Chris Maroldy
So you can still catch some pretty good crappie as I write this, and channel cats on a down line or a float give the buck bass on a plastic salamander or a topwater plug a run for the money right now.
But what I’m trying to tell you is you should forget all that and concentrate on the
upcoming deer season.
Yeah, right.
Okay, I get it. Deer season is months away and fishing is hot right now. But whoop-de-doo. There’s plenty to do to get ready for whitetail.
For instance, if I have to read one more “How do you carry all your ‘stuff’ [!] into the woods” internet threads between now in the off-season and continuing on through this coming December, my head might explode.
Apparently, a lot of folks are unprepared for deer season, even in the middle of deer season. The ones who got hung up on this gear-hauling issue last season are asking questions now, and the ones who get stuck this season will be looking for answers starting Day 2 or 3 of their rut-cation 2025 and running through next summer.
“This makes me very angry—very angry indeed.” (Does anyone remember Marvin The Martian from Looney Tunes?)
Just kidding. I’m not angry; more like amazed that people seem so needy on this topic. I’ve been making fun of those packing threads for 20 years, seems like, though, so I guess one lesson to learn is that while I poo-poo it, there must be a legit question here.
Folks are either carrying too much gear (or too much weight or bulk), or pack and stand companies aren’t addressing concerns about portability.
Probably both.
Weight weenies abound among Western big game hunters and many Eastern backpackers, but they’re fairly rare among whitetail hunters. Most of us after whitetails aren’t hiking very far, so the consumer demand and the marketing response isn’t robust for lightweight, compact, packable gear (or “systems”!) except in a few niche areas.
Saddle-hunting and “mobile hunting” get a lot of buzz these days, but the number of guys who are really running and gunning or even just walking in to a pre-set stand any appreciable distance is quite low by comparison to all the noise.
So there’s just not a lot of attention being paid from either the buying end or the selling end to an off-the-shelf solution to the “too much gear/weight/bulk” problems many whitetail nuts complain about.
That’s not to say hunters don’t try to buy their way out of the problem or that some companies don’t angle to take their money with “game-changing mobile solutions.” (LOL) But I think this is mostly think-out-of-the-box territory, and while you can throw some dollars at a better pack and some lighter gear, that is not the magic bullet, no matter how much we want it to be.
Better to assess what we have now, first, and either tweak it or leave it behind.
Remember when you used to go deer hunting with only your gun or bow, some rope and a knife? Think about those days as you lay out everything you carry now, and you might become more mobile right on the spot, without even spending any money.
I’m not saying it’s easy to pare your gear. If you told me I don’t “need” a few things I can think of, you might as well try to talk Linus out of his blanket. But the longer you play the game, the better you get at knowing what’s worth carrying and what’s not—If you think about it!
That’s the key. You have to concentrate on this a little bit. It IS easier to throw money at a lighter version of whatever piece of gear is up for a verdict, but the real question is do you really need to be carrying that bit of kit in the first place.
And if something seems stupid and not workable, it probably is. If your pack and stand don’t carry well, or your clothes are too bulky to carry in for a cold December sit, there’s your sign, as the old comedy routine used to go.
At that point you need to do something different, and maybe the bank account really is going to need to take a hit, or maybe you *will* have to change how you hunt. Don’t try to do the impossible with tools that are not suited to the task, and don’t be a slow learner (as I often am).
Go over your deer gear now. Experiment now. You’ll be one less guy looking for help in the fall, when you should be a lean, mean hunting machine.