Big woods transition areas

[street28ss]

What do you guys see in big woods for transition areas? For example, do you see deer moving consistently from timber to clear cut areas at night and in the mornings? I'm trying to find general parallels between farm land type hunting to more big woods style hunting. I have a few nice bucks on camera on a clear cut edge and they are almost all at night and the ones I see during daylight almost all the movement is in the direction of the timber rather than the clearing. The amount of pics I have is fairly limited so I don't want to jump to the wrong conclusion.

[Evanszach7]

viewtopic.php?f=159&t=1550&p=14331&hilit=Clear+cuts+Stages#p14331

This should get ya going down the right path

[elk yinzer]

It can be hard finding destinations in big woods to make it work like you are saying, comparing it to farmlands. Which makes getting tight to bedding all the more important, because when deer get up from their beds, you often have no clue where they are headed. And typical fall patterns here, they are bedding in areas with oaks so they can eat right when they get up from their beds.

Deer certainly can transition between clear cuts and open woods, but often they stay in the clear cuts all the time because they bed in there and there is plenty of food also. And everybody and their brother hunts the edges of clearcuts here, so you have to find the edges where no one else hunts. Probably for that reason alone I don't really focus in on them a lot, but if I figure out a big buck is using one I am not throwing it out, I hunt where the deer tell me to.

[BorealBushMN]

What do you guys see in big woods for transition areas? For example, do you see deer moving consistently from timber to clear cut areas at night and in the mornings? I'm trying to find general parallels between farm land type hunting to more big woods style hunting. I have a few nice bucks on camera on a clear cut edge and they are almost all at night and the ones I see during daylight almost all the movement is in the direction of the timber rather than the clearing. The amount of pics I have is fairly limited so I don't want to jump to the wrong conclusion.

I don't have a lot of insight to add to this, but I feel that I see a ton of movement up here around 0900 (lots of deer running across roads around this time). I'm assuming that it is movement related to the day winds kicking in and deer moving to find their day bedding areas. I would assume that areas between a food source and their day beds would be a type of "transition area".

I've seen deer using clear cuts early in the AM to feed. I bet after that they linger in the outskirts, or bed down and then probably relocate once the day winds kick in.

I may be completely full of it, too.... I'm still trying to dial in how deer use the big woods, too.

[headgear]

From the sounds of things those late night pics mean they are feeding in the clearcut but I doubt they are bedding in the nearby timber. More than likely the bedding is anywhere from a half mile to several miles away. In the bigwoods everything is spread out more and the food sources are not as defined, big bucks can and will travel a long way from bedding to food and they could do a lot of foraging in the spaces between. If you can post a pic of the area zoomed out a bit we might be able to help point you towards bedding.

[street28ss]

From the sounds of things those late night pics mean they are feeding in the clearcut but I doubt they are bedding in the nearby timber. More than likely the bedding is anywhere from a half mile to several miles away. In the bigwoods everything is spread out more and the food sources are not as defined, big bucks can and will travel a long way from bedding to food and they could do a lot of foraging in the spaces between. If you can post a pic of the area zoomed out a bit we might be able to help point you towards bedding.

Thanks a lot, I will definitely do that when I have the chance. There is also a big swamp/marsh that is a few hundred yards from this area that I know deer are in sometimes. Historically this clear cut edge has shown good rubs and scrapes too.

[Jeff25]

Most of the clear cuts I see around here in big woods areas typically are 90% briars, don’t really know how deer use them compared to other cuts with more saplings. I tried scouting one and found a few beds but never actually hunted it. I typically just look for points or ridges that have been cut in the past on arial maps and set up on a terrain feature nearby.

[magicman54494]

What do you guys see in big woods for transition areas? For example, do you see deer moving consistently from timber to clear cut areas at night and in the mornings? I'm trying to find general parallels between farm land type hunting to more big woods style hunting. I have a few nice bucks on camera on a clear cut edge and they are almost all at night and the ones I see during daylight almost all the movement is in the direction of the timber rather than the clearing. The amount of pics I have is fairly limited so I don't want to jump to the wrong conclusion.

Lots of stuff here..... where to start?

Assuming that big woods is like farm is a mistake. dont do that.
Assuming direction based on a trail cam picture is not wise.
Stop assuming and start breaking it down by the little that you do know. They are there at night. so either they are bedding a distance away or they are pressured into not coming out until after dark. Hunting them there is not going to work so you are going to have to try to determine where they might bed and try to hunt closer to the beds. In my areas its hard to find a clear cut or select cut that is not pressured by bird hunters and their dogs. You might try scouting to look for tracks and rubs and droppings along transitions for clues or place some trail cameras out to try to nail them down a little better. Knowing where and how bucks bed will really help you but that is too big of a topic to cover here.
In my area, about the only cuts I hunt are the overgrown ones that humans have given up on. Deer often bed right in them or on the edge of them.

[BackCoverBowHunter]

When I see deer moving in the evenings typically coming down the mtn. They stop before the clearings check everything out. Then they book it to the next transition. I have seen this a few times. Has anyone else?