Where Are The Whitetail Deer?
Where Did The 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.
Article By Tracker Outdoors
www.tracker-outdoors.com
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