Fooling whitetails and other big game from a ground blind comes with challenges, but you can overcome those challenges by following these simple steps.
By FeraDyne Staff
Picture this: While scouting, you find a whitetail hotspot with multiple trails intersecting. You just can’t wait to hunt there. You pop a blind up next to a tree 20 yards away from the deer “highway” and make plans to return on opening morning, which is just a few days away.
Opening morning comes and goes without a deer sighting. So does opening afternoon. And the next day. By now, you’re bewildered. How could you not, by default, encounter a deer parade in an area so filthy with deer sign?
Ground-blind hunting has advantages, but simple oversights can override them. With a little planning and know-how, though, you can capitalize on ground-blind hunting’s benefits by following these six simple steps.
1. Air It Out
Whether you just recently purchased a new Rhino ground blind or have one in your garage, it has odors that will spook animals passing by downwind. Before you set it up in your hunting location, pop it up in your backyard (if you have one in the country) and let it air out for a week or more. An alternative option is to get Scent Crusher’s Halo Series Locker Lite or The Locker and treat the blind’s odors with ozone.
2. Practice Shooting From It
Hunting from a ground blind is different than most other types of hunting in the way that you position yourself to shoot. You’ll either have to shoot while seated or kneeling, and you’ll have to shoot through a window. Depending on your blind’s dimensions, you’ll also have a somewhat limited amount of space for drawing your bow. Rhino Blinds has multiple different blinds to choose from so that you can pick one with shooting ports and inside dimensions that work best for your individual hunting applications.
These reasons make it crucial for bowhunters to practice shooting from a ground blind well before hunting season. This is your chance to identify and solve issues that could cause you to blow it when a big buck steps out. Get acclimated with the blind’s dark interior (as a side note, lighted sight pins, where legal, are a must for ground-blind hunting). Determine where you must be positioned in the blind to avoid interference — hitting your elbow or bow stabilizer against the blind wall. Also, before you shoot, glance down at your arrow tip while at full draw to make sure you’ll clear the fabric.
Once you’ve gotten that far, spend a bunch of time shooting from the blind. Try to develop a high degree of comfort and learn if you’re a better shot while seated or kneeling. Regardless, practice both ways, because you won’t always be able to go to your knees when a deer shows up. Likewise, you might face a shot opportunity that you can only make if you get on your knees and reposition.
3. Set It Weeks in Advance
When you’re setting your Rhino ground blind to be a virtually permanent setup for most or all of the season, your best bet is to position it in your hunting location at least a month before you plan to hunt from it. When you do that, be sure to stake it down well (emphasis on “well” if you hunt on the plains and prairies where the wind blows extremely hard). You don’t want to head out to hunt and find that it blew away. Plus, the more wind flap you can eliminate, the less attention animals will pay it.
Brushing it in, which will be detailed in tip number four, isn’t a necessity when you’re giving animals ample time to accept it. Oftentimes, the reason a blind is placed early is that the hunting location has no place to truly hide it. So, putting it out early is how deer get used to it. If there is an opportunity to brush it in, all the better, but it isn’t totally necessary.
4. Brush It In and Then Brush It In Some More
Now, when you’re setting a blind and hunting it the same day, you must go to great lengths to brush it in to the point that it’s practically invisible. Deer easily spot new fixtures in their living quarters, so it cannot stand out, or else deer will have your number the instant they appear.
Begin with a backdrop. Anything from a huge tree trunk to a dirt berm to a deadfall can provide a nice backdrop. From there, assess the setting and try to utilize both vertical and horizontal cover to brush it in. You have to disrupt the outline, especially the roof and outer walls. Not many natural land features have an outline with such straight edges as a ground blind, which is why deer so readily notice it when not brushed in properly. If the blind’s camo pattern isn’t quite blending in with the cover you’re adding, keep adding more until you can hardly notice it.
Of course, this will require time, commotion and walking around the area. In other words, this could disrupt your hunt if you get careless with where you walk and/or how loud you are. If you walk across deer trails and tromp around too loudly, you could be in for a no-deer hunt. So, walk with care and douse the brush you’ve touched and places you walked with a scent-eliminating spray.
There are times when you don’t need to brush in a blind conventionally. Look for opportunities to hide your blind in plain sight by parking it against a barn, silo, haystack, farm implements, abandoned home or a scrap-metal heap. This can be very effective.
5. Use a Decoy
When you want to hunt from your ground blind the same day you set it up but the area has little to no cover to hide the blind, you can often get away with it by setting a decoy upwind of the blind. Animals will typically focus on the decoy and not so much on the blind. If you can fool them into believing that the decoy is a real animal, they’ll develop confidence in approaching your blind because, in their mind, another animal has already assessed and accepted it.
6. Hunt Treeless Areas
The biggest advantage of hunting from a ground blind is that you can hunt places you can’t with a treestand. Think brushy thickets, cattails sloughs or even the middle of a hayfield littered with round bales. This is especially beneficial when hunting public-land whitetails because very few other hunters will be in such areas due to a simple lack of trees to put a stand in. You might have the location entirely to yourself.
That’s a Wrap!
Ground-blind hunting has its advantages, but even simple oversights can alter your hunt’s outcome. So, when you find that next deer-littered hotspot, be sure not to just go buy a blind and pop it up next to a tree. Follow the six tips outlined herein, and you’ll increase your odds of success.
I would add that wearing black clothing (including a face covering) while hunting from the blind helps you to blend in and avoid drawing attention to your presence (or movement for that matter) while in the blind. Also, using fleece clothing helps muffle any noise you may create as you shift from sitting to drawing your bow.