Growing up on what I consider the edge of northern Wisconsin, with U.S. Highway 8 running through my hometown, the big woods has always had a special appeal to me. Sure, I was about a 20-minute drive from the northern forest, but the smaller woodlots and timber-lined rivers and creeks around Barron served as a fine training ground, until I turned 16.
It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about paying my way through college by trapping the small beaver ponds pocking the big timber, or striving and often failing at trying to find deer, the big woods has always had a truly special appeal to me since childhood, while being one of the ultimate deer-hunting challenges there is.
What follows is how I learned to take seemingly endless miles of timber and help make it hunt much smaller.
CONCENTRATION EFFECT
One of the first things I was able to learn about the big woods is that it’s big. I know that sounds obvious, but, all else being equal, it’s way easier to find your keys when you know they are somewhere in the house than when they could be anywhere you’ve been in the last month. Well,
