During my childhood in Maine’s bottom third, deer enthusiasts who chose to hunt alone often took a stand downwind of foraging areas such as wild apple orchards, oak and beech stands, and heavily used game trails, where heart-shaped tracks and droppings littered the ground. These loners found places to sit at dawn, sunset and maybe noon, and they still-hunted in woods a step or two at a time through mid-morning and mid-afternoon. Still hunters look for deer that haven’t heard them approach or are curious enough to stand to see what was walking toward them. (I like to sound like a deer when I’m walking – two steps at a time just rustling leaves without breaking branches.) These two techniques of taking a stand and still-hunting require extreme hunter patience.

Even for average deer hunters, these common tactics proved common and effective from the end of World War II and continued through the late 1960s because our deer herds were dense then, dense for Maine anyway. Then in the 1970s, bad winters, full-blown coyote invasion and massive clear-cuts in northern and eastern Maine deer wintering habitat started the herd’s downward spiral in those places, eventually lowering big-woods deer to two or even to one animal per square mile – on average.

Deer hunting in the North Country during my youth was legendary and also proved superb in the bottom half of the state. In fact, a decade ago, a Maine IF&W statistic from the 1950s caught my eye. During some seasons in those Eisenhower years, one in four hunters registered a deer – an impressive success ratio for this state. (These days, that figure ranges from one in eight hunters to one in 12.)

In December 1970, snow fell heavily and the storms continued through April 1971, a severe winter that raised havoc with Maine’s herd. I was young and relied on my usual stand hunting at dawn, noon and sunset just in forage areas and still-hunted between those vigils and did poorly that year. Deer were that scarce in my home woods, where snow had fallen particularly heavy, devastating the herd.

With such a low deer density in the early 1970s, it took me two or three years to figure out a tactic to increase the odds. At dawn, noon and sunset, I’d be settled over a trail between deer bedding areas and the forage. In early morning, whitetails might linger until a tad after first light before heading to thickets to sleep, in late afternoon they’d move toward the food before legal shooting time ended and at noon might get hungry, making these connecting trails a great spot to catch deer on the move. (Heavily hunted whitetails won’t enter the forage area until after dark and leave before first light – a rule with minor exceptions – but they might get onto a connecting trail before shooting time ends.)

And yes, there is an elephant in the room with this topic – driving deer. In my youth it was legal for hunters to drive deer in the direction of hunters on stands and was extremely popular for folks hunting in small groups limited by law to certain sizes. However, I never liked this method; my choice, not a law. Maine is one of the few places in the world where driving game animals is illegal. Does that tell us we’re wiser or dumber than the rest of the world?

Sure, I did drive deer with my family, but something about this method annoyed me. Inevitably, an inexperienced hunter in the group would get lost or could not find the correct crossing to intercept a driven deer. How many times in my youth did I participate in drives that ended with lost hunters from my party? We’d wile away an hour or far more, trying to find them, annoying in that bewitching hour before dark.

However, when my father, Lawrence French (an older cousin) and I drove deer, we knew the woods, which resulted in effective hunts. (Unfortunately, because of my youth, I often did most of the “blankety-blank” driving.) In short, I saw plenty of bobbing white on deer tails bouncing away in the distance and a short while later heard a shot or two from Lawrence or my father – superb marksmen on running game.

Maine’s deer herd has seen huge ups and downs, but in lean times, sitting over trails between bedding and foraging areas worked well, and the key to success begins and ends with patience. A hunter on a stand must sit silently without fidgeting, and it never hurts to have a few bushes in front of the hunter, just enough to break the human outline. Standing against the front of a large tree trunk also obscures a hunter.

During long vigils in cold weather, warm clothing adds greatly to the hunt, and the cloth must be soft so folks can move their arms to raise a rifle without stiff cloth making noise. Brushing leaves off the ground so hunters can silently move their feet also helps when on stand should a deer sneak up from behind and the shooter must turn.

Ken Allen of Belgrade Lakes, a writer, editor and photographer, may be reached at:

KAllyn800@yahoo.com

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