Photo by Mike Biggs

Change frightens most people. The fear is probably linked to fear of the unknown. If we don't know what is around the corner, we may not want to go there.

Change, however, can be a good thing. It is often said that if things are not changing, then people are not thinking. Creative people think, and the result is often a better way of doing something.

This reasoning can be applied to deer hunting. Many deer hunters, unfortunately, get stuck in a rut, no pun intended. For example, they often wear the same camouflage, shoot the same type of bullet, park their truck in the same place, walk the same way to a particular tree stand and always hunt the same one or two stands.

Think about it for a moment. You know whom I am talking about. It is you and me and the majority of other deer hunters. We are like a bunch of cows walking a path across a snow-covered field, single-file and each doing the same thing and never straying out of bounds.

But conditions change, and if we don't adapt, we probably will not be successful on that particular hunt.

Your usual route to a tree stand might work when the wind is blowing from the northwest because it carries your scent away from a bedding area. However, if the wind is coming from the southeast on this particular hunt, the deer will know you're there, divert their routine and you won't see anything.

If you hunt the same way or same few stands all of the time, eventually the odds will favor you once in a while and you will get a crack at a nice buck. There is nothing wrong with doing or using the same thing. If something works, stick with it. However, we have all heard the stories of a particular deer hunter who is notorious for sitting in oddball places, like a small wooded graveyard at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, and routinely kills trophy bucks.

It is not luck. It is called thinking outside of the box, which is nothing more than being creative and changing things on occasion.

The same philosophy can be applied to draw deer hunts held on the state's wildlife management areas (WMAs). They can be operated the same way season after season or wildlife biologists can continue to evaluate what they are doing and determine if there is room for improvement.

Remember, change can be a good thing and many of the state's WMAs have changed. Fortunately, the changes have benefited hunters and the deer herd and made hunts operate more efficiently for the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR).

Here's a rundown of some great draw deer hunts and a discussion of the changes that have made these hunts better.

FANT'S GROVE WMA
Perennially a bowhunting-only area for a number of seasons, changes were made at Fant's Grove WMA a few seasons ago to provide more hunter opportunities and to improve the deer herd.

The 7,000-acre Fant's Grove WMA lies in the upper Piedmont of South Carolina, just outside of Clemson, in Oconee, Pickens and Anderson counties. An archery season is typically held on the area from mid-October to early December. After deer check stations were eliminated, wildlife biologists no longer were able to keep tabs on the deer harvest on the WMA.

A permit system was instituted for the bowhunters two seasons ago. Now, wildlife biologists can monitor the harvest and use of the area.

"We now know through the permit system that over 1,000 bowhunters hunt at Fant's Grove," said Richard Morton, a SCDNR wildlife biologist who oversees the area. "We don't have results yet for last season, but the season before, archery hunters took 84 deer."