I'm going to be nicer than some. Every hunter is dealing with something. It might be physical, it might be emotional. Most people do not like to get too far from their comfort zone.
A big consideration is can you get an animal out if you get one. If you are older, out of shape, dealing with a bum back, you aren't going in very deep.
That said, the worst thing about being a road hunter is that so much of what a hunt offers, goes missing. This fall, while we did not kill a bull, we saw many interesting things. We saw fresh black bear tracks most every day, in the area we hunted. I'm a bit surprised we did not get a glimpse of it. We were into cows and spikes nearly every day, but not brow tined bulls. But it is always fun to have elk close by.
Last year after I killed my bull, we packed it out on horses, to a road, since that was much closer than getting back to where we were camped. I rode one horse back to camp, my brother stayed with the other horse and the meat. When driving a truck up the road, I came around a curve. The was a pickup parked in the middle of the road, with a hunter standing in front of it, using his binoculars. He was 40ish and likely north of 250 pounds. It amused me that he was glassing from the road, at maybe 1030 in the morning. I don't think his plan included getting in deep.
When we hunted a different area, where horses can't easily go off trail, we were in about 9 miles hunting and exploring. When eating a lunch we heard animals wading the creek. It was a pair of hunters on horses, doing what we were doing. Where we hunt now, there is far more solitude, even thou we are rarely a mile from the road.
out of my head this morning
