Hunting Northwoods Bucks | Exclusive Interview with Steve Heiting
Category: article
Aug 20th, 2014 by OutdoorsFIRST
Modified Nov 21st, 2018 at 4:05 PM
Managing Editor of OFM’s WhitetailFIRST, Sam Ubl, conducts an exclusive interview with Steve Heiting, who is the Managing Editor of Musky Hunter magazine and author of the book, Hunting Northwoods Bucks. Read along as they explore some depth into several topics that were touched on in Steve’s new book, and some that were not. Steve Heiting reveals great insight built by his own personal experiences hunting deer in the Northwoods.
WhitetailFIRST: You preface your new book, Hunting Northwoods Bucks, with a common conflict of interests that many sportsmen and women face – the decision to climb into a boat or up a tree in the fall. How do you balance work in the office, home life and the arduous decision of spending your free time on the water or in the deer woods?
Steve Heiting: Working full-time for Musky Hunter magazine, most of my fishing, unless I’m on a trip to some destination during the summer, is going to be in the evening. Once fall hits, a lot of my fishing drops off because it gets dark quickly, and while you can certainly catch fish in the dark at that time, generally the windows are so short at that point I don’t find myself pursuing muskies as heavily in the fall as I do in the summer. Being on Ranger’s Pro-Staff, a lot of people think we’re given our boats, but that’s not the case. We buy and sell our boats every year, and it really helps me to move the boat if I can sell it at a time when the buyer can have a month or so to fish with it, usually early October. After that, if I’m motivated to get on the water I can call a handful of friends in the area and hop into one of their boats if they have room if, but this really opens the door for me to dedicate my free time elsewhere, too. I think most importantly, my wife and I have two wonderful grandson’s, ages 6 and 8, that we like to spend a lot of time with, so on the weekends we’ll typically soak up as much time with them as we can, but when I do have free time in the fall, I absolutely love being in the woods.
WhitetailFIRST: In one of the earlier chapters, “Finding the Perfect Deer Stand”, you make honest mention of the intimidation factor the big woods can have on someone. Miles of contiguous acreage naturally landscaped by towering pines, glowing yellow birch and dense tamarack swamps can certainly have adverse effects on even the sharpest and direction-minded individuals. Have you ever been lost?
Steve Heiting: Yes, in fact, just a couple of years ago. My cell phone now has a compass and mapping capabilities, but if you don’t have a compass with you then you’re asking to get lost if the situation inherits it. I was lost for about 10-minutes where I thought, ‘uh-oh, this isn’t going to be good’. I was in deer camp the week prior to the season opening up with the rest of the guys prepping firewood and cleaning up the shack as we do every year. As the guys were heading out, I said I was going to hold back to check on a stand I’d be sitting to make sure the ladder was still secure to the tree. It had been raining all day, so I was damp and wet from the weather after trekking the two miles back to the stand, but figured I’d take a quick look around to see what kind of deer sign was around. With the drizzle and low ceiling blocking the sun, a lot of my surroundings in the swamp I was in began looking the same. I didn’t have my cell phone on me, I didn’t have a compass, my buddies were all gone by this point and being lost and wet, you know, it was quickly becoming one of those situations where I could be in trouble. I took a deep breath, looked around for a moment to settle down, and recognized a treeline that was hard to make out due to the low ceiling, so in a hundred yards I was back on course. There was that moment of self-doubt, though, but it was completely my fault.
WhitetailFIRST: It’s not uncommon to count 20-30 deer along the roadways between one town and the next in Northern Wisconsin, and at times it can be downright dangerous driving with deer crossing the roads so frequently. To some, the sheer number of deer seen along those roadways may provoke a sense of a booming deer heard in the northern part of the state. Is this a misconception? If so, what is the reality one mile deeper into the woods off those very roadways and beyond?
Steve Heiting: I think it’s a misconception. There are several things going on here that bring those deer out into the open like that. The Northwoods are typically pretty mature and dense so much of the browse deer will feed on exists in logging clear-cuts and those open areas along the roads. There are lots of flowers, grass, weeds and whatever else the deer could really want to eat along the roads, but the openings also afford them the opportunity to get out of the woods when the mosquitos and biting flies are bad. A lot of people up here feed deer in their backyards, so the deer will typically travel along the roads from one yard to the next, as well. So the deer that are around do tend to be more visible for all of those reasons I’ve mentioned, which of course can leave people driving by with a false impression of how many deer there really are. Where I live in Vilas County, there are more areas where you could walk a couple of miles in the woods and not cut a single deer track.
