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Reuben Dourte Common Ground

Common Ground Bowhunter, Reuben Dourte Common Ground, is a little project that I started and it’s just a place where I go and I kind of describe it as my platform for my musings and adventures as far as whitetail deer hunting goes. So I go on there and I write my blog posts about what’s happening in the woods throughout the year. And then I do a few articles on my stand setups and the strategy that’s behind it and then some of the self-filming that I started doing we put into videos and share some of them on there.

So it’s a work in progress, it’s fun, it’s kind of what I do for a hobby, Reuben Dourte Common Ground

So it’s a work in progress, it’s fun, it’s kind of what I do for a hobby when I wanna relax in the evening and more or less I started it kinda with the thoughts one day my kids could, if they wanted to pursue the outdoors they could go on there and see what was going through dad’s brain back then, so.

Bruce: Well, where’s it going and do you have a website, tell us more about it and just where do you think the thing’s going?

so the website is just http://commongroundbowhunter.com

Reuben: Yeah, so the website is just commongroundbowhunter.com and the name I kinda just derived from the idea that some of the areas that we’re hunting in Pennsylvania and the southern tier in New York really most of the eastern hunting that we do isn’t quite the pristine parcels that maybe some people hunt in the more well-known, big buck states. But that’s part of it for the Pennsylvania hunter. And we’re not short on challenge. We have plenty of bucks to chase, plenty of deer but it’s not always quite as much about the inches of antler as it is the pursuit. And so that was kind of the thought behind it and what I wanted to portray and I’ll admit I feel like I pale in comparison to some of your other guests as far as being this big buck slayer.

I’ve had my share of success, but I profess to be the end all, be all to big buck killing. But I do feel like I’m able to relay the information that I’ve gleaned from different sources that have affected the way that I hunt. I feel like I can relay them to people in a relater able manner. So that was kinda why I thought it would be something that I’d like to start and kind of a fun project. Reuben Dourte Common Ground

Bruce: Now are you doing filming with this also?

Reuben: Yeah, so I thought, I guess it was back in 2014 before season, I knew that one of my buddies had just a real cheap camera arm and I was like, “You know what? I got this Handy cam here,” and I was, “why don’t I try and get some footage? That might be fun, that might add something to the hunt.” So I got his camera arm and I started filming and I shot two does that year on film and had a lot of fun doing it, and what I found was, when I was in the woods with the camera I guess the way that I would put it, it didn’t feel like I had to have every hunt be a success in the sense that it resulted in a kill. Like, if I saw a yearling buck making a scrape, and I got it on film, and could take it back to camp and show the rest of the guys back at camp, or show my friends, that was almost as much fun for me as it was shooting a deer. Reuben Dourte Common Ground

And I found myself going back after season and just watching my footage and reliving those hunts. And that just became almost invaluable to me and I thought, “You know what? This would be really awesome if I just threw these together into short video my kid, he was born in May of 2015 and I’m trying to brainwash him into being a deer hunter, of course. So he likes to watch all the DVDs and videos that I have and I was like, “You know what? It might be cool for him one day to able to watch dad hunting a little bit.” So yeah, that’s kinda how that started and then just been upgrading some camera equipment along the way and mics and different things like that just to improve the quality I guess I’d say. So I’ve got a few videos up and we’re always working on more stuff. Reuben Dourte Common Ground

You know what?

So I’ve got a few videos up and we’re always working on more stuff

Bruce: That’s for sure because the job never ends and what I’ve found is as you go through the seasons things get a little bit better or you have some really, really neat experiences and you try to duplicate those more and more because they’re more meaningful to you. That’s what I’ve found. Reuben Dourte Common Ground

Reuben: Right, right. Absolutely.

Bruce: How old’s your son?

Reuben: He’s about 16 months old, he’s full of energy, so he knows how to say buck already so that’s a good thing. I’m headed in the right direction with him I guess.

Bruce: Oh yeah, the first nice fall day it’s just gonna be a great time being in the woods. Just put him in a front pack and tell your wife he’s gonna be okay and just have him sit there with you. There’s nothing wrong with that. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Reuben: I probably wouldn’t see much. He’s not real quiet, these days but it definitely would be a good time, right?

Bruce: Yeah. I mean, you knew though the day of the pick it’s like everything’s alive and the trees are alive, the birds are alive, and the geese and ducks, I mean everything’s alive and it’s like oh my goodness, this is right outside my window, so. Oh, that’s super. Now when you start thinking about at 12 years old and being hunting with your father, how’d that all come to be? Reuben Dourte Common Ground

Reuben: Yeah, so my dad, and well my grandpa they were always, I would call them big hunters in the sense that they never missed a deer season. I mean it was always something that they were looking forward to and they were at camp for opening day. My grandpa never archery hunted, he was a farmer, I think he would tell you that he never had the time or the interest to do it. He was mostly a meat hunter. And my dad pretty much started out that way and started me out that way.

There was a lot of deer, we were never short on deer, but where we were hunting in Potter County, Pennsylvania the deer numbers in the early 90s mid-90s, you could see 100 deer a day and you might only see two fork horn bucks. And so it really wasn’t conducive I guess to that whole big buck hunting mentality.

The antler restriction in Pennsylvania has changed some of that

The antler restriction in Pennsylvania has changed some of that. And then we’ve also kind of redefined our approach. But so I started out mostly just kinda the brown it’s down kinda hunting heritage driving deer, pushing deer across the mountains and we’d sit for a few hours in the morning and then about the time everybody started getting cold which was usually about 10:00 we’d all get up and meet and decide which woods we were gonna drive for the rest of the day and that would just go on pretty much through the rest of the first day and into the second and sometimes the third day.

And so I guess, yeah, it certainly provided the itch and made me wanna get out into the woods as much as possible that first year that I was hunting. I remember thinking it sounded like a war zone in Potter County, Pennsylvania on opening morning I was like must be what war sounds like. So as you can imagine there’s a high buck exploitation so, past the first couple of days, you’re chances diminish significantly, I would say, I think that’s fair to say even to this day. Reuben Dourte Common Ground

And so pretty much from that first time, I decided I needed to find a way to have more opportunities in the woods, and so that was kinda what bore that want to archery hunt in me, even though I didn’t come from a family of archery hunters. And so I started reading and doing some research and getting my hands on any hunting magazine I could find and bought my first bow, I guess when I was 13 or fourteen and started archery hunting on the ground and made a lot of mistakes and still making some of ’em. But yeah, that was kind of my beginnings in hunting and then the transition to archery hunting. Reuben Dourte Common Ground

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