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Where Did The Whitetail
Deer Go?, Early Season Thoughts..You have worked
all spring and summer keeping your feeders filled,
building new deer stands or fixing old ones, planting
food plots and planning hunting strategies for
your first fall hunt. Each time you checked your
feeders, food plots or game trails, you were encouraged
by new deer sign, fresh tracks, rubs, scrapes
and other signs that deer continue to use the
area. But, now that archery or early gun season
opening day are here, you’re not seeing the deer
you expected to see and now you may be asking
yourself, “where are the deer?” or, “what did
I do wrong?”When this happens, and believe me
it happens to all of us, there are several factors
to keep in mind. Let’s discuss a few.First, most
of us observe deer patterns over the spring and
summer and work to draw deer into our areas using
any number of tactics including feeders, food
plots, salt licks and other game getting techniques.
While all of these
are good strategies, many of us forget that deer
also require a good source of water. By late summer
and early fall, water sources can “dry up” leaving
few locations for deer and other wildlife to get
that life sustaining fluid.If your hunting area
that has shown good promise all summer long suddenly
stops showing deer activity and deer sighting
are down, it may be that the deer are seeking
a water source.
If you believe this
is the case, try to locate a creek bed, small
pond or any other water source, no matter how
small. Chances are that if you find water, you
will find fresh deer signs. Even if a creek appears
to be dried up, search up and down the creek bed
for any remaining pools of water and look for
deer signs. Once you find water and fresh deer
sign, consider using a portable deer stand to
set up on this location for early season success.
Second, regardless
of how much corn and feed supplement is around
your feeder or how well your food plot has grown,
deer, especially mature bucks, prefer the natural
forage of the woods and field edges. If your deer
feeders and food plots are not located near natural
food sources, you may be waiting until natural
food sources run low before deer seek your feeders
and food plots more actively. If your man made
food sources are not drawing in deer and other
wildlife, it may be because natural food sources
such as acorns or other mast crops have the attention
and your stand is not in the path of the natural
sources.Your choices are to either wait for the
natural food sources to dwindle and for deer to
return to your feeders and food plots, or, you
the hunter will have to become mobile and hunt
the natural food supply using portable stands.
With this in mind,
you will also want to choose future permanent
stand locations that are close to natural food
sources when possible. Another good strategy is
to place your stands between natural food sources,
between food and water sources or between food
or water sources and deer bedding areas.
Another factor
that can reduce deer traffic to your permanent
stand locations, feeders and food plots is human
traffic. By late summer, it is important that
your trips to stand locations be limited and that
when you do visit these locations, it is important
to reduce human scent left behind. If you are
visiting your stands and feeders just to check
for fresh deer sign, stop. Trust your stand location
choices, fill your feeders and work the food plots
early enough that your present is no longer required
long before season opens and it is time to hunt.
Repeated trips will inevitably leave behind human
scent and prevent deer from visiting. Your best
chances of a successful deer hunting stand are
those less visited by you the hunter. If you do
visit your stand locations before your early season
hunts, take care to use quality scent elimination
products and strategies. It is a good idea to
use different routes to and from your hunting
areas before during and after hunting season.
The point is that you don’t want a human scent
trail caused by repeated visits to your stands.
Changes to the environment
near your hunting area can also play a part in
changing the frequency that deer visit a stand
location. These factors may include timber logging,
field plowing, construction or another hunter
creating a new stand location to close to your
existing one. For example, we have two deer hunting
stands that are close to a paper company property
line. About a month before deer season, the paper
company decided to cut timber on the adjacent
land. Before the timber started falling, these
stands always showed good deer sign. When the
timber cutting started, even though it was about
100 yards away, the deer traffic to these stands
was greatly reduced. In this case, we also learned
that the logging would stop just before gun deer
season opened. So we chose to leave the stands
in place and hunt other stand locations until
the deer return to this area.
For successful deer
hunts, my bet is on the hunter who adjusts to
both natural and man made conditions, uses sound
judgment when choosing stand locations and makes
the necessary adjustments as the environment changes
with the season.
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