Ok, so when deer get out of their beds.....?

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Stump
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Re: Ok, so when deer get out of their beds.....?

Unread postby Stump » Sun Jan 30, 2011 2:56 pm

But seeing beds now and determining which way they are laying and trying to figure out the direction they are traveling now really does me nothing. Obviously because of the available food/mindset now compared to June or in Oct/Nov.

Determining bedding areas when your dealing with ridge country, at the surface, is pretty easy. Pick a thick point near a point or a bench off of a point and there will be a bed there. The trick and key of it all is to figure out when they will be bedding there and then where will they go once out of their bed....well, that's what I need to figure out. Then outside of that, how to access the area and get as close as one can silently without alerting them. Of which in the back of my head and even outside of the rut, keep hunting those pinch pts...funnels and saddles. I need to go watch that video again. ha, ha


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GRUD
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Re: Ok, so when deer get out of their beds.....?

Unread postby GRUD » Mon Jan 31, 2011 2:40 am

I too have observed buck traveling with the wind to their back in open woods or terrain. Like Dor said, so they can smell behind them and see in front. The buck I killed this past fall got up from his bed and walked across an open point of woods, at the time I thought with the wind to his back. When I went back to scout this area later in the year with the same wind, I walked his path from his bed and found that the wind was creating a crosswind eddy allowing him to scent check the whole area. So the wind was actually the opposite direction for him. Sometimes it helps to actually walk the terrain with the certain wind you think will work for the spot to see what it is actually doing. Where I hunted the wind was NW, where he walked from into the ambush the wind was SW. I was just past the "thermal tunnel" edge.
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GRUD
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Re: Ok, so when deer get out of their beds.....?

Unread postby GRUD » Mon Jan 31, 2011 2:44 am

Stump, one last thing, your scouting now with snow and all is not a waste if you pay close attention to what the wind is doing. From my observation, with foilage or without foilage the wind seems to do pretty much the same thing in the places that I hunt. So, see what the wind is doing in the actual bed and along the travel routes to and from the bed and it will tell you a lot about which direction that animal will exit based on wind and food sources.
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cornfedkiller
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Re: Ok, so when deer get out of their beds.....?

Unread postby cornfedkiller » Mon Jan 31, 2011 4:57 am

Stump wrote:But seeing beds now and determining which way they are laying and trying to figure out the direction they are traveling now really does me nothing. Obviously because of the available food/mindset now compared to June or in Oct/Nov


Right, which is why most of your scouting should be done after the snow melts but before green-up. During that time, the beds from last season (ones that may not have been used since october) are still visible. When you find those beds, it should be easy to determine entry and exit routes, so you can tell where they are going when they are using that bed. With all the snow this time of year, if they are not using the bed right now because of a food source no longer there or something (which is probably the case for the majority of them), you wont see it. You will be able to see them however after the snow is gone. Then when hunting season arrives, you can check field edges, trail cams, etc, and determine when he is using that bed...

Watch the marsh bucks video..it explains all of this pretty well. The hill country video does a great job of explaining where they bed in hill country, but IMO, the marsh bucks video does a better job of explaining how to use all the knowledge and putting it all together to hunt them.


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