For a long time, the Working Class Bowhunter Podcast crew has preached the importance of the Hang n’ Bang (coined by the WCB crew) - The idea that you are not limited to pre-hung sets. The basic idea is that you have a stand and sticks that are light, compact, and easily caried in and out. This allows you to make adjustments, whether little or big, based on most recent information (MRI). It also allows you to tear down and move if the wind isn’t as favorable as predicted. The value of this type of hunting was made abundantly clear to me on Friday the 13th of this year.
Before sunup, I went in with my stand on my back and set up on a ridge top where I knew that does sometimes bed during the day. I had great visibility and the wind was forecasted to be straight out of the north east. However, when the sun came up and the day winds began blowing, the wind was blowing due east. The direction I was expecting deer to be coming from. It was a light wind so I decided to stay put and hope that the thermals would override the wind direction and suck up to me out of the bottom. This was not the case. At 7:45 I let out a few grunts and waited. The leaves were crisp but I failed to hear the buck slip in from the bottom. I heard a deer take off and turned in time to see a nice buck bound away. He had come up the ridge in a blind spot and got directly down wind.
Frustrated, I tried calling but it was pointless. I started looking at my map and remembered a ridge that I had scouted two years prior that had a great transition line where thick pines met the hard woods. It had been littered with rubs and scrapes along that edge so I decided to slip over there and try that. The transition line ran east/west so I set up on the south side of it down far enough so that if a buck was traveling along that line, the wind would be in his favor but I would be just south of what he was smelling.
(The red line in the transition line and expected travel route. The blue arrow is the wind direction. The stand location is marked by the yellow x)
I started tearing down my initial setup at 9 AM and 45 minutes later, I had moved locations and was in the tree ready to hunt. It was a slow first hour but, like they say, it can all change in an instant - and that’s what happened. At about 10:50 I heard crashing and running. I looked behind me and saw a doe running down the hill from the opposite ridge. She started coming up towards me and stopped to look behind her. That’s when I knew there was something behind her. Not five seconds later, I spotted a big bodied deer trotting down after her.
As he neared her, she took off running up the hill towards me and walked twelve yards from me into the thick pines. The buck came straight up on the same trail following the doe.
(Twelve yards away - the moment before the shot)
That morning I had no intention of hunting this location. I set up in an area that I thought bucks might travel while scent checking for does. It was a mobile setup to begin with but the wind was wrong and I had been busted. If you listen to lots of well-known big buck killers, they will tell you that the number one concern that a hunter should have is wind direction. Having blown an opportunity, it took some mental back-and-forth to convince myself to tear down and move, but once I had made the decision, I was kicking myself for taking so long to do it (it took about an hour from when the buck busted me to when I decided to make the move). Fortunately for me, I was set up with plenty of time to catch this mature 8 coming through with the doe. I was unsure of the shot so I backed out and went in to look after dark. My buddy brought his dog out in case it was a tough track job but the shot, although a touch back, had been good and got the back of the lungs. The deer was dead 88 yards from the shot and had died running.
(Lucca got on the trail and brought us straight to him in less than a minute)
There is no doubt in my mind that the ability to be mobile is what killed this deer. I had never hunted here before, although I had scouted it in previous years. I made an adjustment based on wind direction and I will never think twice about moving again. The Hang n’ Bang hunting style has proven to be effective over and over again and I would encourage everyone to try it. Call this my “ahah moment”. It is mentally daunting at first but I feel confident that if you are smart about it, you will see the benefits and reap the rewards.