WhitetailFIRST: Does it make sense for hunters to key in on areas along the roads?
Steve Heiting: Yes and no. If you’re hunting along the roads you will see more deer, there’s no question about that, but you also have a greater opportunity for someone to interfere with your hunt, as well. If there’s a big buck in August going across the road and feeding along the edges, there will be half-dozen vehicles driving back and forth every evening looking for it and paying attention to it because it’s so visible. There’s going to be competition from other hunters when the season opens up in those instances, and sometimes it’s a combination of too much attention on that buck that might drive him away from those visible areas, too. I think if you just want to kill a doe or a don’t mind taking a small buck, then hunting along the roads or areas near houses so long as you’ve got land available for you to hunt, then I think you’ve got a real good shot at getting it done. I think if you want to kill a good buck then you might have to get in a little deeper.
WhitetailFIRST: Deer in the Northwoods are nomadic by nature due to the lack of abundant agricultural food sources, the same food sources that many hunters in the farmlands rely on heavily to pattern deer. Your book reveals favorable browse the deer feed on in the Northwoods, such as acorns, otherwise young Popple trees and Willows in clear cuts, yet you go further to say that you do not frequently make a decision on where to sit based on food sources because although the deer do have their preferences, they will eat just about anything. Is it unpractical for hunters to dial into feeding patterns in the Northwoods?
Steve Heiting: I think you need to be near a food source, but to actually hunt a food source is very difficult. There are times when the deer will prefer the acorns of a certain oak tree, as opposed to others, but why that is only known to the deer. When there’s a huge acorn crop then you have to hunt the oaks, otherwise you’re going to spend a lot of time looking at nothing. But when you don’t have a healthy acorn crop, which is more often than not, you need to be by low browse, like DNR clear cuts. If the DNR or contractor for the DNR clear cuts a 40-acre area, where is that deer going to show up? He could show up anywhere in that 40-acres because there’s lots of food there. What I’m looking for is how that deer is going to get to that food source. In a way, it’s really similar to hunting an agricultural crop, the only real difference is that while you can usually shoot into a field of beans or alfalfa, for example, the brush of a clear cut area is typically too much cover to shoot into so you have to key in on areas that will cut the deer off before they ever reach that food source. I’m looking for funnels coming from a suspected bedding area to the feeding area.
WhitetailFIRST: With miles and miles of state land available to the public for hunting, one would think encounters with other hunters would be far and few between. Many hunting parties execute deer drives as a primary approach to harvesting deer during the gun season. Public land is just that – public, however, inevitably there are some who feel their toes have been stepped on by large parties conducting drives while they sit in wait. What have been your experiences while executing drives on public land – positives and negatives?
Steve Heiting: When we make our drives, it’s more of the less a still hunting drive with maybe two or three pushers and a couple standers. We go in quietly and come out quietly, in fact, in many cases our standers will shoot a deer sneaking into their positions before the actual drive even begins, so we’re not in there banging pans or yelling when we’re moving through. If we encounter someone else, we aren’t out there to ruin their hunt, we’re just sneaking through. The same goes for others who cross our path coincidentally. There’s a lot of land up here but it’s not unbroken, it does get hunted, and being public land we all have to realize that we have to share it because it’s open to everybody, so it doesn’t pay to get mad about encountering other hunters.
WhitetailFIRST: What is the culture of deer camps on National Forest Lands and State Lands in the big woods of the north during the 9-day firearms season?
Steve Heiting: There are so many places to camp, and there are a lot of small private parcels surrounded by public where people have cabins or park a camper for the gun season. On the public, everyone kind of stays in their own areas to hunt and there’s a lot of shared respect between deer camps because so many of them have been coming back to the same spots for years and years. It’s public land, so there are no lines, but typically neighboring camps will give each other their own space. Our situation is a cabin situated on a 15-acre private parcel, but we have 100 non-contiguous private acres available to us to hunt with easements crossing other private acres, but it works both ways and no one gets upset with it. If a neighbor needs permission to cross our land to get a deer, then they can do that and the same goes for when we may need to cross into their land to retrieve a deer. It’s a great situation.
