Hunting observations from a newbie

I hunt elk mostly, so may not have anything to do with any-deer, but I'd believe it does apply across the board ....just matters where & when ...

When in the thick stuff (& ther abouts), I'll hang out & "get the feel of the area."

Check wind & shadows & then walk into that stuff. Terrain, etc. probally makes a difference far as which direction I'll walk though.

Most likely & depends of what (type terrain) I'm looking at.

Depending, I'll move off 1/4 wind in my face & with the best terrain ....

One point though. Although I'm not hunting deer, per se - I "kick 'em up" all the time. Mostly, I can shoot any bedded deer whenever .... makes sense all told. "Problem" is, I'm not hunting deer & don't get to shoot bedded 5X mulies often ..... my season is an "elk-only" hunt. (wah!)

Sneaking up on deer/elk is no big deal. You can "easily enough" get within 20-30 yards in dark timber (their bedding areas) & smoke 'em right there, [if you just see 'em first.

Quiet, quiet, & make no smell that goes to 'em. You can make all the smells you want - just don't allow it to go to your quarry.
 
I heard that! I REALLY wish muzzleloader seasons overlapped in the same manner as bow seasons.
BTW, pulling the arrow out of the squirrel is easy, pullling it out of the TREE is hard! :D
 
To me, the single most important concept to absorb in hunting is SILENCE.
Deer can hear a soft voice at a range of 1/4 mile. Every time you speak, cough, blow your nose, crack a branch on the ground, fumble with some metallic object - make any non-natural sound whatsoever - you have alerted every deer within a radius of 1200 feet (or thereabouts) to your presence. Once you have made a noise you must move at least that far to be in territory where deer are unaware of your presence.
It's pretty easy to absorb the concept of moving into the wind when hunting, but relatively few hunters realize how noisy they are or how much better a deers hearing is than their own.
 
Keith

I'll be scouting tomorrow. Rifle season doesn't start for roughly 6 more weeks. How silent do I need to be? If I'm too loud, and stink to high heaven, will the deer go away for good?
 
Since you can't be absolutely quiet, the noises you make must seem like part of the ordinary world of Bambi.

You don't march, or move with any rhythm. Take one or two steps; pause; step; pause; step, step...

Deer don't step on sticks. So, don't you.

Nylon clothing makes a "weeeep" sound against brush. Same for any newish hard weave. Wool is one of the best for quiet; old, worn khakis are next best. Camo is a waste of time and money; any old dull color is fine.

You work cross-wind or quartering into it or directly into it, so far as possible.

I have read that deer will remember some spooking for no more than around 20 minutes. If you break an unseen stick, and are hunting as opposed to "exploring country", just sit still for a while.

It is common for an experienced still hunter who will move and look, move and look, will take an hour to move a few hundred yards. If they know they're in a bedding area, they'll move even slower. A soft-soled boot is much better than waffle-stompers--quieter.

When you're sitting and looking, don't turn your head until you've swept as far as possible with your Mark 1 eyeball. Then, sloooowly turn your head. Never make a sudden motion.

There's a lot more...

:), Art
 
Izzat right? I've always been of the philosophy: Get out there before daybreak, be quiet, but don't let it slow you down. First man to his spot a half hour before daylight gets the buck.

'course, when settin is gettin old, or like what Art said about bedding, better to move slow and quiet. Don't make no more sound than the squirrels around you, and you'll be alright. No squirrels around you means you're bein too loud.
 
Well, I'm just getting back from running around in the woods. I saw lots of trails and a few tracks, but no rubs or scrapes.

Acorns are all over the ground. There is an abundance of mosses and lichens, and the mushrooms are popping up as well.

By the way, has anyone ever seen a purple mushroom? My wife and I saw two, and they looked as if they were made of hand-blown glass.

Anyway, based on the small numbers of tracks in the area, and the lack of rublines, this particular spot I was gonna try may not be. Whaddya all think?
 
After yet another failed day of hunting today, we got together with some other bow hunters to see how everyone else is doing. Out of 5 hunters plus my friend and I, no luck at all.

