Tomorrow starts the Pennsylvania Center Fire Deer season. I typically pass on doe's as I am looking for a nice buck. A busk to be mounted on a special place on our log cabin wall.
I only have one neighbor within a pistol shot of the redoubt and he too goes out deer hunting. He is kind of a "brown & down" type of hunter. Not really particular or choosy.
We booth have been hunting the same land since 2006. In the beginning we used our cell phones for comms via texting. That seemed to work about 50% of the time due to the remoteness of where we hand & live. One year, maybe 2012, I bought a BaoFeng HT. The HT changed our comm life on the hill.
We never talked on them unless we needed help. We would just break squelch using a modified Brevety Code.
One press of the PTT button was "YES"
2 = "NO"
3 clicks was "Deer coming your way"
4 = "on stand" and or it meant "I shot one"
5 = "Danger" and or it meant "Pushing your way"
Yes it was rudimentary for sure however, it served our purpose.
Case in point...One year I heard a shot over where my neighbor usually sat in his ground blind. After about 5-minutes or so, I heard squelch break 4 x's. Then I heard about 5-minutes later squelch broke 5 x's. Okay, he is on the move. Mmmmm?
Thirty minutes or so passed and nothing. Then the HT barked with my neighbors voice, "Hey my son shot a nice 8-pointer but when hit it ran into a deep ravine that a creek ran through. Could you come over and help us dragged the deer out to the road?"
Of course I did. If we used our phones and texted, the chances of him contacting me would have been slim to none.
Made my way home, picked up the truck and using the HT for voice directions found him about 50-meters off the dirt road huffing and puffing ready to have a heart attack trying to drag this monster of a deer up the side of the ravine.
So my question is, if you hunt with anybody, do you communicate using a cell phone or HT?
