Mountain hunting

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Chainreaction
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Mountain hunting

Unread postby Chainreaction » Thu Feb 28, 2019 5:16 am

Hey guys I’m new here and new to the beast hunting style. In the past I’d say I’ve taken a fairly mobile approach but mainly hunted the rut and rut travel corridors. I’d like to step up my game and start really hunting bedding areas and figuring out the deer I hunt, mainly where they bed and spend their daylight hours. We have a good handle on where they feed year in and year out and where to look for that sign. We know of a few bedding areas but have never really explored them to try to figure out when and why they were bedding there. Where I hunt in PA most of the time is up at our camp in the mountains and we hunt square miles of state forest land that gets almost zero pressure in bow season. These mountains are steep, and have elevation changes of up 1000 vertical feet. My main questions are what topo features should I hone in on to find bedding areas, when to find and dive into these areas, and what to look for in a bed to tell me if it would be a good one to hunt. We don’t get up there near as much as we should, so my scouting and hunting time is at a premium when I am there. Im not hellbent on killing mature deer at this point in the game, but am not apposed to trying. My target animal would probably be a 3.5yr old or better mountain buck so roughly 100” plus deer. We do have some nice 130”+ mature deer on camera though, so I would like some tips on locating their core areas as well, however at this stage in the game I just want to get some decent bucks under my belt. Any tips from stand setups to look into to finding bedding areas would be appreciated! Currently running a lone wolf assault hand climber.


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Hatchet Jack
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Re: Mountain hunting

Unread postby Hatchet Jack » Thu Feb 28, 2019 5:26 am

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freezeAR
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Re: Mountain hunting

Unread postby freezeAR » Thu Feb 28, 2019 9:31 am

Another thing to consider is the historical trail cam photo's. Depending on the time and the wind direction the time of the photo you can sometimes get some key insight as to how far away bedding is. In other words if the bucks are withing an hour of sunrise or sunset I would have a strong inclination to think secure bedding is near. By using the wind direction in correlation to the pics you might find a pattern that would point you to some good wind based bedding.
Chainreaction
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Re: Mountain hunting

Unread postby Chainreaction » Thu Feb 28, 2019 10:56 am

Yeah we do need to go back thru our pics as we run about 10 cameras year round and I can remember one early October we had a couple mature bucks and some lesser bucks in broad daylight on one particular camera that has potential bedding close by its on a year round primary scrape that is on the edge of fringe laurel right about the top 1/3 line just on the side of a point and right on the edge of the bench with moderately thick laurel on the other side of the point and a little less thick laurel on the bench headed towards a smaller ravine but theres about a 100yd gap between the patches. The flat of the point on the bench is pretty open. We hung a stand there that we leave out year round and my brother sat it when he hung it towards the end of October then the next sit my dad killed a decent 2.5yr old out cruising on Nov 11th. We had the deer on that camera atleast twice maybe three times between October 1 and when he killed it.
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BBH1980
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Re: Mountain hunting

Unread postby BBH1980 » Thu Feb 28, 2019 11:54 am

Chainreaction wrote:Yeah we do need to go back thru our pics as we run about 10 cameras year round and I can remember one early October we had a couple mature bucks and some lesser bucks in broad daylight on one particular camera that has potential bedding close by its on a year round primary scrape that is on the edge of fringe laurel right about the top 1/3 line just on the side of a point and right on the edge of the bench with moderately thick laurel on the other side of the point and a little less thick laurel on the bench headed towards a smaller ravine but theres about a 100yd gap between the patches. The flat of the point on the bench is pretty open. We hung a stand there that we leave out year round and my brother sat it when he hung it towards the end of October then the next sit my dad killed a decent 2.5yr old out cruising on Nov 11th. We had the deer on that camera atleast twice maybe three times between October 1 and when he killed it.



Sounds like you got a scrape near bedding, which is gold. I'd pull that camera outa there and stay clear other than 2 or 3 hunts a year only hunt it on the right wind. Just my opinion but you got a great spot !


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