Ok I'm sure this has been asked but how many of you hunt with your bow even when the orange army appears
Hit a buck tonight with the bow, it's been rifle season for over a month here in NC. But I have access to private land, I use the gun back in pa during our two week season, if I had private I would hunt with the bow Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I do it every year but 8 hunt private that is restricted to bow only by the landowner's policy. If I was stuck using public land it might be different.
I have been bow only since 2008. I don't even own a rifle I can hunt deer with. So yes, I hunt with my bow. Look for good funnels or thick escape routes. I have taken a couple deer with a bow in rifle but in PA when 750k hunters hit the woods on the first Monday after Thanksgiving it can be tough lol.
In Vermont, you can only hunt with a bow during rifle season in "discharge ordinance area zones". Which is great, because the orange army isn't allowed access here and they tend to pressure the surrounding areas. I seek these out for rifle season and use it to my advantage.
I always take both when it's gun season. The last deer I shot with a rifle was over 15 years ago and it was a 20 yard shot. I said "Never again". Since then I take both and hope they come close enough to harvest with the bow. I've taken my two last PA buck in the First week of Rifle with my crossbow at 20 - 30 yards. Good Luck!
In Missouri you can only hunt during gun season with a gun tag, so I sit out the 10 day gun season. I will hunt during youth firearm season but there are much less hunters during that time frame. The out of state tags are too expensive for me to buy the additional gun tags to bow hunt during gun season
I tried it once on public land. There were 3 hunting camps in the area and a carpet of beer cans on the ground outside the trailers. Never again. It sounded like WW3. Fortunately, I've tagged out before gun season that last few years.
This just became legal in IL this year. I took the bow out last night on our lease - and saw exactly one button buck. 2nd season starts up the weekend after Thanksgiving so I'll be back out with the bow again at that time.
I archery hunted this past wkend in Ohio and it was youth gun season, I had a close call that kid satin the corner of a bean field and shot at buck in a direct line with me as I sat up a tree up the hill side. Mom sat in her suv as the kid hunted. Thankfully he missed the deer, but had i been on the ground I would have been more upset. To far for me to shoot at the buck.
SC has a lonnnnnnnng gun season. Archery only season on private land is only two weeks long, so essentially, yes, I'm bowhunting during gun season all fall. But the shots are way more spread out than during a short gun season up north.
After shooting a deer with my muzzleloader in 2012 it was sold exactly 3 days later. It didn't give me that rush anymore so since then I have been strictly bow only. I live in sw Michigan and have access to multiple private land spots. With all of the surrounding gun pressure I definitely see an increase in deer numbers on my properties.
Sorry to say but I don't discriminate...I try to use my bow from October 1st through November 15th to fill my tags...Once November 15th hits there is a shotgun in my hands...after that a muzzleloader...after that if its cold for late archery season I might use either my bow again or a crossbow from a blind. I shot one buck with my bow and one with my shotgun this year. I am proud of both. Maybe one day I'll change my tune.
I live about an hour north of nyc and hunt some of my local public lands. Unfortunately, those same public lands i hunt are the easiest to access by the citiots that come straight up the parkway. So opening weekend there will literally be over a hundred people hunting these public lands that are all 1200 acres or less. Most of them are under 700. So you want to talk about WWIII?? Lol shots all around and it can be rather dangerous. A few locals use that to there advantage and hunt certain funnels near property borders to harvest good bucks, but i just tend to avoid openeing weekend for sure, then do my best to hunt week days during the gun season where/when i can
In TN we start out with archery season that morphs into Archery/Muzzleloader and then into Archery/Muzzle/Gun. No special tags or permits one license does it all as long as you have big game tags. I have deer rifles but haven't gun hunted in maybe 10 years. Probably only gun hunted twice in the last 20 years. Except small game hunting. I really enjoy archery and just prefer it. I've always had private land and still do, there's just no wildlife on it. LOL! So, this year I have ventured to some public and see what everyone's been talking about. I was sitting in my new climber Sunday afternoon and about 15 min before magic time a guy walks right under my tree with a gun and sits 47 yds in front of me in the plot I expected deer to come into and feed. I actually had to wave and do the pssst! thing because I wasn't sure he saw me and we talked in the parking area afterwards and he did not see me, even in blaze orange. This is the first time I've dealt with any of this. I don't get mad about things like that though. It's public land and you hunt when you can hunt. I could very easily walk thru someone elses set and wouldn't want them to get all mad at me.
Carrying my bow for the first time this past Saturday cost me a shot at a 150" 10 that chased a doe at 60 yards. That was tough to swallow. Sent from my LGLS992 using Tapatalk
I do every year since ND's gun season is during the "prime" of the rut. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