We figure that due to the weather, rut will come later this year, maybe about the 2nd week of shotgun season in November after Thanksgiving. None of us are seeing any fresh rubs at all, and deer signs are at an all time low. When the deer ain't movin, they ain't romantic either. They're holed up.

Did you see as many premature acorns as I've been noticing on the ground? You'll know'm - from a distance they look like snow on the ground. Upon closer inspection, it's white acorns tha have fallen prematurely, before they got their "bark".
 
Yank

There were quite a few premature acorns on the ground, but there were more fully ripened ones. I had figured that I would have seen some rubs and whatnot, even though down here the primary rut occurs at the end of November.

I had called the are biologist, and she had told me that there were quite a few clearings created a few years ago in an attempt to halt pine weevil infestation, but I did not see evidence of that.

What my wife and I did see, however, in the area I scouted three years ago, was quite a few fallen pines across the trail at the top of a ridge with a lot of oaks. No sign of deer other than a few tracks leading up the ridge from a creek running paralel to a dirt access road. I was hoping to see more tracks than what I observed.
 
Concerning tracks but no rubs:

Did the biologist or the hunting license info happen to tell you about when doe season starts? It might be a good idea to consider shooting does instead of young bucks. The Southeast US has a vast overpopulation of deer and by weeding out the does we can keep the herds more balanced.

Just a thought, moot for me as my landlord prohibits taking does despite all the good reasons for it. Maybe he'll change his mind this year.

BTW, if there are not too many hunters, I'd want to hunt at the edge of the woods between clearcut areas and bottomland hardwoods.
 
Or Meek, maybe you could suggest what the better hunt-leasers do around here - Just make it a rule for guests of paying hunters not to shoot bucks, only does, hunters who may shoot bucks only shoot 8-point or better, and everyone bags their limit on does, if any.

That way, you're letting the dominant bucks grow up a little to breed (bucks can be the best breeding, the most dominant, but it makes no matter against a 50cal sabot! :D ), and they'll keep the herds strong all by themselves.
 
No Ojibwe, the deer won't go away for good. They'll just know where you are and move away from your immediate area or lie low for a while. But, since deer generally only move for a short period in morning and evening, you've pretty much killed the area for that day.

I normally hunt very high on ridges and mountainsides and I've occasionally watched hunters below me move through an area and disturb deer. Some deer will move into thick stuff and lie down and others will just move away, sometimes making a circle and coming back to where they were before the hunter moved through and then watch in the direction the hunter went. I *think* in general, does tend to just move into thick stuff and lie down and bucks more often tend to leave the immediate area - that's not a hard and fast rule, just a general observation.

The conditions you are hunting in are quite different than around here. We tend to move around a lot because you can get up on a mountain and scout below until you see deer and then stalk them. In Alabama, you're going to want to scout out an area with a lot of deer traffic and then pick a couple of spots that you can observe from. You want to "ambush" them because the limited visibility doesn't lend itself to stalking very well. I say pick a COUPLE of spots because the direction you observe your area from will depend on which direction the wind is coming from on the day you hunt. You'll want to go in to your stand before light and get there as quietly as you can - if that means you need to start earlier to get there quietly, then do it.

Keith
 
It's limited to bucks only in National Forest Service lands. The biologist did say that peak rut does not occur in the Bankhead National Forrest until the end of November.

I tried scouting around Black Warrior Section A. That's the area that is on the left hand side of Hwy. 33 when heading towards Moulton. I didn't see any clearings; all I found were ridges with a goodly supply of oaks and pines. A creek did run alongside a gravel road, and there were a few tracks that lead from the creek to the ridge west of the road and creek. I figured that the top of the ridge was roughly 1/2 mile from the road.

It's a pain to get to the top of the ridge; the same one I visited 3 years ago while married to my ex-wife. At that time, November of 1999, there was a large trail, possibly an old logging road, that had tons of tracks, several scrapes, and tons of rubs.

Yesterday, just shy of three years after my first visit, there was one small rub. The trail had dead pine trees lying across it, and there were no tracks or scrapes to be found. There is lots of food for deer, though. Plenty of acorns and mushrooms. Do deer eat moses and lichens? Because if so, there's alot of that as well.

Anyway, are ridges a good place for deer to hang out?
 
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