Bruce Ingram

Busting the Flock

outdoorlife-editor — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:26:37 -0400

"There goes Patches," yelled Larry Case of Fayetteville, W.Va. One minute Larry and I were trailing along behind his turkey dog on a civilized stroll through the autumn woods. The next minute, chaos.

Patches, nose to the ground, veered off the old logging road and went straight up one of the mountainsides that characterize the state's rugged topography. A minute later, we heard a single bark, followed by the flapping of wings. A few seconds more, and three turkeys soared over us to our left. Two more came winging by to our right. Last, four birds flew directly over us.

Larry and I hurried up the mountain and easily located the bench where the bust had occurred, since fresh turkey scratchings littered the forest duff. After about 15 minutes, I started with a lost call, the sound of a separated young turkey. Almost immediately, the woods began to sing with the voices of jakes and
jennies responding in kind.

"Here they come," hissed Larry, with Patches between his knees. The lead jake was so eager to come in that he ran past us, but the jenny paused. That was her undoing; I sent a load of No. 4s her way.
A good turkey dog is aggressive and well-trained. They must be able to lie still when birds approach. I've hunted with everything from Labs to Chessies. In West Virginia, residents use a mixed bird dog called a fyce (often called a "feist" elsewhere), a small, yappy dog with a strong nose. West Virginia's turkey season begins October 22.

Eastern Deer Tactics

outdoorlife-editor — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 12:26:34 -0400

Mountainous terrain, a common sight in the Northeast, presents a challenge for hunters looking to hang a tree stand. The steep hillsides often force hunters (unwillingly, mind you) to the ground. Chris Ellis, of Fayetteville, W.Va., had no choice but to keep out of stands, though, due to injuries he sustained in a car wreck. What was first a disappointing situation has taught Ellis that being earthbound is an excellent way to arrow a deer.

"The two mistakes I made when I first started hunting from a blind are the two most common ones that bowhunters make," says Ellis, wildlife marketing representative for the West Virginia DNR. "First, a location that may be a satisfactory place to position a tree stand because of wind direction will probably not be as good for a ground blind.

"When you're in a tree stand and the wind's not quite right or is swirling about in different directions, you don't have to pay as close attention to it, because your scent will be carried away. When I first started hunting from the ground, I had deer snorting at me from a hundred yards out, even though the wind wasn't blowing directly from me to them. It took me a while to figure out that the wind direction had to be perfect before I could even attempt to hunt from a ground spot."

The second mistake involved the blinds themselves. "I started out either using camo cloth blinds or making what I called 'log cabins.' That is, an elaborately constructed blind with lots of limbs woven together and covered with pine or hemlock boughs," says Ellis. "Not only did bucks avoid these blinds, but so did the does. Deer would look at my blinds and snort and stamp, even though the wind direction was perfect. They seemed to know that something wasn't right in there."

The West Virginian then decided to take the opposite tack in earthbound concealment. He says that modern-day camouflage is so effective at concealing humans they need precious little else, even when bowhunting from the ground. All an archer really needs is something to break up his silhouette [BRACKET "see sidebar, above"].
What happens if the deer aren't coming out to feed until late in the evening? Ellis admits that developing a game plan for this situation stumped him for several seasons. "I decided to try hunting right in one buck's bedroom,"
recalls Ellis. "Two things are true wherever Eastern bucks bed. The first is that the cover is thick with plants
like rhododendron, mountain laurel,
autumn olive, grapevines or some sort of briar. The second is that mature trees are rare, so bowhunters don't have many places to hang stands."

Hunting the Bedroom

Ellis believes that the best locations to hunt a buck from the ground are the deer's bedding area or thick cover. "One day after two o'clock, I decided to sneak into the outer edge of a mountain laurel thicket to within about a hundred yards of where I thought an eight-pointer was bedding," says Ellis. "To keep down the noise and to minimize disturbance, I set up in some laurel that was about ten yards off a faint buck trail. I placed a few sprigs of cut laurel in front of me. I also cut out only a couple of narrow shooting lanes. When the eight-pointer came out that evening, I killed him. There's no way I would have taken that buck if I had been hunting him from anywhere else but from the ground in his bedroom."

While on my outing with Ellis, I noticed that he didn't apply any kind of scent. He doesn't use any corn or oak cover scent, for instance, because he doesn't want the deer to look his way. The same goes for doe-in-heat or coon scents. He just washes his clothes with scent-free detergent and keeps them in an airtight compartment.

Elaborate blinds, special camo and complicated scent application aren't part of Chris Ellis's bowhunting plan. To take a wall-hanger, Eastern hunters should consider his well-grounded strategies.

Take Charge Of Turkeys

outdoorlife-editor — Sun, 31 Oct 2004 19:00:00 -0500

The flock of turkeys had frustrated me throughout Virginia's fall season. All of my attempts to take a bird ended in failure. The mother hen of the assemblage was an exceptionally loud old girl, and it was quite obvious that I couldn't lure away her jakes and jennies by outcalling her. Her young, as nature had intended, were more in tune with her own yelps and clucks than with mine.

