Grinding it out in the hills during the rut.

[ozzz]

For you seasoned hill/bluff hunters.

How do you observe movement of bucks during the rut as far as distance covered? Are you seeing them generally travel pretty far in the ridges compared to other types of terrain? I would think it would be a lot easier for them to cover some miles.

How does this pan out into how you hunt the rut? I would think it would enable you to really grind good rut spots during the rut when they are covering ground. Youve got that begining part where the local bucks are moving more during daylight but still generally staying home but when things get going and they are off running do you find you can sit these spots pretty hard?

Thoughts?

[dan]

I am seeing the younger bucks travel great distances but the older bucks being a little more careful. You can certainly hunt a rut spot more than once and get a buck on a later sit, but, I have noticed a decrease in both size and quantity of bucks going thru the funnels on consecutive hunts. My advice would be to sit fresh stands each sit.

[keb]

If everyone is hunting in the hills, via topo and funnels, some of the older deer may have moved to other locations. Like fence rows, water ways, standing corn fields, and scrub brush away from the hills. I not a season hill country guy, but I saw few good bucks and other hunters in the hill country I was in.

Once I looked at the mentioned overlooked spots, I began to find shooters and no people. Big timber and lots of it is not always the best place to find a big one.

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[ozzz]

I see some guys in decent spots up top but just as many down low in poor spots.

Permanent stands down at the bottom of a steep bluff on three sides on the corn.

[BigHunt]

I am seeing the younger bucks travel great distances but the older bucks being a little more careful. You can certainly hunt a rut spot more than once and get a buck on a later sit, but, I have noticed a decrease in both size and quantity of bucks going thru the funnels on consecutive hunts. My advice would be to sit fresh stands each sit.

x2 this is what I do, unless its a great spot then ill hunt it the next day......after that I move on


i had an encounter with a 2.5 split brows eight pointer in 2012...... also I was getting trail cam pics of him all summer last year 2013. I also found his shed last spring to confirm It was the same buck, it was. well I wanted this buck to last another year 4.5 . he was a good buck last year at 3.5 (I think) but had great potential I thought, being he blew up from 2.5 to 3.5. .....last fall he was killed 2 miles from were he was living by a lucky bow hunter. word gets around fast in small towns. turned out to be a main frame 8 pointer with split brows with matching kickers on both G3s...so a 14 pointer
to make a long story short, the buck was killed 2 miles from were I was getting the pics, encounters and shed.

another thing I noticed is every year ill get the "local " bucks on cam all summer and early fall. around October 20th-25th , suddenly my trail cams will start getting bucks ive never seen before "pre rut movement" and so on into the rut....who knows how far theses bucks are traveling but it sure makes me wonder

[keb]

I'm referring to spots along away from the base of the bluff out in lifeless looking cover in the flat stuff if that's around the area, mile for the hills

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[ozzz]

I'm referring to spots along away from the base of the bluff out in lifeless looking cover in the flat stuff if that's around the area, mile for the hills

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"Dead" Space between the farms and the wooded hills?

[Bigb]

Good Topic.

[keb]

Non traditional cover and edges that look irrelevant

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[dan]

If everyone is hunting in the hills, via topo and funnels, some of the older deer may have moved to other locations. Like fence rows, water ways, standing corn fields, and scrub brush away from the hills. I not a season hill country guy, but I saw few good bucks and other hunters in the hill country I was in.

Once I looked at the mentioned overlooked spots, I began to find shooters and no people. Big timber and lots of it is not always the best place to find a big one.

