Deer and cows orient with magnetic north/South...

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Re: Deer and cows orient with magnetic north/South...

Unread postby PeteJ » Tue Oct 11, 2011 12:28 pm

Very Interesting Read!


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Black Squirrel
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Re: Deer and cows orient with magnetic north/South...

Unread postby Black Squirrel » Wed Oct 12, 2011 2:41 am

The more I think about this, the more i wonder how true it is with deer. Wouldn't this fly in the face of, wind over the back looking down wind of the bed in hill country?
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Re: Deer and cows orient with magnetic north/South...

Unread postby Stanley » Wed Oct 12, 2011 3:41 am

I have noticed that cows will put their rears to the windward side of weather. So if the wind were from the south most or all of the herd would be facing north. This goes for horses also. I guess I'm just a tough sell. I'm not buying magnetic oriented bovine. I did listen to the song; "cows with guns" though. :lol: :lol:
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Re: Deer and cows orient with magnetic north/South...

Unread postby dan » Wed Oct 12, 2011 12:12 pm

Black Squirrel wrote:The more I think about this, the more i wonder how true it is with deer. Wouldn't this fly in the face of, wind over the back looking down wind of the bed in hill country?

agreed... Been watching cows a lot since reading that and I have not seen what the article claims...
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Re: Deer and cows orient with magnetic north/South...

Unread postby Autumn Ninja » Wed Oct 12, 2011 12:34 pm

dan wrote: Cause most of the bucks I have observed always bedded facing down wind with the wind to there back, or the bed had a direction that had him facing a human or predator access such as the trail hunters access the property from. And does, I have seen does bed in a circle all facing different directions.

X2!!!

I can always tell which way is north (I can feel it)....I use to think everyone could do this but have learned thats not the case. Can anyone else do this?
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Re: Deer and cows orient with magnetic north/South...

Unread postby DropTyne » Wed Oct 12, 2011 1:10 pm

Yup, I can always "feel" north. I thought It was normal to have that feeling as well. I rarely use a compass or gps and have never been lost even in some crazy situations with turn arounds ect........ I was not always able to follow the exact trail I wanted out,but can always orient myself enough to get to the road or trail i want too.

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Re: Deer and cows orient with magnetic north/South...

Unread postby cornfedkiller » Wed Oct 12, 2011 2:03 pm

Autumn Ninja wrote:I can always tell which way is north (I can feel it)....I use to think everyone could do this but have learned thats not the case. Can anyone else do this?


DropTyne wrote:Yup, I can always "feel" north. I thought It was normal to have that feeling as well. I rarely use a compass or gps and have never been lost even in some crazy situations with turn arounds ect........ I was not always able to follow the exact trail I wanted out,but can always orient myself enough to get to the road or trail i want too.


I cant say I can always "feel" north. Sometimes are better than others, but sometimes its nothing more than a hunch. I generally have a decent idea which direction is north (better than some of my friends), but there are times where I get really turned around... I lived in Duluth for 4 years and I still could never tell which way was north up there in the city - out of town I was fine, but in the city had me totally turned upside down and inside out...

I definitely wouldnt trust my "sense" if I was lost in the woods and got turned around..
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Re: Deer and cows orient with magnetic north/South...

Unread postby dan » Wed Oct 12, 2011 8:24 pm

I definitely wouldnt trust my "sense" if I was lost in the woods and got turned around..

Not me... I need a compass.
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Re: Deer and cows orient with magnetic north/South...

Unread postby dreaming bucks » Thu Sep 05, 2013 12:02 am

bumping this thread for those that have not read it...... I have to remember to pay attention to which way the cows are bedded again now... :D
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Re: Deer and cows orient with magnetic north/South...

Unread postby JoeRE » Thu Sep 05, 2013 12:31 am

cornfedkiller wrote:
Autumn Ninja wrote:I can always tell which way is north (I can feel it)....I use to think everyone could do this but have learned thats not the case. Can anyone else do this?


