“Building Your Deer
Lease 2”
This is our second installment in the “Building Your Deer Lease” series and we’ve really made some progress since choosing our lease.
This time we’ll talk about choosing a blind and location for set-up. First I should say that you need to make some decisions. Are you going to hunt directly over your feeders or hunt the approach routes to the feeding areas? We make no assumptions or judgements as to the method YOU choose to take your deer. Some people think the only sporting way to kill a deer is with a bow. Some think long shots are poor sportsmanship. The point is that YOU must decide and go from there. If you are bowhunting, for example, your blind will need to be suited for that purpose and located much closer to the action. A tripod blind of good height and sturdiness will be portable enough to carry into the heart of things, and would be a good choice. More on bowhunting later.
Our lease area overlooks a heart-shaped canyon. Some shots will be long, some short (225-98 yds.). for this reason we are going to hunt this particular area with a rifle. That takes care of decision one. Next, we must decide on blind and feeder location. Which brings us to another decision! Hunting over feeders ( shooting deer as they come to feeder pens) is common in Texas. Some think it is more sporting to actually set-up over the approach routes deer use to get to the feeding areas. One or the other, it still determines where your blind goes. Generally I locate my feeders in a flat, wide, clear area near a well worn game trail. I know deer are passing through and a free meal will soon be noticed. Now I can scout the area for signs of rutting bucks from last year (of course it is always best to get a jump on scouting in the fall and winter months but your first year on the lease this probably won’t be possible) and other indicators. Finding “sign” is the first ingredient, it takes a little detective work to link together game trails, feeding routes, bedding locations and watering holes. All of these things together make up the ingredients of a deer day. Once you know where the deer operate daily you have to find what YOU think is the best location to intercept your buck. By the way, you WILL be tested on this! The test comes in the fall!
For now, without the benefit of a season of scouting and watching deer movement, just find as much “sign” as you can, and work close to that. Your blind position will be determined by the size, mobility and weight of the blind. The easier it is to move, the more placement options you have. Consider the route you will take to the blind, and where you think you will actually make your shot, then see if Mother Nature will help you determine where your blind goes. You will probably find a placement that offers little or no visibility even though everything else looks perfect. Now you can either cut shooting lanes in the brush, or keep looking. I vote option number two. Cutting brush is hard work and I hate to go into a deer area and make big changes. If you DO intend to cut a lot of cover and brush for blind placement and feeders, do it WELL before the season! As I said, I would keep looking until I found the best mix between the perfect place and minimal work!
As you can see from the pictures, my blind is not very mobile! In this case we operated on a different system. First we found a good, flat spot for the blind which was easy to get to with a trailer and had a good view once the blind went up we got inside and chose feeder locations and shooting lanes as best we could. For more on the blind, the “Wrights Igloo” visit the hunting product review section or the banner ad on this site.
Looking out from the blind it was pretty easy to locate the feeders by looking for open areas with open avenues of approach. We wanted to do as little road cutting and brush trimming as possible, and hauling bags of feed by hand is not something I want to play at! Putting up a feeder will require you to build a feeder pen to keep unwanted critters out. This can best be built out of hog or cattle “panels” available at most feed stores. Fifteen to twenty feet in length and three to four feet high these panels will be wired together ( maybe 6-10 panels depending on your preference in pen size) to form a free standing pen around your feeder. I suggest putting large rocks around the inside and outside of the panels to act as a barrier at the bottom of the pen. This will help keep critters from nosing under your pen. If money is not a concern you can have angle iron welded into a frame, say 15 x 4 ft. and then fit the panel inside the angle, weld it in place and add a fence hinge to each end. Now you can hook the panels together at the hinges and make a free-standing pen that won’t need rocks, and even better, by un-hooking the panel at a corner you can drive right into your pen. This is no small feat when it comes time to fill three or four feeders with six bags of feed each! For more info on the feeders we are using see the hunting product review section under “Feeders”.
Of course if you’re bowhunting everything changes. Generally, bowhunting requires much more intimate settings of blinds and feeders than the rifle hunt. You must be close enough for an arrow to be accurate and achieve maximum penetration. Again, whether you hunt feeders or approach routes is your call. Over feeders you have a few more options only because at any given time a deer is in the pen he will be disrtracted by the act of feeding. In other words,he has to drop his head to eat! Adeer moving to feed however, my be on full alert as he makes his way down the game trail. This means you will have to double your efforts. Take the same steps as the rifle hunter. Find good sign, find a nice open flat area for a feeder, let Mother Nature be your friend and look for the open avenues that already exist. Now you will have to go one step farther. Get that blind hidden! Put it in the trees, against a bush or mesquite or whatever, but you can’t do enough to hide your blind when bowhunting. A deer may not see me from 150 yds. Before I see him ,but at fifteen yards things are a lot more tense!
Now that we have a blind up and feeders working we’ll move on to some other stuff we can do to keep our lease in good shape. Next time we’ll talk about what to put in thew feeders and maybe some of the gadgets that you might want to play with at your lease!