PUBLIC LAND REALITY
During an early November Saturday morning hunt in Michigan, I entered some high ground in a tamarack swamp and was perched in my saddle about an hour- and a-half before dawn. Time in the pitch-black morning darkness always calms me and allows time to think and evaluate life and the remainder of the season.
There was a specific purpose for my more-than-two-hour-before daybreak entry: to be on stand well before any mature deer transitioned from the crop fields across the road and into the swamp bedding area before daybreak, which is the norm in heavily pressured areas.
The entry walk to that location was just less than a half-mile, and because the foliage was down and I was on high ground, I would be able to see a long distance after dawn broke.
This was public land, however, and just before light, I heard several vehicles on the surrounding dirt roads and was dismayed when two parked along the road from which I’d entered. When the vehicles stopped, I immediately heard deer running toward me through the timber, and within a couple of minutes, they were splashing into the swamp. A couple traveled directly under me.
By the time the hunters got out of their vehicles, with their overly bright headlamps shining, the deer were well beyond their hearing distance, so the hunters had no clue they had just spooked the