DropTyne wrote:Yup, I can always "feel" north. I thought It was normal to have that feeling as well. I rarely use a compass or gps and have never been lost even in some crazy situations with turn arounds ect........ I was not always able to follow the exact trail I wanted out,but can always orient myself enough to get to the road or trail i want too.


I cant say I can always "feel" north. Sometimes are better than others, but sometimes its nothing more than a hunch. I generally have a decent idea which direction is north (better than some of my friends), but there are times where I get really turned around... I lived in Duluth for 4 years and I still could never tell which way was north up there in the city - out of town I was fine, but in the city had me totally turned upside down and inside out...

I definitely wouldnt trust my "sense" if I was lost in the woods and got turned around..


I kinda agree with you guys, but I find extremely unfamiliar/new terrain really destroys that "hunch" feeling. When I backpacked in the outback in australia I didn't have a flippin clue where north or south was....the same is true for a few other back country spots I've been around the world. Its relatively easy for me to do in the upper midwest, generally I am off by 45 degrees or less, but elk hunting in the rockies last year I needed a compass/map/gps to get around all the time.
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Re: Deer and cows orient with magnetic north/South...

Unread postby dreaming bucks » Sat Apr 11, 2015 6:04 am

Bump for the new guys...I forgot about this topic, I'm going to start looking for this when I find beds.

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Re: Deer and cows orient with magnetic north/South...

Unread postby SaddleMaster » Sat Apr 11, 2015 6:29 am

dan wrote:And does, I have seen does bed in a circle all facing different directions.


A couple of weekends ago I found a doe bedding area on top of a very narrow ridge top. It may be 10 yards wide on top and drops down steep on each side. With the narrow ridge top and green briar they didn't have much room. So instead of bedding in a circle like normal, they bedded in a straight line along the top. But each bed was still facing a different direction. Thought that was cool when I saw it.
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Re: Deer and cows orient with magnetic north/South...

Unread postby ihookem » Sat Apr 11, 2015 1:54 pm

There was a time I couldn't find my way around a forest for nuthing. I almost had to walk around with a compass in my hand. As the years went on I learned to scout out of necessity cause the deer numbers are so low way up north. Now, I can walk in the woods where I have never been and almost always know where I am going. I dont know why , but I can just tell and am almost always right, no matter how big the woods is or how far I am back in the woods. I never go in the woods without a cumpass and Gps, or 2 compasses. Down here in the Kettles I most likely wouldn't need a compass but always bring one compass and a gps , more for marking deer beds and stuff, not for compass use. I also knew a guy who never used a compass and never got lost. We would go on all day scouting trips in the Flambeau River State Forest. He could decide to head to the truck and away he went . We would come out right by the truck,,, ,,, until one day we decided to look at a spot around Draper Wisconsin . We came out on the wrong road and couldn't find our truck.
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Re: Deer and cows orient with magnetic north/South...

Unread postby Stanley » Sat Apr 11, 2015 4:33 pm

Autumn Ninja wrote:
dan wrote: Cause most of the bucks I have observed always bedded facing down wind with the wind to there back, or the bed had a direction that had him facing a human or predator access such as the trail hunters access the property from. And does, I have seen does bed in a circle all facing different directions.

X2!!!

I can always tell which way is north (I can feel it).
...I use to think everyone could do this but have learned thats not the case. Can anyone else do this?

I often think I can but I have been wrong so many times I'm saying no.
You can fool some of the bucks, all of the time, and fool all of the bucks, some of the time, however you certainly can't fool all of the bucks, all of the time.
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Re: Deer and cows orient with magnetic north/South...

Unread postby Motivated » Sun Apr 12, 2015 1:33 am

In 1997, the LA Times posted a small story about a cow falling from the sky and sinking a Japanese fishing boat. Apparently went crazy after being smuggled in a Russian cargo plane, so they pushed it out over the sea of Japan. I cut the article out because it was hilarious.

It was a hoax.

Why are California cows so happy? Because they like outsmarting LA Times reporters. You think they would stop covering cow stories after being burned by those smart happy cows once. ;)

Sorry, I'm a skeptic when reporters cover research. I think I'll have chick-fil-a for lunch. Gotta love those ads.

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