should be looking.
11) Never ,ever, under no circumstances, drive when gun hunters, black powder hunters are in the area and walkers should wear some blaze orange to , hopefully, catch the eye of noobs with x bows.
12) If your painstakingly-planned and perfectly-executed drive puts a monster buck right in front of a total stranger who arrows him while the buck kept looking back over his shoulder, shake his/her hand and help drag it out.If you do enough drives, I guarantee it will happen.
Topic: Deer drives (Read 2556 times)
