Late season distance from bed to feed

[1STRANGEWILDERNESS]

Howdy all,
Looking for some insight. I’m in the northwoods, mostly cedar, spruce, tamarack swamp. Some small humps of maple that are very mature (no browse). Anyway I have a spot with a small standing corn patch. It’s only a couple acres and as you can imagine the deer are coming out of the swamp and hitting it hard.not much left.. It’s close to human activity. Maybe 100 yds.. but there is no real AG in the region. A few hay fields but they don’t pull deer this time of year. The deer are hitting it after dark and I’ve got a jumbo on camera. We’re talking like 12 am though. I’ve tried to back track him but there are so many tracks and the snow is knee deep so I can’t make much out as they all fill in.

I have 3 ideas of where he might be bedding and I’m gonna move in to look. Two of these areas are 400 yds or less away and 1 area is more like 3/4 mile to a mile. If he doesn’t show up till that late I would think he’s bedded far away. Then again there’s 20-30” of snow.. would he want to travel far at this point?

There may be some leftover feed piles in the area from gun season.. maybe he’s there first..

[dan]

How long you have to hunt? If you got a while you might want to monitor the camera and let him get comfortable and move in on a cold day when he is getting closer to daylight on the camera.

[1STRANGEWILDERNESS]

How long you have to hunt? If you got a while you might want to monitor the camera and let him get comfortable and move in on a cold day when he is getting closer to daylight on the camera.

Dan, Thanks for the reply
I’ve got till Jan 1st and I can get out 2-3 times a week. I like that idea a lot. Ive been scared to spook him off. I think he comes from public and crosses the corner of a small parcel on his way to this spot. An out of towner was up hunting that parcel heavily, using an atv to get to his blind and such. The buck completely disappeared shortly after that began. The guys been gone a few weeks and the buck is back.

[Bio1]

I’ve killed a couple good bucks late season a minimum of 1/2 mile from the food source when I knew they weren’t hitting it til late. I’ve also killed others literally on the food when there was no pressure. I like Dan’s idea. If you hunt it 2-3 days a week probably zero chance you will kill him on the food source, if at all.

Good luck,

Lee

[1STRANGEWILDERNESS]

I’ve killed a couple good bucks late season a minimum of 1/2 mile from the food source when I knew they weren’t hitting it til late. I’ve also killed others literally on the food when there was no pressure. I like Dan’s idea. If you hunt it 2-3 days a week probably zero chance you will kill him on the food source, if at all.

Good luck,

Lee

Thanks for the info,

I don’t plan on hunting him on the food source for a while. I’m all sorts of scared to push him out. Probably just monitor the cams and hope I’m off work during major cold snap toward the end of the month.. I want to run some more cams to try and figure him out a bit more but I don’t know that he will tolerate it.