Mark from MT asks,
Bill, Just wondering how your camping has been doing. I live and hunt here in Montana, and while I don't camp when deer hunting, I camp when elk hunting where weather can be down to low twenties at night and 40-60 during the day. If you need some pointers on being comfortable and staying warm, let me know, as i've been there and done that. I think a big challenge this time of year is the long amount of darkness and shorter daylight. Makes for a very long night. Thanks, Mark
Bill responds,
Topic: Camping Out for Whitetails:
This is one of my setups. The stand ended up about 75 yards from this spot on the ridge to the left side of this image. I could sleep here without the risk of alerting deer by coming and going a longer distance to my stand. It worked pretty well, but was very boring.
Mark,
Side note: First for those that aren’t up to speed on this subject, I spent many nights sleeping in the woods this past season because the farm I was hunting was super hard to get into and out of without spooking deer. Rather than spooking them coming and going, I decided to sleep either in my blind or under my tree stand. I will write a complete blog about that soon, but that is the basis for Mark’s question. I had shown a few photos on Instagram of my setups. That’s how Mark found out about it.
To Mark,
Thanks for the support. I didn’t have a problem with the temperatures (got into the 20s a few times at night). I had a -20 degree bag and that was very cozy. But I did get really bored, as you guessed. The worst was when I did back to back sleepovers with an all day hunt in between.
So, I arrived at noon, set up my “camp” in an out of the way spot, covered it with sticks and leaves, went a bit further and put up my stand, hunted, came back to the “camp” after dark to sleep, got up, covered it with leaves, went back to the stand, sat there all day, went back to my camp at dark and then back to the same tree the next morning. That was super boring to the point where it wasn’t fun.
I was OK as long as I snuck in at midday, set up, hunted, slept, got up, hunted and then packed up and snuck out at noon that second day. I could live with that. I sure caught up on my sleep and when I woke up at 2:00 AM it was entertaining to hear the sounds around me! But throw an all day sit in the middle of an already pretty boring approach – that was just too much.
Again, as I mentioned, I will write a full blog about this soon. I did learn a lot and I will share those lessons in the near future. Good luck. (11/27/21)
