There are plenty of ways you can use the summer months to prep for hunting season. Don’t let the off season throw you off your game. Check out the five tips below and learn what you can do now to help make next hunting season the most successful one yet.

Practice Archery

If you’re a bowhunter, take the off season to practice your archery form and technique. It’s important to keep your skills sharp during the summer months so that you can go into hunting season ready to go. You don’t want to let your technique get rusty during the off season. That will only make it harder to brush the dust off and get back into hunting shape in the fall. You don’t want to have to spend the first few days of hunting season retraining your body and making poor shots.

Set Up Your Stump Blind

Now is the time to set up your Stump blind in your chosen hunting location. Placing your blind during the summer months gives the deer enough time to get used to the structure and gives you plenty of time to practice from it before hunting season begins. Try to practice your shots from the blind. Set up 3D targets outside your blind at realistic distances and practice at various angles. Try practicing from each of the windows in the Stump blind so that you’re comfortable switching windows mid-hunt when the time comes. The Stump 4 ‘Limited Edition 360°’ has eight windows, so you’ll have plenty of options to choose from.

Clear Some Paths

Take a walk around your property and clear any walking paths that have become overgrown. Only trim what’s necessary to make the path safe for you to walk around. You want to clear enough that you won’t be stepping on branches and leaves and making all kinds of noise, but not so much that the deer feel exposed when they’re walking along the same path. Leave plenty of overgrown shrubs and bushes for the deer herd to use as bedding areas.

Start Feeding Your Herd

If you haven’t started putting out feed for the deer herd, now is the time to do it. A deer’s digestive system can’t handle changes in food when the weather turns colder, so you need to set them up with a steady diet now so that their bodies have time to process and get used to the food source. Our Feedbank Gravity Deer Feeders are very easily moved, so you can switch up the location of the feeder throughout the summer until you find a spot that works for you. The feeders are set on a single post, so pulling up and moving the feeder is no hassle.

Create Your Water Source

Now is also the time to establish a water source on your property. If you have the trifecta of a bedding area, food source and water source on your property, the deer herd will likely gravitate to your property all year. Our Wild Water® 300 can hold 300 gallons of water and refills the trough automatically when the valves sense that the trough is empty. This means that you can spend less time refilling the tank and more time focusing on your other prep work. Going to the water source less often also means there’s less of your scent for the deer herd to pick up on.

What activities are you taking part in now to ensure a successful fall hunting season? Let us know your tips and tricks in the comments below!

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