Small deer drives

[hunter_mike]

Anyone have any luck with these? I think you could have some really good results if you had two to three people that were really coordinated and knew the lay of the land well. I know Dan's group has had success.

I have had tons of success on does and small bucks with small 2-3 person drives but it seems like every time I try taking someone with me into a place where a nice buck is more likely to be hanging out, it doesn't go as well as i would like and communication becomes really tough.

I am marking out some walking paths on google earth that I want to take during gun season. As I was marking them out, I was thinking that if I had another person to accompany, it could work our really well IF they moved along at just the right pace and stayed in the right location.

Maybe I just need to think through and plan it out better. I would like to know any strategies that have worked for people, ESPECIALLY in tough terrain where communication is really hard.

I need to check the regs in WI to see what types of electronic communication are legal as well.

I would really like to put together a well-organized drive this coming gun season but I do not want a bunch of people 2-3, 4 people total is getting much bigger than I would like.

[Stanley]

I have done some 2 man drives not with gun though. What a friend and I used to do was push some real small timbers. Once you see where the deer travel when pushed you get an idea of where to set. I arrowed a buck in the mid 80s doing this. I also had many near misses.

[remmag]

I arrowed my first buck doing a small drive. Me and a friend were walking down some train tracks back to a creek to check my trapline when a small 6 point buck ran across the tracks about 10yds in front of us into a small patch of woods that I had access to hunt.

After checking traps we took the long way around and I ran home to get my bow( I wasn't old enough to use a gun at the time) I made post in a thick patch of saplings while he slowly and quietly worked towards me through the thick underbrush where the buck ran into...the buck ended up busting out and came within 10 yards of me where he stopped and looked back to see what spooked him when I made the shot.

Its funny looking back at my first few years of deer hunting, I was so clueless and aggressive, but in this case and others it actually helped pay off in the end because it led me to think outside of the box and use strategies I would normally not

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[Czabs]

I would have to be super confident in my shooting to do deer drives with the bow. I've never tried it and probably won't ever do it.

I can see maybe setting up a long ways away where they get pushed but they are settled down by the time they reach you...otherwise I think it is somewhat unethical...

Another thing to add is, I like to figure out an animal and to get as close as possible to him without him knowing i'm there...I find that fun. Deer drives to me doesn't involve any real skill and I wouldn't consider it to be fun.

[bones09]

I have been apart of a many successful gun drives with 3-4 people in some pretty hilly terrain as well as some river bottoms. It can be done if all members understand how the deer are using the property. This is surely our most effective method after the opening weekend of gun season in WI.

[JoeRE]

I have been meaning to write up something about small deer drives or nudges or bumping as I call it. My brothers and I do them late season and have taken a lot of big bucks that way over the years.

For it to work consistently you need to know the land very well and how deer typically move across it when bumped from bedding. If you do, it can be very successful.

We typically have one person bumping bedding areas and the others on known escape routes or entry points to other cover we know the deer will head toward. Sometimes the standers are 1/2 mile away from where the deer are getting bumped out of. We take our time, we don't want a buck taking off a hundred miles an hour. Typically they will run a short distance then slow down and that's where we want to get them although occasionally we encounter a really wiley buck that has learned he should run flat out for a mile or more when he is bumped - that is a tactic hard to overcome!

Like I said you have to know preferred bedding and you have to know the most likely escape routes. Posting the blockers is best done where a buck will naturally pause before continuing, like just before the crest of a hill, at a fence or transition line, or a field crossing. With big deer drives guys blaze away at running deer whereas almost all our shots are at standing or slowly moving deer. There is no excuse for wounding a bunch of deer.

Deer are creatures of habit when it comes to escaping danger. For instance around here the principal tactic used by gun hunters is the big deer drive - a dozen guys sometimes many more line up and push toward an equal line of blockers. Typically they try to push the deer with the wind at their backs so they cannot smell the blockers. Well, after a deer survives a few seasons of that they learn to run into the wind when bumped to smell hunters in front of them. It is a very consistent habit I see late season and we try to play it so the blockers use a slightly quartering wind to pick off a buck that thinks he is being safe heading into the wind.

I know in other areas, where there are wolves and such, deer more commonly move with the wind to their back so this is a pretty local tactic. A 5 year old buck has never seen a wolf around here, but he has to survive deer drives every year.

[Crazinamatese]

Last season my brother and I did a successful drive on a private parcel. There was a marshy creek bottom next a corn field. All flat terrain. I had my mother sit along the the creek which flowed east and west with the corn field running along the edge of it. We pushed the marshy bottom straight west from mom and ended up pushing 3 does right to her. The plan worked perfectly. The deer funneled right along the creek to mom and they did not want to jump into the creek to cross into safer grounds. Mom shot a few times, but those deer were coming through to fast. That was probably the first well executed drive I ever done in the 20 some years of hunting. Hill country is real tough to drive with a few people. If you know the direction where the deer up in the hills like to run to if spooked, then I can see a small drive group successfully pushing deer to a stander. Otherwise, you could see a few deer bump and go over a ridge toward a stander and they never end up seeing them. Its like they disappear.

