As my beast hunting style progresses I've come to realize that I'm awful and extremely scatterbrained when it comes to knowing when to stop and setup shop when scouting with a stand on my back.
When it comes to looking at maps and reading topos, predicting deer movement, etc.. I've become extremely confident at this and have been close to 70-80% at locating buck beds. My problem is going in blind, not seeing that rub line I was expecting but I know that given the wind, terrain, etc.. he's somewhere in there. I begin questioning myself and it gets frustrating.
This happened to me this evening and I figured I'd set a stand in an area where I know a big buck is lurking, given the wind it was the perfect time to hunt this buck. Around 5:35 I catch movement 63 yards to my right, coming exactly where I anticipated him to be bedded. Never got a chance to check out the head gear but I got a good glance at him when he stopped at an opening 93 yards away and judging solely off of body size it's a 3.5-4.5yo buck. I heard him tear into two trees soon after he disappeared back into the swamp thickets, then he went to torment some does.
Now I'm really interested how I can work on closing the gap, because tonight was really a fluke. What is going through your minds when you are entering an area blind where via maps you expect deer bedding, but area not seeing the sign to correlate? (rubs, scrapes, etc)
Knowing When to Stop
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Knowing When to Stop
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Re: Knowing When to Stop
I have become really good at being in the exact tree I need to be in... A couple reasons I would give is that I read the terrain more so than the deer sign. Big bucks travel thru a landscape in a certain repeatable fashion. The other thing I do is go real slow and really study the trees, wind, and where I think the deer is bedding, choosing my tree before I get to or past it.
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Re: Knowing When to Stop
dan wrote:I have become really good at being in the exact tree I need to be in... A couple reasons I would give is that I read the terrain more so than the deer sign. Big bucks travel thru a landscape in a certain repeatable fashion. The other thing I do is go real slow and really study the trees, wind, and where I think the deer is bedding, choosing my tree before I get to or past it.
Thank you Dan.
What's your take on mature bucks bedding and traveling through swamps, during daylight?
From what I have noticed they like to bed leeward of any form of elevation change (5'-20') but most importantly I have noticed these beds being within a certain type of shrub, overlooking open and generally mature hardwoods. The problem lies in figuring out which thicket to opening he's lurking.. Do you rely on binoculars and scan that edge between a thicket to opening to pick him off?
Compared to what little hill country bedding I've seen, which is more elevation and topography based than foliage based.
Have you seen similar observations up North?
*Ideally I would have scouted this area in January-February but due to time restrictions this wasn't possible.
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