Is it possible to sneak up on a deer?

Factual Questions
21

I’m surprised that this is being portrayed as some sort of utterly impossible Hollywood-Ninja feat. I’ve personally snuck up on a group of deer to within bowhunting range, which for me was about 30 yards. Your success rate is low, but it can be done.

You have to have a few things going for you. (All, IME, and IMHO.) The wind must be in your face. If they smell you, they’re gone. Period. I’ve never used any covering scents or luring scents, so maybe they change up the equation? Camo is nice, something to break up the outline. The essential piece of it was something to knock down the shine on your face. I used a camo gauze-y face mask, but facepaint would work too. The Schwarzenegger-esque camo from Predator isn’t essential IME in deer hunting. I’m judging this by deer not freaking out when they were looking at me, in face mask, camo long-sleeve shirt and sweats within 30-40 yards. Not moving was the key, not absolutely blending into the background. Now turkey-hunting, OTOH…

Watch where you walk, and if you make noise, don’t do it in a rhythm, for many of the same reasons Herbert cited in Dune. Branches fall in a forest, leaves rustle, but they don’t do it in a “thump-thump-thump” rhythm. Finally, move when the animal’s head is down, like when it’s feeding. Deer can see in a tremendous arc, so be really sure it’s not looking. Ideally, put a terrain feature (like a fold in the ground, small arroyo, that sort of thing) between you and them.

But doing the above—and it’s not like I’m the reincarnation of Natty Bumpo—and I’ve personally walked to within 50 yards of wary deer and closer in camo. As noted by many of you, they’ll tolerate a lot before running, if they don’t smell you. I remember being zoned out with fatigue while deer hunting, stumble-butting up a hill, and hearing a “Woooosh! Woof!”. I looked up, and ~20 feet away was a small buck, who was woofing at me. The next second, he took two leaps and was gone. No idea how long he’d seen this figure stumbling towards him before he decided to make that challenge.

Tree-stands are a much more effective method of hunting than still-hunting, though, IMHO. It just wasn’t an applicable method in the wide-open, low game density region of California where I grew up doing this.

22

Does anyone take that guy seriously? I mean, come on… he is saying I need to rub charcoal all over my body, and then roll around in the dirt in order to camouflage myself? :dubious: Surely he must be joking.

23

De-scenting, as he describes it, strikes me as bullshit. That said, I tried to wear clean clothes when I still-hunted. I tried to keep my stalking clothes in Ziplocs and away from camp scents as much as possible. I figured it couldn’t hurt. I’ve never used cover scents, and I’ve never done any controlled studies on deer’s olfactory capabilities; I tried to keep the wind in my face as much as possible. Wouldn’t the charcoal help keep down his own scent? Or would you need activated charcoal?

The rest of his advice doesn’t look terrible. He’s trying to knock down shine, break up his outline, and not leave his scent all over the area. These are all good things when trying to get close to deer, IME. You can achieve all these goals without the whole sweatlodge-child of the wilderness bullshit though.

Touching a deer, FWIW, is a whole lot closer and harder than just getting within bowhunting range. I’ve done the latter; don’t know if I could do the former.

24

You have to be vewwy vewwy quiet. Oh wait, sorry…that’s for wabbits.

25

You can also appear to be something else and get very close. I discovered this accidentally while going to feed my horses. I’ve got a quarter horse mare that has personal space issues – she will walk along side you practically with her head on your shoulder. Anyway, walking through the pasture with her in this configuration we walked right past two doe who apparently share the pasture with my her. I was on the other side of the mare from them, but just in street clothes, wearing cologne and looking them right in the eye the whole time – things I’d never do while hunting. We passed within fifteen feet of them and then continued on to her feed pan. The deer didn’t bolt until I came back near them by myself.

Apparently there is a bird hunting technique that uses this same tactic, but I can’t remember what it is called.