I decided that the time had come for an all-out charge on the flock. Charging a turkey flock is a time tested and effective method for scattering turkeys. Unlike in spring, turkeys in a gang will not respond to calling. If they're spread out, though, you can take position and usually call a bird into range.

This particular flock's habit was to feed in fields during the morning and enter an adjoining woodlot sometime early in the afternoon. I entered the woods around 2 p.m. Just 15 minutes later I saw the flock winding its way up a ridge along a mountainside, some 100 yards away from my position. I waited until the flock was out of sight and then began huffing up a ridge adjacent to the one the birds were foraging on.

When I felt I was well above where the turkeys would be, I inched up to the lip of my ridge and looked over to see if they were within sight. Fortunately, they weren't. This allowed me to run over to the birds' ridge and hurriedly set up against a tree.

Regardless of whether you hunt fall turkeys in the mountains, on rolling hills or in the flatlands and swamps of the South, one constant exists: You can use the terrain to hide your approach when charging a flock. Those terrain features might be a ridge like the one I used in the Virginia mountains, a hummock in the hill and valley regions or just a small rise in a flatlands swamp.

I heard the sounds of birds scratching from my position. Shortly afterward, several turkeys crested the edge of the flat below and began feeding.

Inexplicably, however, the flock hen decided to move toward the next ridge over. Laying my gun down, I quickly began screaming and running down the mountain. Chaos reigned among the flock's members, and the entire assemblage took wing and pitched off the side of the mountain in every conceivable direction—a textbook scatter.

With the birds dispersed to all points of the compass, I set up against an oak that was 30 yards from the edge of the ridge. I waited 15 minutes and began yelping softly. Five minutes later, I began to utter frantic kee-kees—the sound of young turkeys lost and desperate to rejoin their flock. Ten minutes later, a jake poked his head over the edge of the flat, and my hunt was over. The young tom weighed 16 pounds—not bad for a Southern mountain bird.

QUICK TIPS

1 Although Southern hunters often debate whether to try to call in a flock first or scatter it and then call, I have had more success with the latter tactic.

2 The kee-kee run is the best call for fall turkey hunting. Basically, this call is a whistle-like wee-wee-wee, followed by yelps.

3 If, during your scatter, the flock flies or runs off together, don't waste time trying to call in the birds. Your attempt will most likely be futile. Try to relocate the gang and attempt to scatter the birds again.

4 Lay your gun down before attempting a charge. Never fire into a flock; doing so makes them too scared to be called back in and runs the risk of wounding a bird.

5 Don't try to outcall the flock hen. If you hear her uttering the assembly yelp (a series of a dozen or so yelps), move toward her and attempt to run her off.

Whitetails And White Oaks

outdoorlife-editor — Sun, 31 Oct 2004 19:00:00 -0500

November in the South means one thing to deer hunters: the rut. It's getting into full swing, and hunters are putting a simple game plan into effect—find where does are feeding and locate big, active bucks. When it comes to uncovering food sources, look no further than the white oak (Quercus alba). No other natural whitetail food has more influence on where deer will be than the white oak. This holds true whether you are in a creek bottom in Alabama, the rolling hill country of western Kentucky, the mountains of Virginia or the lowlands of northwest Florida.

THE ACORN CROP

Find the oaks and find the deer. Sounds too easy, right? Well, the only flaw of a white oak is that it's a notoriously fickle producer of acorns. This fact greatly influences stand placement in the South. For example, about every five years or so, the white oaks in a given area will produce nuts in great profusion. Oddly enough, this makes stand placement more difficult, because deer won't need to move far from their bedding areas to feed. Hunters should determine which groves are closest to bedding areas and set up accordingly.

It's more common for only a fair number of white oaks to produce acorns. Under these circumstances, deer gravitate to the groves or individual trees that have most recently dropped nuts. In this case, you need to spend a lot of time in the woods, figuring which groves produce acorns. Flexibility is important, because you'll have to move your stand every few days to keep up with the crop.

My favorite scenario is when the white oak crop fails to materialize, except for a few trees. Placing a stand in such a grove is the closest Southern hunters will come to a sure thing. Several seasons ago I took a nice nine-pointer when the acorn crop was scarce. I had scouted the buck for a while, watching as he returned to the same small grove. Because there was so little food around, he had scraped the forest floor clean and rubbed numerous saplings around the white oaks. He visited one time too many and ended up with my tag on his antler.

IDENTIFY THE WHITE OAK Although there are notable exceptions, such as the chinquapin (which has sharp-toothed leaves), most white oak species feature rounded leaf lobes, light bark and acorns that mature in one year. The red oak's acorns take two years to mature, and its leaves are toothed with hairlike bristle tips.

THE SOUTHERN WHITE OAKS

Although Quercus alba is the predominant white oak in the South, it wouldn't hurt for deer hunters to become more familiar with several other members of the oak family. Like the white oak, the post oak thrives throughout the region in habitat as diverse as rocky ridges and flood plains. Southern sportsmen who live in the coastal areas from Virginia to central Texas should get to know the live oak. And the chinquapin oak flourishes in the limestone soil common from western Virginia to central Texas.