Manipulating deer activity...

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Lockdown
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Re: Manipulating deer activity...

Unread postby Lockdown » Thu Mar 04, 2021 5:17 am

RiverBottoms wrote:
Lockdown wrote:I have also seen evidence of deer bedding in my natural ground blinds. If you clear the ground next to an obstacle, there’s a good chance they’ll use it if it’s in a suitable spot. They love that cool black dirt...


Interesting, I hadn't thought of this.


If there’s a bedding area that I want them to use, it’s common for me to “spruce up” their beds a little. Sometimes that means clearing sticks from their bed, sometimes I’ll add branches when they’re bedding in a blowdown or next to a bush to try and make it more appealing. Or I might be trying to block their vision more.


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Lockdown
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Re: Manipulating deer activity...

Unread postby Lockdown » Thu Mar 04, 2021 5:20 am

Hawthorne wrote:I used to spray trails in spring with with a heavy dose of round up thru thick crp fields. Would kill the vegetation down to bare ground. The deer would automatically take them over. Some areas of the trail got muddy and you can read tracks. Otherwise the rest of the field you couldn’t see tracks. Got on a really nice buck from a track I saw on the trail. Almost got him. Was before I was a member here


Great tip! I read an article years ago talking about using a backpack sprayer to steer deer through tall grass, but I’ve never done it.
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Re: Manipulating deer activity...

Unread postby headgear » Thu Mar 04, 2021 5:40 am

I have been known to make large pile of brush in known bedding areas that lack a little cover just to make them all the more attractive. Also blocking certain trails with blowdowns to help push them a little closer, of course this can backfire on you too and push them a little further out. Also been taking a chainsaw to my back yard stand to make some better bedding, once the kids are older and not roaming all over my land it might actually work.
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Re: Manipulating deer activity...

Unread postby Boogieman1 » Wed Mar 10, 2021 3:41 pm

For whatever reason manipulating deer movement always just came natural as the thing to do for me. I remember being very green and hunting a big creek. The creek had 3 crossing points spread out over probably 3 quarters a mile. Just made sense to block off 2 of em to swing the odds. I don’t only do it for stand sites I do it for trail cams. Just seems like the thing to do. Doesn’t take much effort at all and there’s usually ample dead brush on both public and private to accomplish the mission. Will say blocking off stuff is pretty simple, steering deer takes a lil trial an error. Really a game of angles. But it’s fun for me and I enjoy it. Trappers have done it for 100s of years.
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Re: Manipulating deer activity...

Unread postby 1STRANGEWILDERNESS » Fri Mar 12, 2021 12:42 am

I mess around here and there dragging a limb or something. Last spring on my own land I knocked out lower branches on some higher mounds that were growing spruce. Some got taken up as bedding, some didnt. This winter I blazed some trails. A couple converge in front of an old deer blind so maybe it’ll be a good spot To park myself a Couple hunts in rifle season. The trails come through the swamp from some remote hardwood islands. They lead to higher ground and the main food sources.

I had a skid steer with a mulching head open up some 100 yr old skidding trails through the cedars. I hope the deer use them but if not that’s ok. Least I can run em in the winter to get timber out.
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