Beyond the Bow: The Small Stuff That Closes the Distance

Every fall I get the same question at the counter. A guy has his bow tuned, his arrows matched and his broadheads shaving sharp, and he wants to know what else he should be carrying. Fair question. The bow and arrow get all the attention, but they are only half the hunt. The other half is getting a deer to walk into a spot where that bow and arrow can do their job.

That matters more for us than it does for most. A compound shooter can reach out and touch a deer at 40 or 50 yards. With a longbow, I want that deer at 20 or less, standing still, looking the other way. Everything I carry beyond the bow is there to make that happen. Here is what rides in my pack once the leaves start dropping.

Close the Distance with Your Voice

A grunt call is the first thing I reach for when I see a buck cruising just out of range. Most of the time he is not coming to me on purpose. He is walking a line, and I need to give him a reason to bend it my way.

The Hunters Specialties Quadgrunter XT2 has earned a spot on my lanyard because it does four jobs in one call. Slide the o-ring inside the mouthpiece and you move from a mature buck grunt to a young buck grunt, a doe bleat or a fawn bleat. The expandable bellows on the end let you put some inflection into it, which is the difference between sounding like a deer and sounding like a guy blowing into a tube.

My rule on calling is simple. Call to a deer you can see, not to the whole woods. A soft grunt or two when a buck is walking away, then shut up and let him come looking. If he hangs up, a doe bleat will sometimes do what a grunt won't. And when the rut kicks in, a young buck grunt can bring out the bully in a deer that thinks someone is moving in on his girls.

Give Them a Reason to Stop

Getting a deer close is one thing. Getting him to stop broadside in your shooting lane is another. That is where scent earns its keep.

Scrapes are the best community bulletin board in the whitetail woods. Bucks and does both work the licking branch hanging over a scrape, rubbing their foreheads on it and leaving their calling card. If there is no good branch where you want one, you make one.

The ConQuest Scents Forehead Gland Rope Kit gives you a scent rope and 4 oz of forehead gland scent to build a licking branch right where you need it. Hang the rope 4 to 5 feet off the ground over a natural or mock scrape, dose it with scent and let the deer do the rest. I like to set these 15 to 18 yards off the stand, quartering away from my shooting side, so the deer that stops to work it is standing exactly where I want him. Put a trail camera on it early in the season and you will learn a lot about who is in the neighborhood.

For everything else I carry the Tink's Scent Stick Variety Pack. These are wax-based sticks with a dial-up applicator, so there is no bottle to spill in your pocket and no scent on your hands. The wax holds up in rain, snow and wind, which is most of the season where I hunt. The pack gives you three tools:

• #1 Doe-P, a non-estrous doe urine that works all season and makes deer curious.
• #69 Doe-In-Rut, the classic buck lure for when things heat up.
• Peak30 Doe Estrus, collected at peak estrus, for late pre-rut into the rut.

I rub a little on the bottoms of my boots on the walk in, and dab some on a branch or a clump of grass at the edge of my shooting lane. A buck following his nose tends to stop and check it, and a stopped deer is a deer you can shoot.

One word of caution. A number of states now restrict or ban natural urine-based scents because of CWD. Check your state and any state you are hunting as a non-resident before you pack them.

Keep Your Hands Free and Your Movement Down

Here is the part nobody talks about. You can do everything right, get the deer coming, get him stopped, and blow it because your bow was hanging on a stub of a branch behind you and you had to twist around to grab it.

The Realtree EZ Hanger XL fixes that for about the price of a cheeseburger. It screws into the tree, hinges to fold, and gives you 23 inches of reach to hang your bow where it sits right at hand. I run one for the bow and another for my pack, call and whatever else I need close. Back at camp it doubles as a hanger for wet gear or a mount for a camera.

It sounds like a small thing. It is a small thing. But traditional hunting is a game of small things. The less you move, the more deer you get to shoot at.

The Half That Isn't the Bow

I will always believe the most important piece of gear you carry is a well-built arrow in front of a bow you can shoot without thinking. But that arrow only matters if the deer is close enough and calm enough to take it. A call to turn him, a scent to stop him, and a setup that lets you draw without a wasted motion. That is the other half of the hunt.

Everything I mentioned here is on the shelf now at Lost Nation. Come by, or grab it online, and get it in your pack before the good days show up.

See you in the woods.

Blake