Deer Hunting Forums banner

New huntress from VA!

7K views 24 replies 11 participants last post by  Scorpion8 
#1 ·
Hello everyone! New to the site here, I like what I see so far! :) Anywho, I'm 23, from central VA. Last year was my first year as a deer hunter; harvested a single button buck in King William county, VA with a shotgun, and I've been addicted ever since! My boyfriend bought me my first bow this month, and I'm hopin to get good enough with it to hunt the upcoming archery season here in VA. My aim here is to connect with other female hunters and to also hear other hunters' stories and to take any piece off advice I can get (males or females, I don't discriminate!). Hope to make some awesome friends on here soon! :D
 
#4 ·
welcome to the club !! from KY,

bow hunting is the best !! but it takes practice, practice, practice, but dont over do it either. stop if arms are fatiged at all. it takes time to build the muscles up. as far as bow hunting i sugest to people to look at shooting half the distance of the poundage of your bow seems to me to be just about perfect. ( meaning if your pulling a 40 lbs daw bow only take clean hunting shots under 20 yards, 50 lbs = 25 yards or less, 60 lbs= 30 yards or less and so on.
 
#5 ·
I'm feeling very welcome here :) and thanks for that bow advice. Im having a blast with archery! Right now as a newbie I'm pulling about 45lbs on my Parker Sidekick, and I've got it pretty accurate at 20 yards. 30 and 40 still need some work, but when it comes to the field in October, I probably won't attempt any shots beyond 30 or so. We'll see what happens! What kind of bows do you guys shoot?
 
#12 ·
Thanks everyone!

And I've heard great things about all those bows. My boyfriend shoots a Mathews Heli-M, and he has a hard time putting that thing down when we get to the range, haha. We also have a friend that shoots the Z-7, but he says both the Heli-M and the Z-7 are so much alike, he loves both of them.

I'm happy with my little wimpy girly bow :) :) :)
 
#13 ·
Greetings from VA! I'm actually from Rockingham County in Western VA. Right around Harrisonburg. I've seen several women become deerslaying machines with those Parker Sidekicks. Hell, my friend's girlfriend has a pink one and shot more deer than I did last year. Good to see a fella bringin' his woman into the sport. Let me know if you 2 ever get interested in hunting up this way. Be it public or private land, me and my friends (we're also 23 and 24) turn my house into a practical deer camp for 90 days a year :) glad to see some other people from VA on here. Thought I might've been the only one. lol
 
#15 ·
Virginian's united indeed. I actually have family that lives in Goochland, and I lived in the West End of Richmond for a few years after high school. I've been coming down every season for a bowhunt and for the 3 days after Christmas for shotgun season, and I've killed exactly one deer down there in my life. The dogs never run the deer my way. The one I killed was a decent 8pt with my bow, and i was just trying to figure out where I was on the lease. lol. But yeah the hunting up here is definitely different but I scout hard to try and figure out where the bigger deer are. Idk if you'd heard about the decline in the deer kill up here but its gotten rough. That being said, I only hunt with my bow around here. My friend and I video all our stuff and try to put dvds together and whatnot. Anyways, I'm rambling. I could bs about hunting for days. Good luck on your endeavors and let me know if I can be of any assistance!
 
#16 ·
I haven't heard of any declines, but I can tell you for sure that I haven't been seeing many deer around this way like I used to...ya know...BEFORE I started hunting! lol It seems like as soon as I pick up a shotgun they go extinct immediately. It's ridiculous! Hopefully this year will bring more backstraps and hindquarters for the freezer.
That's awesome that you record for DVD's, have you submitted anything to any producers? What do you use to film? My boyfriend wants one of those things that mounts to your shotgun barrel and films from there. IDK, boy toys I guess lol...if I recorded myself attempting to shoot anything, I'd be embarrassed to watch it lmao!
 
#17 ·
when it seems like the Deer have all left the areas, think back on what we've done and how we did it.
Many times the reason we don't see as much wildlife as we used to is because we've become
very typical and predictable in how we hunt or scout our hunting spots, by that I mean
we tend to enter the woods from the same locations every time and walk the same trails every time
and stop to investigate all the typical spots and before we know it the Deer have patterned us.
They know where we come in and where we'll be going when we arrive.
Most times all we need to do to correct it is to give the area a break for a month or two depending on how long we've continued our typical patterns.
We're only human, the things we do when we scout/hunt are very natural and common practices,
It's easy to become relaxed enough to allow it to happen, I bet it happens to all of us from time to time.
This is all a part of learning.
Good Luck
 
#19 ·
Another Extremely Valuable tip for anyone is one I've come to rely heavily on now and that is the ability to use "Googe Earth" as a scouting tool as well as putting in the actual ground work for my hunts.
If you haven't ever used Google Earth, click the link and download it to give it a try, Im sure you'll be very happy you did.
Good Luck


here's an example of a Google Earth Aerial Image of the spot where I'll be hunting this year.
You can see how it can be helpful locating things like open fields, ponds, lakes, streams, food sources like cornfields, beanfields, etc. etc. etc. You always have the ability to zoom in a lot closer or zoom out for a much braoder view.
Good Luck.

 
#20 ·
Ms. Charmer, We each have a Panasonic HD palmcorder with 42x zoom. Usually we mount one to the tree pointing at the shooter the whole time, and one above the cameraman pointing down to get both of us. Our main camera is a Canon SLR something or another that we got used for like 1k. we havent submitted anything yet. We're documenting 3 full deer and turkey seasons and then putting that together. I just feel like, as a producer, I'd be way more impressed if someone sent me footage of them knocking down big bucks year after year as opposed to a couple of fluke bucks. I actually got me shooting a 152" 10 pointer with my bow on public land on film last november. By myself. It's tough stuff but itsss sooooooooo worth it.
 
#21 ·
Bruce, we have actually used Google Earth before, marking our tree stands and camera locations, it is definitely an edge we hunters have now, VERY thankful for it!
Mike, thats awesome, sounds like a good thing you got goin' there. You got anything on YouTube or are you keeping it private for now? :)
 
#23 ·
haha. its still private. to be perfectly honest, we layed the smack down on turkeys this spring, but a lot of it was on the palm corder which has auto focus and doesnt always focus on what you want it to. Well there's that, and neither of us can figure out the editing software very well. we thought we had, but when we put it on dvd, it was all twitchy. Idk. We are most definitely not computer people. lol.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top