[PK_]

The hardest part is finding a few other guys who know what the heck they are doing and how to get into the right position or push a piece correctly without having someone hold their hand. If you can't tell I have been a part of numerous botched drives. But they are always fun.

I believe small, well organized drives are the absolute best way to kill old stubborn bucks.

[dan]

The main ingredient is having great people you can trust, teaching them how each drive works, and having the same people take the same positions they have learned over the years... Every time someone new is allowed into my group they fail to comprehend there role. It takes a season or two to get them into the routine, and some people never get it. When you get a good partner, stick with him, there hard to find.

[stash59]

When I 1st started gun hunting after the 1st couple hours of opening day had passed everybody started making deer drives. Our small "hunting party" was no exception. On average there was 5 of us. We did the same pushes every day. We usually tried to push the deer into the wind. Doing these drives over about a 10 year period I can remember only getting a couple of immature bucks. I knew back then that our lack of success was because we burned out the areas on the first couple pushes.

I eventually read articles, chapters in books and even one book dedicated to the art of driving deer. Problem was once I had moved away from my first original group I never found anybody willing to take the time to really do the drives correctly.

Like was mentioned above you need people you can trust to do their part.

Today I would think with the use of GPS devices it would be much easier to get people in the right places at the right time. Timing is also critical in many cases. If the pushers don't allow the standers enough time to get in place they won't be ready and may be caught off guard or totally miss the action.

Just like others have mentioned and just like the Beast modes other than driving. Knowledge gained through scouting and experience is key. The name of the deer driving book I have is "Remember the Deer Do". Good advice for any type of mature buck hunting,

[JoeRE]

Yea I second what PK and Dan say about teamwork! My brothers and I have been doing them for 10+ years together now and have only gotten really good at nudging deer the last 5 or so. The first few seasons we did them was pretty much all wrong place, wrong time. Now we knock one or two good bucks down every year between the three of us by bumping them and those are deer that just survived 2 weeks of big deer drives during regular gun season.

It requires precise timing like Stash said too. To have good success you have to know person 1 must take a specific route and arrive at a specific spot at a specific time. Person 2 must do the same, etc. When we do a nudge each of us knows pretty much exactly where every one else is at any given time. The only way to learn how to work as a team like that is experience - and everyone committed to good teamwork.

When you master a simple drive/nudge, then you can add more and more complexity and make them even more successful - for instance we do two and even three stage nudges now where walkers become blockers and vice versa. It becomes a lot like chess. I think doing a small scale drive/nudge well is more technical than most other hunting tactics frankly.

[dan]

One thing I will add... No room for guys argueing about how to do drives. One person needs to be in charge, the others need to listen. Thats not to say a person shouild not be able to voice an idea, or ask a question, but rather to get the point across that arguing will eat up the whole day, and people going off on tangents will kill drives...

[mauser06]

Both of those were killed during the second week I believe...both one the same 1 man push (different years).

I push a hillside to my dad...we both know the woods like the back of our hands...in don't know that we've ever done it and not seen deer...dad missed a buck the same year I shot mine..


Me and another buddy also hunted together in the big woods...sometimes we would take turns sitting...others we still hunted 100-200yds apart and bumped each other deer...we had shots at a good 20 deer the LAST DAY on state game lands...I passed a buck because it was snowing so hard...nearing last light I got on buck tracks that were steaming..he started crossing right...my buddy was on my left so I hooked down and came up hard to push him back left...my buddy put 2 rounds in his chest...1.5yo 8pt...he ran 50yds toward the road....a guy shot and claimed the buck was alive....I know better...it was on the ground when he shot. I was furious..slob!!!!!


Most of the time I hunt in rifle and flintlock its with just a few guys...we know the land and the deer and we hunt well together...

Too many guys hinders us...3-5 guys is when we usually do best...

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[stash59]

One thing I will add... No room for guys argueing about how to do drives. One person needs to be in charge, the others need to listen. Thats not to say a person shouild not be able to voice an idea, or ask a question, but rather to get the point across that arguing will eat up the whole day, and people going off on tangents will kill drives...

Great point. Designate a "captain" to be in charge. Even if all he does is keep things organized.

[hunter_mike]

Great info, thank you. It sounds like if I want the drive to go my way, I will almost need to have my partner (probably my brother) do the posting and I will need to do the driving. I will need to move him around, maybe I can figure out a way to give him pre-planned gps coordinates to walk to on his smart phone. At least for the first year until he sees how the drive works. Maybe this year my bro will get to shoot at yet another nice buck that I push to him lucky guy.