It took me fourteen years to finally hunt out of state, but when I finally took the plunge, I went hard. I chased whitetails on public land in the big woods of Wisconsin and the badlands of North Dakota, and it was painfully obvious that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
What I thought would be a fun and challenging adventure quickly turned into a therapy session I didn’t sign up for. Hunting out of state pushed me out of my comfort zone, highlighted my weaknesses, and forced me to adapt as a hunter.
Ok, maybe I don’t know a lot about therapy. But I do know I returned to my little house on the prairie a better deer hunter than when I left. I learned a lot of tough lessons once I cut my own deer hunting umbilical cord. Here are a few of those lessons.
Same Deer, Different Tactics
Whitetails have the same life requirements no matter where they live, but the availability of each resource varies across their range. Between agriculture and oak trees, my hometown Kansas whitetails are pretty well-fed—even on public land. Destination food sources are ubiquitous on the landscape, so I tend to focus on more limited deer necessities, such as water and cover.
The big woods were a shock to my system. It was the opposite of what I normally hunted. There was nothing but water and cover, while food was limited. By sheer luck, I stumbled onto a small cluster of red oaks and laced a small buck that came to snack on them the following morning. I had a similar experience in the badlands, when the spot I e-scouted happened to have a fresh burn full of bright green shoots in the middle of it, and every deer in the valley knew that too.
In Kansas, neither food source would’ve generated that much deer activity. I had to recognize that while I was hunting the same species, their needs were different in this situation. This is a critical aspect of the game that a lot of hunters don’t understand the first time they shell out hundreds for a nonresident tag. Your home-state playbook might not travel well. You might have to make changes on the fly.
Keep Your Sh*t Together
Forgetting a crucial piece of gear behind is always a pain, but it’s not the end of the world when you’re hunting your own backyard. Leave your bow release on the kitchen counter, and you can probably run home to get it and still make it to your stand in time for a worthwhile hunt. If not, there’s always next weekend.
Make that same mistake on the road, and you have a real problem. Especially if you’re hunting in a remote area where you can’t find a quick replacement. You might only have a few sits to work with on an out-of-state hunt, so the implications are a lot worse if you tank one by forgetting, misplacing, or breaking something important.
No one wants to admit that they’re unorganized, but as I sat two miles in on a North Dakota riverbank and tore apart my backpack in search of my haul line, there was no more denying the truth. Organization was a huge hole in my game that I needed to address. If I wanted to find success, I’d have to organize my gear.
Enjoy the Highs and Lows
It’s easy to lose yourself in the pursuit of America’s favorite big game animal, especially on an out-of-state hunt with limited time. Maybe you finally drew a coveted Iowa archery tag, and the pressure to fill it with a giant is almost unbearable. But travelling to hunt has so much more value than just another mount on the wall.
I was stressed to the max as I crossed the halfway point of my North Dakota hunting trip. I had yet to let an arrow fly, and it wasn’t until I took the best nap of my life on a rocky riverbank with an unbelievable backdrop that I considered myself lucky. I left the next day without a deer, but I didn’t leave empty-handed. I had some incredible encounters with public land deer, honed my skills as a mobile hunter, and knew, without a doubt, that I would return next year.
Nonresident opportunities are getting more limited each season. That’s all the more reason to take a step back and appreciate every chance you get to hunt whitetails, no matter where they roam.
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