on the site and on facebook lately. Partly it’s due to the natural let down of hunting season being over. This is my time to get back to my much loved laid back, relaxed style of living, but it is also time to go over the hours of footage I’ve gathered during the season.  Being busy with the new house, the new little girl, the wife, the son, the job, and everything else that goes on during the day does not leave me much time to review and edit footage. But at some point it has to be done.

Frustrated

Yes, that is my mood during this editing “season”.  I have a few gripes that I need to get off my chest.

1. It’s maddening that my GoPro handles low light situations so poorly compared to my regular video camera. I guess it is understandable, but as I’m editing footage that was shot simultaneously, one looks dark and the other perfectly light, it kills me to cut from one to the other.  Although the footage goes well together, especially since it was shot at the same exact time, it looks funky going from a dark shot to a light shot.   I’m so tempted to lay down the 400 bucks to get the hero 3 to hopefully alleviate this problem. But there lies another problem……I need to find 400 bucks.

2. Bugs are crazy loud in the early season. While sitting in the tree the constant humming of bug activity becomes so normal its unnoticeable.  But man, when replaying footage from the early fall, it’s a constant hum of bugs. It’s as if there were thousands hanging out on my mic.

3. Telling a full story is darn hard.  Self filming is not an easy venture to begin with. I could fill up pages listing the issues you can run into while doing it.  But I am trying to tell a complete story of my hunts while giving my 100% to avoid adding a voice over at a later date to explain what is happening.  Yeah, we can set up a cool scene with fence posts or show my “bow workshop” in my garage while I sit on a stool with a Northeast Archers shirt on telling you about my hunt that you are watching with your own eyes. But I don’t want that.  I want the viewer to see a hunt, be entertained by the hunt, live the hunt all while watching the hunt.  Practice makes perfect I guess. I am getting better at this each year. (at least I think so).  I just wonder how many years it will take before I’m good at it. Enjoy your spring and but some birds on the ground!

Ok, I think I’m done now. Excuse my complaints.

This is my favorite time of year to get in the woods, well, besides the months where you’re able to sit in a tree with a bow in your hand.  With glimpses of warm weather, winter’s miserable grip loosening, who wouldn’t want to get out in the woods?

Scouting this time of the year is a ton of fun with a lot of possibilities.  The chance to find those sheds from the bucks that made it through the season, finding turkey sign, to getting to those spots you didn’t get a chance to concentrate on during the hunting season.  Those are the first places I go.  I need to see how often deer were using an area where I wasn’t hunting, before I can even start to think about taking down stands or checking on the areas we hunt often.  It’s my obsession with the unknown, which wouldn’t be a problem if I could get away with hunting more and hit every spot!!!

This is the best time of year to expand to completely new areas as well. Scrapes are still fairly open, this year’s rubs are still clearly visible, and deer trails are all obviously beaten down.  Scouting in the first few months of the year will garner more information much quicker than doing it throughout the summer as new growth hides last year’s sign.

The most important thing

Some fresh deer droppings found on a early spring scouting trip to a new area.

I’m looking for when I’m scouting before spring is Poop. Yep, poop is pretty important to me right now.  Finding fresh droppings during this time of year will give you an important tool in understanding how deer are using the area in which you are hunting. I get super excited when I find fresh poop this time of year near a few rubs or scrapes.  This find will show that deer are using that specific area for a few months of out of the year.  Deer were there pre-rut or rut and now during the late season or after season, obviously they like it.  From there you can start asking Why?  Is it food, bedding, or safety that brings deer to that area?

If you limit your scouting to pre season and in season you will miss out on the last piece of the puzzle. As the rut winds down, where do the deer winter and why?  Finding those fresh droppings will start to answer those questions.

Finally, ask yourself why like 29 times!!!!

Companies use the “why tree” or “5 why’s” to solve problems for a reason. It works! A very annoying process, but it does work.  Do it for your scouting as well.

The main goal of scouting is gaining pieces to help solve the puzzle of deer movement. Getting out after the season will go a long way in helping you gather some very important pieces.

Plus, who doesn’t like going in the woods anyway?

Nothing can substitute for actually seeing deer while scouting.

Fresh deer droppings near rubs this time of year tells us that deer use this area a few months out of the year.

“I read about hunting out west as a kid….” ME TOO!!! I can’t wait to watch.

$9k in and that’s before construction!!!!!!!!!

While checking the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife Capitol Funded Projects list I came across this interesting tid-bit.  It costs the division $9,182.00 to do a feasibility study for an Archery range on the Black River WMA. I’m in the wrong business!!!  You would think there are only two questions needed to be answered. Is there room for the archers to comfortably shoot at different distances? And is there an effective way to stop errant arrows from causing damage and/or injury to property or other users of the WMA?

I’m sure $9, 180.00 of that money was paid to a lawyer to determine if the state could get sued for any reason because of the range. The other two dollars for the employee’s morning coffee, drank while standing in a field saying “yep, we can put up some archery targets here”.

In all seriousness  A few other archers and myself built an archery range for a town in central New Jersey a few years ago.  The town apparently had no fear of lawsuits and were very happy with the plans that we drew up.  With a donation from the town of approx. $2,000 and some hard work by us volunteers, the range was created.  Quite the simple project and how things should happen.

http://www.state.nj.us/dep/parksandforests/cbt/expend_template_webpage_a.html