By Alex Comstock
Have you ever wondered how many hours you might spend afield during a calendar year pursuing whitetails? Between winter scouting, shed hunting, hanging stands, glassing, checking trail cameras, and actually hunting, A LOT of time is spent preparing and chasing whitetails. This past year, I decided to document every hour I spent in the field and wanted to share that with you today.
The hours that I kept track of was only time actually spent in the field doing anything deer hunting related. I didn't track time spent looking at maps, reading, writing, or anything like that. Just time spent in the field. How do you think your amount of time spent in a year would compare to me?
I broke down my hours into a few different categories such as scouting, shed hunting, checking trail cameras, and hunting. Any time spent on hanging stands, taking stands down, or glassing I roped into the scouting category. One thing that I didn't keep track of which I will this year is how much time I spent shooting my bow. With that said, here's what I ended up with.
Scouting: 68 hours
Shed Hunting: 40 hours
Trail Camera Work: 49 hours
Hunting: 203 hours
Total Time Spent in the Field in 2017: 360 hours
Conclusion: Looking at how many hours I spent chasing whitetails this year, and reflecting on how my season went, there is one glaring problem to me. If you look at the number of hours spent scouting compared to hunting, I think they need to be more equal. One of my major goals for 2018 is to spend more time scouting. The numbers can be a little misleading given the fact that the whole time spent scouting is vital, while time spent hunting there is a lot of time where you get to the stand early waiting for the time where deer should be more apt to move. Even with all of that said, if I can spend more time scouting in the next year, I think it will pay huge dividends in my success level.
What's one thing you'd like to spend more time doing in the next year? Let me know in the comments!
