Mathias Outdoors

Hi folks, we’re at it again. I’m heading out to an area to start scouting out where to put an outdoor base camp near to an area I am planning to do some hunting next spring and hopefully next fall as well.

My goal will be to find a spot I feel may be a decent area for a base camp & I’ll hopefully be using for hunting purposes in the future. I will also be doing some more video blogs and gear reviews in the future possibly, so I need to be specific and extremely selective of the exact location to this camp. My future targeted species for hunting the area will be Turkey, and deer.

For turkey I’m not too concerned. Although turkeys have a keen sense of sight, they do not have a very good sense of smell so for Turkey, as long as I’m a few hundred yards away from my hunting spot I’m sure it would be just fine. The area I selected to set up for a lunch was only about 1/4 KM away from an open grassy field on the edge of the Forrest.

As for the deer, not only do they have an incredible sense of vision but their main defence is that they have an incredible sniffer, even considerably greater than that of a bloodhound.

It’s impossible as a human to know exactly what it’s like to be able to sense even a slight smell only 10 to 15 feet away but deer can smell a human up to a half mile away if the conditions are right, and not only that but they can also detect a human scent up to 10 days(ish) after that human has left the area. (According to studies). This incredible sense of smell is what makes hunting deer so hard and what keeps the population thrive by avoiding so many hunters and other predators.

Ok so that said. Why on earth would I want to risk putting my scent somewhat close to the area I plan on hunting? Well let me tell you. I believe most good hunters put up their blinds and go to their hunting grounds several weeks ahead of time to bait it and to set up their grounds they wish to hunt usually weeks to even a couple months before hunting season begins each year. They do this for several reasons which is no different to why I’m starting now. They do this in order to get the deer used to their presence and all the smells they will be carrying in with them when it’s go time.

So for me, if I go in now and start a base camp near my potential hunting grounds ( hopefully a few hundred yards away) then my scent will be well known to the local deer when the time comes to be in my stand or blind. And hopefully I won’t be spooking them too much.

Ok moving on. Time to go play in the woods lol.

I’m heading out in search of tracks and obvious well travelled deer tracks, I’m going in alone this morning and Erin and our son will be joining us for a small lunch later in the day.

Because I have not yet been to this location I needed some extra time to scout a decent area, look for well travelled deer tracks, gather some fire wood, clear a decent spot from any brush and because although the weather was warm, (-1 degrees out) it was also slightly raining and wet. Therefore I also needed to put up a tarp so when Erin and Caspian arrived they would be covered from the rain.

Obviously Since it was not just me I needed to worry about today, and I was on a bit of a time crunch I decided to bring a few extra items in with me to help me out. (You will see the items I use today in the video Below.

It’s January the 9th right now and we’ve had a stretch of cold weather around -18 or -24 with the windchill over the past few nights, but we seem to have this small break where it shouldn’t be colder then -5 or so, and I was fortunate the weather stayed around the -1 degree mark. Since we have not had much snow yet this winter I figure it’s as good a time as any to get in the outdoors and have some fun, besides I may not get another opportunity with the mild weather again this winter to do the scouting I wanted.

Extra items I’m bringing today are

An Axe (large size) to assist in shelter building if I get the chance to start one?. (I didn’t) and, a medium size hacksaw to speed up the process of gathering and processing fire wood for our lunch, And a tarp for cover from the rain The rest of the items in my pack are what I would normally bring with me. Oh also I brought some additional cordage, approximately twice my regular amount I bring on a bush hike.

I know for many bush-crafters and outdoor survivalists, they will give me flack for not taking the time to build my tools in the bush to make my shelters or other such items like chairs or benches, and sure, I could do that but this is not a survival situation, I am out here for a purpose and have limited time to get my outdoor activities done. In this particular case I have exactly 1 day lol. Otherwise I have a little man at home that requires almost all my/our time and energy. I’m lucky I have a partner willing to put up with my hobbies and gives me the time to get out and do these things, not to mention joins me in them much of the time as well.

I hope you enjoy this 10 minute video of my/our day in the woods

PS.

So I also wanted to share that the spot we had lunch at today is not going to be where I set up a base camp in the future. The reason for this is because there was so much sign of deer activity right where we were that I decided that in the spring I will be making that spot where I set up my tree stand.

It was located at a T junction between 2 very active deer trails and one of the trees was exactly 15 yards away from either trail and was also extremely well hidden from surrounding vegetation with a clear field of view making it maybe one of the most promising hunting locations Ive ever come across. So next time out I’ll be looking for a good spot for a base camp well away from where we happen to be today Lol

I hope you’ve enjoyed following me/us on another outdoor adventure. Please comment below and subscribe to my YouTube channel (if you feel so inclined)