Bedding, wind, side of the road

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Sailfish_WC
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Bedding, wind, side of the road

Unread postby Sailfish_WC » Tue Jan 16, 2018 4:40 am

So listening to a few podcast, and a thought kept buggin me

Deer is bedded on the "side of the road" and it will "watch" hunters file into the woods from the parking lot.

How does his body position relate with the wind?


To make it easy:

Road runs E/W
Deer is bedded on N side of the road.
Wind is....out of the N
Will he have the wind at his back and nose to the road?

Wind out of the S, nose and eyes to the road?

Trying to get an idea just exactly what is more important to him at the time; his eyes or his nose

One last caveat, would it matter what he does depending on his bedding? IE swamp just north of him or perhaps he has thick brambles to lie and hide in, etc


Sailfish_WC <-- Deer watcher
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Re: Bedding, wind, side of the road

Unread postby ghoasthunter » Wed Jan 17, 2018 4:17 am

he wont bed their on a wind like that unless its warm and super thick. a buck always beds with some sort of object behind him and approaches a bed from down wind and watches his back track if he cant come in from down wind completely they will sometimes walk their up wind side of a bed then back track himself and jump of his tracks and bed down so he can watch his trail they do that when they get followed by predators a lot.
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Re: Bedding, wind, side of the road

Unread postby dan » Wed Jan 17, 2018 5:10 am

Bucks bedding watching a trail, road, or human access usually bed up wind of what they are looking at. Eyes one direction, nose smelling the other.
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Re: Bedding, wind, side of the road

Unread postby Rob loper » Wed Jan 17, 2018 7:12 am

dan wrote:Bucks bedding watching a trail, road, or human access usually bed up wind of what they are looking at. Eyes one direction, nose smelling the other.


I just found a spot the other day scouting
Its where you would never think a deer would be in a marsh through brush next to a big river going out to the bay. There are two trees out there that are just raped by a big boy and it set up just line dan describes it watches a boat launching site and the access road to it
I found multiple beds along his msin trail and a huge bed looks like a generationsl bed its used so much its bowled like a deers body shape. And by the looks uf it he is well over 200 lbs. there are satalite beds around to probably for smaller bucks and a doe bedding area to the south east so he can watch their entry or exit. Im gonna go back out after this week and film some of it. I gotta set it up perfect
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Re: Bedding, wind, side of the road

Unread postby Boogieman1 » Wed Jan 17, 2018 1:45 pm

dan wrote:Bucks bedding watching a trail, road, or human access usually bed up wind of what they are looking at. Eyes one direction, nose smelling the other.

Do they bed the same way at night? I found a bed last week that was large and just one deer, so I was assuming buck. It was in a spot he clearly wouldn't bed in daylight, but it didn't match up to the winds of late and terrain really had no effect pretty flat area. Just curious in relitively open area under the cover of darkness if they ever bed wind to nose, in this case there was a barrier of a lake on his downwind side.
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Re: Bedding, wind, side of the road

Unread postby dan » Wed Jan 17, 2018 10:32 pm

Boogieman1 wrote:
dan wrote:Bucks bedding watching a trail, road, or human access usually bed up wind of what they are looking at. Eyes one direction, nose smelling the other.

Do they bed the same way at night? I found a bed last week that was large and just one deer, so I was assuming buck. It was in a spot he clearly wouldn't bed in daylight, but it didn't match up to the winds of late and terrain really had no effect pretty flat area. Just curious in relitively open area under the cover of darkness if they ever bed wind to nose, in this case there was a barrier of a lake on his downwind side.

Could be, but I have never seen a deer bed looking into the wind unless a specific threat was noticed and the deer turned to observe it. For instance. There was a big buck that bed in an overgrown field a lot. I could glass it in its bed from a road. Wind from the road had him bedded looking the other way, witch was the way I had to come at him to hunt him, but I noticed he would rotate his head and stair at me the whole time I glassed him. He wouldn't leave, he would just stare.
So, I had a buddy drive to my glassing spot, stop and glass while I snuck in crawling from down wind. I got to 40 yards before the buck new something was up and stood. It worked perfect except, I missed the shot and put the arrow an inch over his back...

In natural undisturbed situations, I would expect mature bucks to monitor danger from all sides, not put both the sight and smell one direction leaving the other vulnerable. With that said, they are just animals, and some will make mistakes.
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Re: Bedding, wind, side of the road

Unread postby wmahunter » Thu Jan 18, 2018 3:33 am

Sailfish, I have a spot similar to that.

road runs E/W deer bed on south side about 100 yds from. parking lot. Another road runs N S about 60 yrds from the bed. So this buck is watching the corner.
Cars are no a problem until they stop then they go on alert and anyone on the road walking.

The best access was from the NW. The wind was our typical NE wind. I blew it this year because I was in the thermal tunnel to far up the side of the slope and watched the wind blow every direction. My next sit a week later I moved out of the tunnel to the west about 60 yds and saw 4 deer. This spot most hunters in there right mind would not sit because I can literally see my vehicle through the trees when I am up in the stand, it is pretty open.

After doing some scouting hikes this year, I have found more beds where deer are watching the road and trail corners.


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