Scratch the Itch: 5 Summer Activities to Help You Prep for Hunting Season

Over the many years that I’ve suffered from this ailment, I’ve managed to find several ways to help me cope with my withdrawal symptoms. Not only did these activities stop the night sweats, occasional crying, and insane desire to move to the southern hemisphere every summer, but they also helped me become a better hunter when autumn finally rolled around.

So, if you suffer from the same terrible disorder that I do and know the pain of summer hunting withdrawal, you might want to give these activities a try and see if they can help you make it through.

Nothing takes the edge off your need to hunt big game better than hunting fish. It combines all the aspects of scouting, stalking, and shooting that we love about hunting, wrapped up in an aquatic environment. Bowfishing is one of those niche outdoor pursuits that, like shed hunting or catfish noodling, isn’t widely practiced yet is completely obsessed over by those who do it. There are few more entertaining ways to get your archery and even your trophy hunting fix than chasing big fish with a bow.

Bowfishing is an easy sport to get into. All it requires is a simple, light-powered bow with an attached line, a decent pair of waders and/or a small boat with a shallow draft, and a creative palette. This is because most states only allow bow anglers to target “rough fish” or “trash fish” like gar or carp rather than legitimate and popular gamefish like bass, trout, or walleye.

This means bow anglers occasionally have to get creative with their cooking techniques to make what are often considered bony or “fishy tasting” fish into good table fare. However, being successful and then finding a creative way to prepare and share your harvest is part of the very core of being a hunter.

In addition to the shooting and cooking of fish giving you that successful harvest feeling you’ve been craving, bowfishing is a great way to take the edge off a need to get in the backcountry. Many fantastic bowfishing environments and targets are in the backwaters and thick, nasty, weed-choked swamps, sloughs, and overgrown river channels where you have to row through interwoven river channels or slog through hip-deep marshlands as you stalk your quarry.

While going out and catching a few frogs may seem easy, when you really get into frog gigging, you’ll find that it’s an extremely challenging and fulfilling way to fill the freezer during the summer. Instead of going out and jumping a few frogs into a bucket like you may have done as a kid, frog gigging is a night-hunting challenge where you spend endless hours slogging through chest-deep water and scanning the surface of the water with a headlamp as you search for prey.

To be a successful frog gigger, you must move slowly and carefully as you search for and try to stick a pair of glowing eyes with a spear. It’s easily one of the most primal and raw ways to hunt where you can utilize and sharpen all your predatory instincts while practicing your stalking skills as you get down and dirty to try and bring home a hearty and extremely tasty amphibious reward.

Like bow fishing, frog gigging is an easy sport to get into as all it requires is a barbed spear, a powerful headlamp, and a target-rich hunting ground. You can hunt frogs around ponds, rivers, and lakes, yet if you’re looking for a true primordial frog-gathering experience, you should hunt in a swamp.

Swamps are ideal places for frog gigging as they not only have plenty of the meaty type of bullfrogs you’re after, but they also offer the type of terrain and trials ideal for awakening your hunting instinct for the fall. Whether you’re creeping through the mud on a stalk, lying in wait in a stand of bullrushes, or trying your best not to shake hands with a gator or a cottonmouth, nothing sharpens your senses better than a good ol’ swampy frog hunt.

The final thing that makes frog gigging a rewarding summer hunt is, of course, frying up and eating a batch of frog legs. Similar to squirrel or rabbit, frog is a light meat with a delicate flavor that works well with all of your favorite small game, gamebird, or even fish recipes. It’s a great way to get the flavor of the wild into your system long before the real game begins.

I know how it sounds. If you’ve been a hunter for any amount of time, you’ve heard the rhetoric from the anti-hunting community about how we can find the same connection with nature and animals by hunting with a camera rather than a rifle. While most of us generally treat this idea with a bit of light-hearted chuckling or complete dismissal, the fact is that aside from the obvious missing aspect of making a hearty and delicious meal of game meat, hunting with a camera can be extremely rewarding. It’s a great way to get in shape for hunting and sharpen your hunting skills during the off-season.

