Otherwise titled, "Try leaving a Mannequin or a Dummy in your stand next time because all your deer stands and blinds look REALLY EMPTY!"
I know this because a few falls ago I participated in a land navigation/orienteering course that covered parts of rural Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, and I was thereby able to view probably 100 deer different stands on various people’s land and except for a very few they were all painfully empty.
For instance, there was either a ton of sky visible inside every one of the enclosed blinds I saw or the ladder stands were simply empty. For this reason, any deer worth it’s deer salt would have zero difficulty visually identifying something completely different inside that blind when you are in there vs. when you are not in there.
Therefore, a solution I borrow from the military would be to put a mannequin or dummy inside your blind or on your stand so that the deer get used to seeing a human figure inside when you are not.
The reason a mannequin looks pretty much exactly like you do is because outside the back gate of Ft. Riley there is an Iraq-style FOB used for training and it's guard tower has a mannequin and every single time I drove by that FOB I did a double take because I would see the mannequin looking down on me and wonder who was up there.
In contrast, every single deer stand I passed on that multi-week 100+ mile land navigation course looked bare empty. I thought at the time that combining the two or a mannequin + your deer stand would completely resolve the issue because when the deer pass that stand they look up, do the double take upon seeing the human figure in the tree, and go on their way. Like anything else in their environment the deer would eventually get used to the mannequin sitting in the tree and then not be concerned come October when it is you there instead.
Now where you get the mannequin, how you dress them, whether they fall out at some point, or how you get them out when you want to sit up there I have no idea? This is entirely up to you because I have no knowledge of the subject. I just know all your deer stands look painfully empty when walking by them.
For instance, I saw 22’ ladder stands on the top of 4,400’ ridges, every hang-on stand in Cabela’s, homemade box blinds on stilts, professionally built wooden guard tower-style blinds with staircases, a whole series of perhaps 12’ tall boxes that appeared to have a UTV/4 Wheeler garage’s in the base for parking your UTV while you hunt.
One guy had a box blind on the ridge about 100’ above the creek with a corn feeder on the creek. He had corrugated tin attached to the sides of the trees surrounding the corn feeder apparently to increase the noise when the feeder was throwing corn. That blind was perhaps the only one that I could not see into nor could really even get a look at it without craning my neck way up. There is no way that guy got busted in that blind.
Hunters had open box blinds on either side of food plots in lush bottoms along creeks with Big-N-Beasty style food plots in the middle that would have won the county fair for super garden.
There were some really nice blinds and then there were ones with about 15 different spike mounts attached to the outside. I found interesting that all the blinds in certain areas were almost identical because this indicated that the local hunters got together and shared technique. That being said, a one county over the setups were entirely different.
Throughout my orienteering, which I might add was totally legal and sanctioned by all mentioned property owners (you know who you are), the one observation that struck me over and over was how bare the blinds looked without a hunter in them. Perhaps surrounding the open stands with a hanging camouflage net might work to conceal your presence? The box or enclosed blinds however would definitely have benefited from a mannequin to occupy the space inside when not occupied by a hunter.
If a mannequin will not fit into your offseason blind/stand plans at least put some sort of plastic E-type silhouette target in each window. In fact, a weatherproof human silhouette target might be more easy to get out of the way on the days you do decide to hunt that particular stand.
At any rate take some sort of precaution to ensure your blind setup does not silhouette you against the sky as did the professional one with its huge, sliding glass windows.
For those of you, including myself, who hunt in open stands I highly doubt the deer will be fooled by our Realtree or Mossy Oak camo patterns, we are just far too big and far too new for the camo to be a complete solution. I have to remember that camo clothing is not the cloak of invisibility I want it to be.
Or if you are happy with your current setup, DON’T CHANGE A THING.
Either way, good luck this deer season! Thanks for reading.
I know this because a few falls ago I participated in a land navigation/orienteering course that covered parts of rural Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, and I was thereby able to view probably 100 deer different stands on various people’s land and except for a very few they were all painfully empty.
For instance, there was either a ton of sky visible inside every one of the enclosed blinds I saw or the ladder stands were simply empty. For this reason, any deer worth it’s deer salt would have zero difficulty visually identifying something completely different inside that blind when you are in there vs. when you are not in there.
Therefore, a solution I borrow from the military would be to put a mannequin or dummy inside your blind or on your stand so that the deer get used to seeing a human figure inside when you are not.
The reason a mannequin looks pretty much exactly like you do is because outside the back gate of Ft. Riley there is an Iraq-style FOB used for training and it's guard tower has a mannequin and every single time I drove by that FOB I did a double take because I would see the mannequin looking down on me and wonder who was up there.
In contrast, every single deer stand I passed on that multi-week 100+ mile land navigation course looked bare empty. I thought at the time that combining the two or a mannequin + your deer stand would completely resolve the issue because when the deer pass that stand they look up, do the double take upon seeing the human figure in the tree, and go on their way. Like anything else in their environment the deer would eventually get used to the mannequin sitting in the tree and then not be concerned come October when it is you there instead.
Now where you get the mannequin, how you dress them, whether they fall out at some point, or how you get them out when you want to sit up there I have no idea? This is entirely up to you because I have no knowledge of the subject. I just know all your deer stands look painfully empty when walking by them.
For instance, I saw 22’ ladder stands on the top of 4,400’ ridges, every hang-on stand in Cabela’s, homemade box blinds on stilts, professionally built wooden guard tower-style blinds with staircases, a whole series of perhaps 12’ tall boxes that appeared to have a UTV/4 Wheeler garage’s in the base for parking your UTV while you hunt.
One guy had a box blind on the ridge about 100’ above the creek with a corn feeder on the creek. He had corrugated tin attached to the sides of the trees surrounding the corn feeder apparently to increase the noise when the feeder was throwing corn. That blind was perhaps the only one that I could not see into nor could really even get a look at it without craning my neck way up. There is no way that guy got busted in that blind.
Hunters had open box blinds on either side of food plots in lush bottoms along creeks with Big-N-Beasty style food plots in the middle that would have won the county fair for super garden.
There were some really nice blinds and then there were ones with about 15 different spike mounts attached to the outside. I found interesting that all the blinds in certain areas were almost identical because this indicated that the local hunters got together and shared technique. That being said, a one county over the setups were entirely different.
Throughout my orienteering, which I might add was totally legal and sanctioned by all mentioned property owners (you know who you are), the one observation that struck me over and over was how bare the blinds looked without a hunter in them. Perhaps surrounding the open stands with a hanging camouflage net might work to conceal your presence? The box or enclosed blinds however would definitely have benefited from a mannequin to occupy the space inside when not occupied by a hunter.
If a mannequin will not fit into your offseason blind/stand plans at least put some sort of plastic E-type silhouette target in each window. In fact, a weatherproof human silhouette target might be more easy to get out of the way on the days you do decide to hunt that particular stand.
At any rate take some sort of precaution to ensure your blind setup does not silhouette you against the sky as did the professional one with its huge, sliding glass windows.
For those of you, including myself, who hunt in open stands I highly doubt the deer will be fooled by our Realtree or Mossy Oak camo patterns, we are just far too big and far too new for the camo to be a complete solution. I have to remember that camo clothing is not the cloak of invisibility I want it to be.
Or if you are happy with your current setup, DON’T CHANGE A THING.
Either way, good luck this deer season! Thanks for reading.
ukey:
