Beds in the cattails

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Beauford
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Beds in the cattails

Unread postby Beauford » Sun Aug 26, 2012 9:33 am

I have a couple of questions with some of the beds I found in the cattails. 1) I found a nice large bed 4 X 4 in size, another 20 yards past this is a dried up pond. The bed looked good and I know that size should be from a buck? I did find doe bedding in the transion area before going into the cattails. Ok the pond is so dry easy walking and not much sinking the weeds are knee hight to waiste hight and trails are all over in this open spot. I found a great sit spot that would bring the deer past me. Should I hunt outside the cattails on the ground and hope the buck comes out, or walk into the pond past the bed and hunt the better sign. I would have to use a ground set up treeless area. 2) I went to another one of my spots and it looks real good with some of the buck beds. Should be good year in the marsh, but with it so dry it also might be hard to find the deer if they start changing bedding. With past dry years anybody notice a big change with deer in the marsh with the trails they use. I know this is bad time to go look, but I have had no free time to make it out, so I hope I did not screw up some of the spots.


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Singing Bridge
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Re: Beds in the cattails

Unread postby Singing Bridge » Sun Aug 26, 2012 12:54 pm

Beauford wrote: 1) I found a nice large bed 4 X 4 in size, another 20 yards past this is a dried up pond. The bed looked good and I know that size should be from a buck? I did find doe bedding in the transion area before going into the cattails. I found a great sit spot that would bring the deer past me. Should I hunt outside the cattails on the ground and hope the buck comes out, or walk into the pond past the bed and hunt the better sign. I would have to use a ground set up treeless area. 2) I went to another one of my spots and it looks real good with some of the buck beds. Should be good year in the marsh, but with it so dry it also might be hard to find the deer if they start changing bedding. With past dry years anybody notice a big change with deer in the marsh with the trails they use. I know this is bad time to go look, but I have had no free time to make it out, so I hope I did not screw up some of the spots.


1) I would say there is a decent chance the good sized bed you found belongs to a buck, especially if there were no other beds nearby. I would pick the spot to hunt that is closest to the bed without you being detected, in order to catch daytime movement.

Did you just find these spots? If so, your intrusion may disrupt things for a while or get your buck to move somewhere else.

2) On really dry years the bucks seem to use the same trails as before a lot of the time... I have noticed that on those dry years the number of deer in the cattails overall goes up especially if there is a decent amount of hunting pressure.
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Dewey
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Re: Beds in the cattails

Unread postby Dewey » Sun Aug 26, 2012 6:10 pm

I would set up on that bed if the conditions are right on opening weekend. If you were in there recently hopefully the buck did not relocate but I think it's still worth trying as long as you stay out of the spot for the next 3 weeks until opening day.

I have found that dry years in marshes can prove to be very difficult at times since it opens up so much more possible bedding cover. I actually prefer years of high water since it really narrows down the available prime bedding areas.

Access should be great this year and I looking forward to exploring areas I normally cannot reach due to deep water. Most of the areas I checked out are dryer than I have ever seen so this season should be interesting.

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