WhitetailFIRST: Much of Wisconsin has controlled baiting regulations permitting the use of bait for hunting deer, a controversial topic that seems to never go away. Studies have shown that the majority of hunters, both advocates and those strongly against it, believe baiting offers an unfair advantage to those who practice it. Other studies have offered insight to disturbing negative effects that baiting can have on deer, primarily disease-related. Some believe baiting alters a deer’s pattern for the worse, suggesting nocturnal movement as a result, while others feel just the opposite. You didn’t mention anything in your book about baiting, so what is your position on the topic?
Steve Heiting: I didn’t touch on baiting in the book because what if Wisconsin bans it next year – then the whole chapter becomes moot and I figure since it doesn’t affect the way I hunt, such as in selecting a stand location, then it’s an irrelevant topic for the book. I’ve killed deer over bait in the past, it’s not my preference, but I have. That said, there’s times and places where placing bait may very well be your best or potentially only shot at seeing deer. If you hunt in Canada, if you don’t bait then you really have little chance at killing one because there’s maybe one deer per square mile, maybe two. If you watch any hunting show that goes north, nearly every Whitetail killed on film up there is shot over bait. Overall, it doesn’t affect the way I hunt, and if it becomes moot, than I won’t be affected, either. My opinion is that baiting does not make deer nocturnal. If it did, no one would kill deer in Canada, which is the main tool of many of those outfitters up there. Here in Northern Wisconsin, what I do see happening are guys who are constantly going in and out of the woods to refresh their small 2-gallon bait sites and check their cameras in the weeks, or days, leading up to the gun season. Don’t think for a minute that those guys sneaking in and out aren’t affecting the deer movement. I believe the first sit or two of a new stand is a hunter’s best shot at killing a mature animal before the buck wises up to the hunters presence and alters his route. The same goes in the instance of re-visiting baiting sites someone intends to hunt over, the more you visit that site, the more of your presence you’re leaving in the woods. This affects other hunters who stay out of the woods for that very reason, too, especially on public land, so if Wisconsin was to ban baiting all together than I’d have no problem with it.
WhitetailFIRST: Towards the end of your book you bring up a topic that truly has become one of the biggest concerns swirling amongst deer hunters in northern Wisconsin – the effect of wolf predation on the deer herd. In a state where tradition of the 9-day gun deer season runs deep, this topic bears a heavy burden on civil conversations between those with varying opinions. What has been your experience with wolves and how has it affected your success? Have you had encounters? Should hunters worry for their safety when hunting in areas inhabited by wolves?
Steve Heiting: When wolf presence is in the area your hunting, it can really shut down the deer activity, which can be very frustrating. A couple of years ago, the seven days I hunted at deer camp, two of the days were affected by wolves; they were in our area. If you don’t see their tracks, their droppings, or hear their howling, then it’s safe to assume their elsewhere and hopefully won’t ruin your hunt.
I think we should have wolves in the woods. Nature put them there, and there was a reason for that, and I’m not going to argue with nature, however, there’s a limit to what we can tolerate. I really bristle when people in areas lacking a wolf population, who don’t have wolves in their backyard, lobby that those of us here in the Northwoods should have wolves in our backyards. When your neighbors can’t walk their dogs without the possibility of having their dog run back to them with a wolf on its tail, well, then that’s not a good thing. So far as my own interactions with them, usually when I see them they take off running the other way. That said, I do most times when I’m heading further than a half-mile into the woods I’ll carry a .38 on my hip because I have been shadowed by wolves, and while I don’t think they were hunting me, it’s a little unsettling when you’ve got them following along with you; It makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.
I think we should have wolves, but I don’t think we should have the number of them in the woods that we currently have. I don’t believe the state should consider increasing the goal for the wolf population just because people are lobbying for it, especially people who don’t have wolves in their own backyards. This isn’t unbroken timber up here; people do live here and have to live with them, which is where the resentment comes from. When people feel like they need to take matters into their own hands out of frustration, well, that’s not right.