26

Yes, you can. I’ve done it. Bow hunting, and got with in 10 yards of the deer. With the bow I had you couldn’t have gotten a clean kill from further out, and I didn’t much care for the thought of tracking a wounded animal though the woods all day.

The first thing you have to realize is that you STINK to the deer, and most of the stink is artificial. The clothes I wore, I washed then rinsed in clear water then hung them on a clothes line for a week to air them out. The day I went hunting, I showered, then most carefully rinsed every bit of soap off. Approach the dear so that the wind blows from them to you.

I usually just wore blue jeans an a blue jean shirt for hunting. As far as I know, deer don’t see colors - they used to sell deer hunting camouflage in shades of day-glo-orange. To the deer, the pattern was all that mattered, but people could see the bright orange color just fine and know not to shoot you.

27

I’ve done this, when visiting a friend who has a couple hundred acres in the country. Walking upwind, I came across a group of about a dozen deer at a range of about 100 yds: they froze at the same time I did.

I decided to see how long I’d have to stand still before they lost awareness of me. At first, all the deer were staring at me. Then, a few started grazing again. After about 15 minutes, they were all grazing, except a couple would occasionally lift their heads, as if to see whether they could catch me moving. After 20 minutes, there was no indication of any concern.

I then decided to see how close I could get. The technique I used was to move really slowly, freezing when any of them looked in my direction. It took around 25 minutes to get within about 20 yards of the nearest deer, at which point I felt the point had been made.

My conclusion was that this kind of stalking isn’t all that difficult provided you are willing to be unusually patient (as, presumably, hungry indians were).
ETA: I was stalking across soft grass, which made it easy to move quietly.

28

I was once innocently walking on some railroad tracks in my suburban town and a deer who was walking the other way stopped right in front of me before I noticed it. I could have reached out and touched it, but I was afraid it would attack me. We looked at each other for about a minute before it ran away.

29

Certainly it’s possible. I’ve done it myself several times. A lot of my friends are hunter types, but the sport never appealed to me. So, when they would drag me along I’d usually bring my paintball gun. The goal was the sneak up on the deer to try and shoot them with the paint ball gun and scare them off so my buddies would go home empty handed. I only managed to actually get in paintball range and make a successful shot twice, but it was a lot of fun relating that to my friends around a campfire later at night…especially when they would come home empty handed. :stuck_out_tongue:

30

My grandfather used to hunt with Fred. My dad still has his Bear Cub, which is rated at 45 lbs, but pulling it, it feels more like 60. It was one of the first wood/fiberglass composites. My dad got a couple deer with it.

Lewis and Clark, in their journals, frequently mention the amazing hunting ability of the one half-breed member of their team, who had grown up among the Indians. The team included settlers who frequently hunted and were considered good hunters for their day (which my guess would be, much better than most hunters today, since for us it’s more of a hobby than an integral part of our lifestyle).

Yet often all the white hunters returned to camp empty-handed, and the team would have starved without the half-breed. (PS: if this is an offensive term, please let me know a better one.) But whether he could sneak up on one and touch it, the journals do not say.

In my neighborhood, we can nearly trip over the damn things, sometimes, but I don’t that counts. Not long ago my wife and I were walking on a golf-course path at dusk, and there were a few deer on the fairway. One of them started trotting right up to us, and the others began to follow. As much as I’d have enjoyed a Disney-esque encounter, I didn’t want to find out how it would react when it figured out we weren’t who (or what) it thought we were, so I said “Hello, there!” It looked a bit surprised and scooted off.

31

Deer, like dogs and cats, are dichromatic, so they see colors somewhat similarly to most “color-blind” people. They don’t distinguish red from green well.

32

Sure it’s possible. But paradoxically, it always seems to happen when you’re not actually trying to. I hunt deer fairly often and it seems all my intentional sneakage somehow alerts them a mile away. Then the next day I’ll nearly run over one in my noisy 4-wheeler.

In this thread from last year’s hunt, I tell of how they sometimes sneak up on you. (see post #19)