Editor’s Note: Using a black magic marker and a gray work jumpsuit, Jim Crumley of Buchanan, Virginia, drastically changed the nature and purpose of camouflage when he created the first sportsman’s camouflage – Trebark. Crumley’s idea that vertical patterns best represented objects in the forest and created an illusion of a tree stump or the trunk of a tree brought into being a new term, “sportsman’s camouflage.” Crumley has been in love with bowhunting deer all his life.

When finding a tree in a clear-cut to hang a tree stand on or to lean a ladder stand against is impossible, I’ll use a tripod stand. Tripods usually are the preferred stands for hunting the arid, desert states like Texas where you set-up a tripod on the edge of a fence line with no trees anywhere and can watch 200 – 500 yards in all directions.

If you hunt in the East where the brush and the trees generally are more-dense, in many places you can’t see very far. Therefore, tripod tree stand hunting hasn’t been very popular. But as timber-management practices in the eastern U.S. have evolved more toward creating clear-cuts, I believe that a tripod set-up in a clear-cut gives the bowhunter the opportunity to pinpoint and bag the older-age-class bucks using these thick-cover spots. You can carry a tripod into the center of a clear-cut, set the tripod up and cut your path through the clear-cut, being careful not to cut any of the young pines.

Rather than leaving the tripod standing in the clearing and looking like a telephone pole, I put brush up around it to camouflage it somewhat. You can walk into the clear-cut to your stand without making much noise. Be sure the path is wide enough to keep your pants’ legs and equipment from brushing up against bushes as you go to your tree stand. Also consider wearing rubber waders when you move to your stand. The waders encapsulate the leg and prevent human odor from escaping. Too, you can cut shooting lanes from the tripod stand through the clear-cut to help you be more accurate with your bow. But do this at least a month prior to bow season opening.

Using this system, you’ll often find and take plenty of deer you otherwise may not see. However, utilize this tactic only on private or leased land. Otherwise, hunters not as careful as you, may go to your tripod on a bad wind or in tennis shoes or boots, leave their human odor all along the trail to the tripod and have their human odor blown from the tripod into the clear-cut. Employ this technique only when you can control the access to the land and hunt where you can leave your tripod up without fear of someone else hunting from it or taking it.

To learn more about hunting for deer, check out John E. Phillips’ book, “PhD Whitetails: How to Hunt and Take the Smartest Deer on Any Property,” available in Kindle and print at http://amzn.to/WIEUoo and Audible at https://www.audible.com/. You may have to copy and paste this link into your browser. (When you click on this book, notice on the left where Amazon says you can read 10% of the book for free and hear 10% for free). On the right side of the page and below the offer for a free Audible trial, you can click on Buy the Audible book. To see more of John’s deer hunting books, visit www.amazon.com/author/johnephillips.

Tomorrow: Jim Crumley – Ground Blinds for Deer