• Help Support TNDeer:

Reflective Trail Tacks?

holstonangler said:
I figured out that tacks are cheap and now I tag every 20 feet or so!
Click to expand...
Same here. I absolutely despise wandering around in the dark looking for my stand. I want to go straight to it as quickly as possible without shining my light all over the woods. My trails look like airport runways at night with a flashlight. 😅
 
Back From The Dead GIF by James Bond 007
 
Problem with tree tacks are most people bye them at the same places and use the same tacks. Several years ago on my first trip to catoosa. I tacked trees going back to the tree I picked out the day before when I was scouting. It is more than a half mile back in there. Opening morning I got pulled over at my spot I could already see enough to not use a flashlight I was running late. So got to my spot hunted all day till dark. Got down got my stuff together and started walking. Shined the tree good there's the tacks. Followed them for a while. Eventually something didn't seem right the farther I walked. I ended up following someone else's tacks the opposite way. Got all turned around and was totally lost. My phone died had it hooked to a battery but it wouldn't turn on. Ended up walking to a 4 wheeler trail. Still no idea where I was or which direction to walk. Walked for a long time my phone finally came on to pull up HuntStand. I was 5 miles from my truck but finally made it to a main road. Luckily someone was driving by and gave me a ride to the truck. No tacks for me ever again. Now I know the place like the back of my hand.
 
Laurel & Ivy thickets……. Everything looks the same in a 5 ft radius. We use tacks for a reason
 
Old thread but still relevant I think. If I am in a new area, I mark my trail with double-sided reflective tacks. They can be seen from each side or head on. I place one color on the right, and another color on the left spaced so you can see one from another. If on public, I recover them on the way out, if on my place I leave them in place, they help me orient myself going in or coming out.

1733631110887.webp

Also, when I am following a blood trail, I carry these and place them on a branch to mark where the last blood spot is at, if there is no other to be seen, so when I make a blind pass around it, I can get back to the last spot to do it again if I don't find the trail. These I always recover since they probably won't last long on the branches.

1733631312844.webp
 
Many years ago when scouting Oak Ridge, me and my Dad were looking for our spot and after finding the tree where I planned to set up I marked my trail using reflective tacks. The morning we went out to hunt I turned on my light to locate my tacks and what did I see?? About a hundred other tacks going in all directions! It got crowded that day, lol.
 
Omega said:
Old thread but still relevant I think. If I am in a new area, I mark my trail with double-sided reflective tacks. They can be seen from each side or head on. I place one color on the right, and another color on the left spaced so you can see one from another. If on public, I recover them on the way out, if on my place I leave them in place, they help me orient myself going in or coming out.

View attachment 256169

Also, when I am following a blood trail, I carry these and place them on a branch to mark where the last blood spot is at, if there is no other to be seen, so when I make a blind pass around it, I can get back to the last spot to do it again if I don't find the trail. These I always recover since they probably won't last long on the branches.

View attachment 256170
Click to expand...
This. I buy the cheap tacks. Place one at the base and one just above eye sight. That way I know they're my tacks. If I don't see one on the bottom of the tree it isn't mine.
I use the orange clips when blood trailing. Completely different so I know it isn't part of getting out of the woods!
I used to have short reflective surveyors tape I would put under the tack but someone copied it! lol. Got myself turned around pretty good. I ended up on the right road about a mile from the truck.
 
Winchester said:
This is a sore subject for me, I dispise the woods becoming absolutely LITTERED with ribbon and bright eyes! For those who use them and then remove them when done, good job and your definitely the Minority!! I just cant make myself understand why anybody would need one or even two markers on trees every 20 yards thru the woods???? You obviously knew how to get wherever the markers lead or you wouldn't have known where to put them in the first place? Why do you now need them to return to a spot you already know how to get to? Some say its hard to find a place in the dark, which I don't really understand either? I think too many people try to use a flashlight and find their way 20 ft at a time, bad idea! If most people would turn the light off and use the terrain and its features as a guide, they would quickly see this is a much better way of navigating in the dark! A flashlight only shows you a few yards at a time, yet blinds you from anything beyond its beam. Oh well I guess everybody is different, just wish more would clean up after themselves with the bright eyes and ribbon that absolutely clutter many hunting areas these days!
Click to expand...
Some don't have the mental capacity
 
One year on public land after the hunt was over I started collecting the orange ribbons from the woods.

I tied them all together and the piece was about 40ft long.

One place in particular, the guy had tied them on about every 5-6ft. He'd have used about as much ribbon of he'd just tied the end of the roll onto his truck, the other to his belt loop, and took off walking.
 
Going back to the idea of two Bright Eyes On a tree that looks like deer eyes. In the National Forest in North Georgia, one of my sons put a tack on a poplar tree mostly so he would know which specific tree was the one he was headed to. It was easy to see off of a fairly easy to follow trail. My other son as a joke put a tack next to it. Those two tax gave all three of us a start at one time or another when our headlamps would pick up two gleaming eyes 4 feet off the ground. We joked about it. One afternoon at the parking lot I came out and there was two other guys standing by their truck they told me about the startling site they saw. You can guess what it was.
 
I quit using bright eyes many years ago. A cheap Garmin gps is a hell of alot better. A funny story about bright eyes, About 15 years ago we got drawn for the LBL hunt. I did all the scouting for myself and my buddy. I would always go the weekend or so before our hunt and get a game plan. I enjoy doing the scouting more than hunting anyway. Well my buddy didn't/don't have a gps, always says he don't have a use for one. So I always put bright eyes up for him and always told him to pull them the last time he was going in. Well I found some awesome sign that year, fresh scrapes and big rubs about the size of a 2 liter bottle. So I put him a trail to his tree a blind person could follow. I hunted all day and when I got back the motel he was mad. He thought I had played a trick on him and put the bright eyes in a circle back to the road. After I got him calmed down I asked him if he ever thought he may have gotten on someone elses bright eyes and ended back to the road. We had a good laugh and all was good. Until he said he wasn't going back in there for the second morning. I said if your not I am, he said you can have that spot. I went in the next morning and killed a big 9 pt.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top