Your first guided hunt, hour by hour.

The night before

Most hunters arrive the evening before day one. That is deliberate. It gives you time to shoot your bow after a long drive, put your gear where you want it, meet the guides and eat a meal without a four o'clock alarm hanging over you.

There is an archery range at the lodge for exactly this, and boot dryers and bow hangers by the door so your gear is dry in the morning. Take the range seriously. A bow that was sighted in perfectly in your garage in September is not necessarily still sighted in after six hours in a truck.

The morning

You will be up early, and earlier than you think. Guides want you in a stand well before first light, because deer moving back to bed at dawn will bust you if you are still walking in. Breakfast is at the lodge, then your guide drives you out and walks you in.

Your stand was not picked at random and it was not picked yesterday. It was picked off cameras that have been running on that farm since summer, filtered by the wind forecast for that specific morning. If you want to understand why you are sitting where you are sitting, ask. Every guide here would rather explain it than not.

The middle of the day

This is the part that varies most, and it is worth having a view on before you arrive. During the rut, the most consistent daylight movement on this ground is between about ten in the morning and two in the afternoon. If you are hunting the rut, we will encourage you to sit through it and to take food up the tree with you.

Outside the rut, midday is usually a break. Come back, eat, sleep for an hour, talk. This is the part of the trip that ends up in most of our reviews, which surprised us at first and stopped surprising us a long time ago.

The evening sit

Back out in the early afternoon for the evening. Evening sits over food are the highest percentage sits of the day outside the rut, and in December they are essentially the whole game.

What happens if you shoot

Text or call your guide. Then wait. The single most common way a first timer loses a deer is by getting down too early and pushing a marginally hit animal. Your guide will ask you what you saw, where the deer was standing, how it reacted and where it went, and then make a call on when to take up the track.

After that, the work is not yours unless you want it to be. Field dressing and cooling are included. There is an ice machine at the lodge, which sounds like a small detail until three deer come in on a warm afternoon.

What happens if you do not

Most guided hunts do not end with a dead deer, and any outfitter implying otherwise is selling something. What a good week looks like without a kill is: you saw deer, you understood why you were where you were, you had a shot opportunity or came close to one, and you would come back. That is a successful hunt in any honest accounting.

Things first timers consistently get wrong

• Not enough clothing. It is not the temperature, it is the wind across open crop ground. Bring more layers than you think and take them off.
• Moving too much in the stand. A deer at eighty yards will pick up an arm reaching for a thermos.
• Shooting too far. Know your maximum range honestly, and tell your guide what it is on day one.
• Leaving the stand at ten. Especially in November.
• Not asking questions. You are paying for a guide's knowledge as much as their ground. Use it.

Bringing a kid on their first hunt

A youth hunt runs differently and it should. Sits get shorter, food comes along, and the guide's job shifts toward making sure the kid is warm and having a good time first and the deer second. One child hunts free with every paid adult here, which is covered on the kids hunt free page. A cold, bored eleven year old does not come back next year, and next year is the entire point.

What to bring

The full list is on our what to bring page. The short version is layers, your weapon, your Illinois permit, a safety harness and blaze orange if you are hunting a firearm season.