Appalachia- mountain laurel/rock outcropping bedding

[Bowfisher]

For those beasts who hunt Appalachian areas, what have you seen in terms of bedding in mountain laurel and rock outcropping? I have found some good beds in cases just like this. Huge expansive hilly open hardwoods, with small dense patches of rocks and cover on ridge sides and points.

[elk yinzer]

Oh yeah I find lots of good beds in the laurel. I've never really patterned a good buck to a single bed yet though. I've always asserted through experience that our mountain bucks are more nomadic and use far more beds than say swamp or farm deer, and the PSU GPS collars largely support that. But make no mistake I am always hunting bedding areas, I just don't feel I can nail down patterns of individual deer with any reliability.


I have lots of photos of beds like this in mountain laurel. This is a buck bed within a larger bedding area, but it's certainly not worn to the ground. I found it postseason last year and I am going to throw an early season hunt at it this year to see if I can nail anything down. If nothing else it's a good rut area because there is all kinda of doe bedding within a couple hundred yards.

Rocks are an interesting one. Growing up my dad always told me deer hate rocks. I've kinda learned hunting the mountains these deer anyway that's not always the case. The rocks get pretty brutal on our Appalachian ridges. There are rock fields up high that carry on for miles. I've seen quite a few deer bedding up adjacent to the rocks where there is good habitat down below. They definitely use them as a sightline and barrier to seek advantageous bedding position. Those are tough ones to hunt. They really have the whole approach covered, with rising thermals they can be extremely difficult to get anywhere near. And they're big woods deer so even when they get out of bed you don't know for sure where they are gonna go. I've never really put anything together on those deer yet.

Buck bed above rocks. This was on the last day of rifle season, I tend to think this is more of a pressured bed. There was really not a lot of other reason for that buck to be in such a desolate spot.

[flinginairos]

I specifically target patches of laurel and most times it is growing below a cliff ledge with big rocks scattered through the bedding area. All of the bedding areas I have crawled through in early spring have beds beneath the rocks that are worn to the dirt. It seems the bucks like to bed closer to the edge where they can see out and the does just bed everywhere. If I can find the exit trail and play the wind right I have great luck hunting these spots.

Elkyinzer, is that all the thicker the laurel in your area gets? The stuff in my neck of the woods is probably 8-10' tall and almost impossible to get through without belly crawling in it!

[JRM KY]

With most of the clear cuts in my area being almost grown up, I find myself keying in on what your talking about more and more. A lot of times, for me anyway, the beds i know are buck beds wont be in the middle of this and sometimes even further down than what i would consider the edge. I have found several that are below the edge but will have a rock, old root ball hump, or some kind of structure between them and that edge. Once i find one, in the off season of course, i can you key in on that elevation and walk around the ivy and find a couple more for different winds. On a year with few acorns it makes it easier to predict which exit he will take from these beds as i am sure you know. But on a year with an abundant crop i swear i believe most of the time they leave with a wind that is in their favor. In evening sits I try and enter perpendicular to the wind and get below there line of travel. They think that they have the wind in there favor and in all actuality they do its just that those evening thermals are working for you and against him. Most of the ones i have killed out of these setups i have thought the whole time i am watching him that he might bust me. The scent line is that close.

[elk yinzer]

Elkyinzer, is that all the thicker the laurel in your area gets? The stuff in my neck of the woods is probably 8-10' tall and almost impossible to get through without belly crawling in it!

It gets a heck of a lot thicker, some areas are seas of it. I tend to find more deer where it is patchy. We have rhodendron thickets too but those tend to grow down in the bottoms and I don't see deer using them a whole lot. The bears really like to hole up in the rhody though.

[RidgeGhost]

I find good bedding along the edge of patches of laurel. I've found very consistently that if you find the edge of a laurel patch in combination with a good point with a military crest, you have a recipe for a great buck bed. Laurel below the bed for escape cover and hardwood ridges above. Sounds backwards since we normally think cover to back, but that's what I've found.

Bedding in and around rocks has been more sporadic for me. I have seen it, but it's not as guaranteed as a sharp military crest with a high stem count.

[Ditz]

I've found some of my best Appalachian hill country buck beds in areas with thick laurel on the ridge top that stops right around that top 1/3 elevation line and opens into the hardwoods below. Beds seem to be just inside of that transition line in the laurel.

Hunting these long ridges is challenging. Without a definitive food source in the big woods, I have found it very challenging to figure out which directions these bucks are going when they leave their beds. I usually find multiple trails with sign, heading different directions.

[brancher147]

I find good bedding along the edge of patches of laurel. I've found very consistently that if you find the edge of a laurel patch in combination with a good point with a military crest, you have a recipe for a great buck bed. Laurel below the bed for escape cover and hardwood ridges above. Sounds backwards since we normally think cover to back, but that's what I've found.

Bedding in and around rocks has been more sporadic for me. I have seen it, but it's not as guaranteed as a sharp military crest with a high stem count.

I have seen similar to RG. Laurel and wind to back, military crest, looking into more open hardwoods. I hunt around cliffs and boulders, and actually sit in cliffs and on top of a boulder at spots, but I do not see much bedding associated with rocks, for me it is near rocks or cliffs but almost always military crest bedding as described above.