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True... But I don't see this very often, I see the opposite. Most guys seem to hunt the obvious funnels like fence lines, and inside corners and miss the ridge funnels. I can't say thats what goes on everywhere, but in the areas I hunt it certainly seems to be the case.
Regardless, the key is to find the overlooked areas that other hunters don't hunt but still offer the types of terrain or funneling that you can kill bucks on.
Once hunted once or twice though, and its the same as all the other spots, to a deer its pressured whether its your scent or someone elses.
Hunting a great funnel over and over can get the roamers that take off cross country and have not yet been thru your funnel yet to smell your scent. Those cross country bucks are generally younger bucks.. The larger bucks or bucks that live in the area and have gone thru the funnel a few times maybe even at night when your not around and smell the trap will find a new way to get from point A to point B... I can remember many times sitting in a rut funnel and seeing bucks going back and forth thru a funnel. Often the same bucks. Sometimes a move is made, sometimes I continued to watch from a distance waiting for the just right wind.. Regardless, the 1st sit usually meant me seeing the same bucks I saw from my observation point, but then consecutive sits saw less and less deer, and or an avoidance of my stand tree location. I can remember bucks chasing does thru my funnel and the buck stopping 50 yards from my tree leaving the doe and doing a wide circle around the area of my tree meeting up with the doe further down...
Little things make the differences... It almost seems like guys wanna hear they don't have to do the work or move around, or they can just scent free themselves and not have to worry about it. Bouncing around is physically demanding and has to be well thought out to avoid burning areas. But a good mobile plan can be a huge difference in success.

[ozzz]

I see a lot of guys hunting inside field edges at the bottom a lot.

I also see some permanent stands in what should be good spots on the map then scouting shows how the deer are avoiding them. I found a real good example of this in the spring this year when scouting. I was looking into a kind of textbook bedding point for a good buck bed. Well I get there and find a ladder stand litterally right on top of the prime bedding spot. So I back track down the ridge a ways and find a solid, obvious doe bedding area maybe 75-100 yards away. Then about 100 +/- yards behing the does and up top a little higher is the buck bed I was originally looking for.

So you had a hunter, does keeping an eye on the hunter and the buck keeping an eye on the does who were keeping an eye on the hunter. So yeah, they pattern and adjust accordingly.

[ozzz]

So say you hunt one terrain feature of a particular ridge/area a couple days and opt to move on.

How feaseable is it to hunt that same property/general area and therefore probably some of the same deer on a different terrain feature that is fairly close.

For example, you hunt a hub where three ridges come together for two days and decide to mave to a saddle that is not exactly far away but a different terrain feature/area that you havnt been in lately.

[dan]

So say you hunt one terrain feature of a particular ridge/area a couple days and opt to move on.

How feaseable is it to hunt that same property/general area and therefore probably some of the same deer on a different terrain feature that is fairly close.

For example, you hunt a hub where three ridges come together for two days and decide to mave to a saddle that is not exactly far away but a different terrain feature/area that you havnt been in lately.

That can work... Potentially you may be hunting some of the same animals that were going past your earlier spot, but you may also be hunting some that are not... Its not ideal, but its better than sitting the same place twice.

[keb]

Let me say, I have hunted real hill country once, this was not ridge country it's was hills big ones, mini mnts. So with no experience I read here and what ever else I could find about it. So about it I went hunting the heads of ditches, funnels and 1/3 from the top. I saw lots of unoccupied tree stands and cars in the parking lots. I never ran into a hunter and saw small bucks in my hard to reach set ups. There was big sign in the valleys ect.

This is prime rut in iowa, one day it's raining and looking around I'm on top of a bald hillside, thinking where would I be if I was a large buck, looking at my maps I felt I was in the locations others were not hunting, I never seen another set up or human singn. It's just a matter of time.

From this glad ridge I can see across the road from this hilly wilderness, I see 80 acres of warm season grass and a over grown fence row that went into a 800 acres standing corn field. The fence row hit the water way that went north and south in this sea of corn.

There was a patch of brush the size of car at to corner of the warm season grass where it hit the fence row, I was man if I was a big buck I'd be there. But whos the owner. Get back to my truck drive over and grown up in the weeds I see public hunting sign, very hard to see the sign. Long story short I saw and missed shooter bucks by the clump of brush across the street from a meca of hill ground, was there big bucks in the hills yes.

Moral of the story if it ain't working it ain't working, gotta know when to pull the plug and move on, maybe across the road or miles away. Just as a side not I found other places like this amongst these giant hills, that looked irrevelant given the cover and terrian of the hills.

I saw and encounter shooter bucks in everyone of them, none of them had trees for trees stands, tall weeds, warm season grass, standing corn, over grown waterways ect. I hunted from the ground.

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[keb]

I will also mention this region was dominated by flat crop grounds with micro cover, the big timber hills were the big cover was, so it seems there that's where everyone hunted, which in turn put more deer in the micro cover. This place had pressure but it was not heavy, so I think it's safe to say some of the deer preferred the micro cover over the hills.

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