Whether you’ve got a fancy, 200x zoom, 18-interchangeable lens, hard-core camera, or just your phone, trying to get that perfect picture of an animal can take all of the patience and stalking skills of any other type of big game hunt.

You have to use maps and E-scout to find the right areas for the photogenic game you’re after and then spend hours glassing or still-hunting your way through them or waiting patiently around a food or water source until you locate your quarry. Once you’ve got a bead on your chosen model, you then have to stalk close enough or wait for the animal to move into position so you can get the perfect shot.

While we may scoff at the idea of hunting with a camera, the fact is that it’s a great way to get out and stretch your legs and even to scout for the game we’ll be after in the fall. And while it may not land you a freezer full of meat or a nice set of antlers for the wall, there’s still a certain satisfaction that comes from having folks comment about a badass picture over the mantel and being able to say, “Yeah, I took that.”

One of the best things about hunting in the fall is the opening of “the season.” It’s the sort of thing that we celebrate like a holiday and wait for with a happy, yet frustrated anticipation all year long. However, there are a lot of species out there that cut out the middleman of having to wait for the season to open as they have no closed season, allowing you to hunt them all year long—I’m talking about varmints.

From prairie dogs and gophers to iguanas, crows, and wild hogs, almost every state in the union has some sort of non-game animal that is either overpopulated, invasive, or simply a nuisance, making them perfectly legal to hunt throughout the entire year.

In fact, by hunting many of these animal and bird species, you can end up helping the environment and native game species by removing animals that are competing with or destroying the ecosystem. This allows you to double dip as not only can you scratch that summer hunting itch and prepare for the upcoming season, but you can also help ensure that all of your future hunting gets better in the long run.

No matter what other game you’re planning on hunting during the fall, there is probably a varmint of some sort that can help you sharpen your skills. Planning on making 400+ yard shots on elk or antelope? Try making 150-yard headshots on prairie dogs or woodchucks, and I guarantee that those long shots on big game will become easier. Need to sharpen you’re wing shooting? Try knocking down fast-flying pigeons or crows, and I bet you’ll be more than ready for the duck blind come fall.

Of course, the other bonus of varmint hunting is that it gives you an opportunity to load up on some overlooked and often extremely delicious game meat. Animals like wild hogs, nutria, and iguanas are particularly tasty. They can make a fantastic and exotic addition to any game supper or family meal during a time when your freezer may otherwise be empty.

Everyone knows that practice makes perfect. Long before hunting season opens, most of us will spend endless hours zeroing our rifles, shooting trap, and flinging arrows at targets so that we’ll be comfortable and ready when the big moment finally arrives. Yet if you really want to up your shooting game and make sure you’re truly perfect when you practice, you should go live.

Whether it’s a 3-D archery target you move around your tree stand, or a skeet shooting course where you walk through and shoot clays flying in unexpectedly and at different angles, nothing better preps you for the real thing like making your practice as real as possible.

As a Western hunter, one of my personal favorite things to do is to make life-size cardboard cutouts of deer and even elk, which I can set up on a hillside and then shoot at different ranges and angles. This type of practice helps me zero my rifle and also helps me orient myself to different scenarios and sight pictures I may encounter during the hunting season. Plus, when it comes down to it, it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

Live-action shooting is just a fantastic way to get your boots on the ground and a weapon in your hand during a time of year when your hunting skills may be lacking. It allows you to turn on that switch in your brain which hones and prepares you for hunting season in a way that shooting at paper or foam targets on a gun or archery range just can’t replicate. When you do it enough, live-action shooting practice will make that moment when a trophy buck, bull, bear, etc., finally walks into your sights seem easy, because you’ll have done it many times before.

There are a lot of things we become addicted to in this world, most of which are bad for our health. From alcohol and tobacco to video games and mindless phone scrolling, there are just certain habits and addictions that we are constantly trying to limit or even break. Hunting should never be one of them.

In fact, when the off season comes and we find ourselves in the doldrums of hunting withdrawal, we should do everything in our power to satisfy our cravings for wild places and wild game and just indulge ourselves. In the end, our time to go out and hunt is limited by both the season and the fact that none of us will live forever. So, like the true junkies that we are, we should go out and get our fix whenever and however we can.