Trouble finding buck beds. Prevailing wind, where do they bed in off winds?

[Mountainpublic]

I've made a couple all day scouting trips to the camp this winter to locate buck bedding. I've spent a lot of time studying maps and satellite imagery. I'm finding a couple challenges. (the area is eastern hardwood mountains)

I'll try to explain as clearly and quickly as I can...

#1 It's harder to find the perfect buck bed to hunt than I though it would be! Low deer densities don't help. Adding to that our mountains run across the state at an angle and have few points that would be "ideal" prevail wind bedding areas. The beds I find are often on a hillside with no point at all.

#2 The biggest challenge is the prevailing wind...actually the lack of a prevailing wind. The mountain can make the wind do almost anything at any given time, everyone knows that. But this year it seems like we never have a prevailing wind. I noticed it in October and now check the wind on a website the lays the wind direction on a topo map, almost every day. And the wind is different every day! Our prevailing wind in hunting season and winter should be from the northeast. Our beds should be on E/SE points. (sunny side). Even though I have only noticed one or two days with the "correct prevailing wind" I have indeed found those "prevailing wind, sunny side, back-to-thick, sight area below buck beds" but they are few.
I think the constant shifting wind has made even the best beds seldom used. Difficult or impossible to find without snow.

#3 I have not found any beds for those off winds. Even though there are more off winds than there are prevailing winds!! Where are the bucks bedding when the wind is wrong?? Keep in ming there are few "points" where they can just shift around a little. A deer would really have to relocate to bed with each day's wind.

I located a bed in December that was a sure thing and hung a camera near. I checked it and did indeed get the buck leaving his bed. So that is promising. I can't find enough of those spots.


Thanks for any input.
Tedd

[ghoasthunter]

I've made a couple all day scouting trips to the camp this winter to locate buck bedding. I've spent a lot of time studying maps and satellite imagery. I'm finding a couple challenges. (the area is eastern hardwood mountains)

I'll try to explain as clearly and quickly as I can...

#1 It's harder to find the perfect buck bed to hunt than I though it would be! Low deer densities don't help. Adding to that our mountains run across the state at an angle and have few points that would be "ideal" prevail wind bedding areas. The beds I find are often on a hillside with no point at all.

#2 The biggest challenge is the prevailing wind...actually the lack of a prevailing wind. The mountain can make the wind do almost anything at any given time, everyone knows that. But this year it seems like we never have a prevailing wind. I noticed it in October and now check the wind on a website the lays the wind direction on a topo map, almost every day. And the wind is different every day! Our prevailing wind in hunting season and winter should be from the northeast. Our beds should be on E/SE points. (sunny side). Even though I have only noticed one or two days with the "correct prevailing wind" I have indeed found those "prevailing wind, sunny side, back-to-thick, sight area below buck beds" but they are few.
I think the constant shifting wind has made even the best beds seldom used. Difficult or impossible to find without snow.

#3 I have not found any beds for those off winds. Even though there are more off winds than there are prevailing winds!! Where are the bucks bedding when the wind is wrong?? Keep in ming there are few "points" where they can just shift around a little. A deer would really have to relocate to bed with each day's wind.

I located a bed in December that was a sure thing and hung a camera near. I checked it and did indeed get the buck leaving his bed. So that is promising. I can't find enough of those spots.


Thanks for any input.
Tedd

they are going to bed in same places on a off wind just a different spot and angle it could be 10 feet or 200 yards that is the tricky part in mountains. when you find a bed really think how hes sitting in it and where hes facing then take a compass reading of exact wind angle he used and write it down with bed location. if the wind is right for the bed when you find it or even better you bump him then check the wind for that day and right that down in notes. I use windfinder it gives you wind history buy the hour if you can age the sign like the rubs you can get pretty darn close to guessing when it was in use. then use that data to hunt and if you find its different adjust your notes. the best way is to put a camera real close to that bed and let it soak the whole hunting season then collect it in the spring scouting then you will have everything then you just need wind history. mountain beds take some time to figure out i have some ive hunted for years and still figuring out but when you do its like clock work every year.

[ghoasthunter]

one good thing is if your back in middle of nowhere the pressure is lower so you will get more mature buck movement in daylight. finding pockets of larger deer numbers really helps where i hunt it could be 2 miles before you find a deer but it seams like they are all there once you find one. hunt the flaming hot sign a buck might only use the same bed for a week during the whole year you could spend a lifetime hunting a bed before you see a buck. but you typically can hunt them more because a buck might take a couple weeks to return anyway regardless of pressure you put on it. i will hunt alot of mornings in mountains then if i catch a glimpse of a shooter i will be right on him the same day. i dont think you can be to aggressive just dont target one buck hunt every mature buck.

[Mountainpublic]

Thanks,
I'm going to go on the the Wind Finder. I never found that site. I was using "Windy".
Maybe I wasn't clear, when I say "where do they bed in off winds" I mean a complete opposite wind. Like his normal bedding would be dangerous, the animal would have to bed on a north/dark side of the mountain to get the security benefits of that wind.
What is the procedure for posting photos on here? I could explain better with a photo.
Tedd

[brancher147]

I see just as much windward bedding as I do leeward bedding in the mountains I hunt. I think the windward bedding is based more on cover than wind direction in my case. But bucks in the mountains move around a great deal and have many many different bedding locations. I did a lot of scouting this winter and did finally find a few buck beds that looked worth hunting, but what I find more than anything are buck bedding areas with seldom used beds. I try to hunt terrain funnels close to bedding instead of hunting actual specific beds in the mountains just because the bucks move around too much. But I have found they will bed in the same type areas on an off wind as they do on a prevailing wind, they will just bed a little differently. But honestly, I do not see as much of a correlation between bedding and wind as most folks on here. And looking back at past wind conditions data may or may not be accurate for a specific spot in the mountains anyway, so how do you really know what the wind was doing.

[elk yinzer]

Not that this really matters in the context of the rest of your question, but the prevailing wind for anywhere in the Appalachians which I think is where you are talking about is Westerly in hunting season. We typically get Easterly winds as a result of the clockwise rotation after a cold front passes through. Of course during hunting season unstable weather is common so you can sometimes have multiple fronts passing through per day with a lot of instability, then add in terrain features and wind can be a complete guessing game. You get to know what the wind does in certain areas through trial and error, and I always find that going higher generally gives more consistent winds if I am unsure. I definitely need more consistent, perfect days to hunt some of my lower spots.

Ghoast nails a lot of points and hunts very similarly how I do. In the mountains think subtle. You seem to oversimplify in terms of a windward vs. leeward on large ridge system. We have these ridges that run SW-NE, like you said a lot of the deer activity does tend to be on the SW aspect that gets more sun. Generally most deer don’t cross all the way over the dark side of the ridge to get to a purely leeward scenario to bed. They find these little terrain undulations and find a subtle point over a barely discernible drainage that creates the leeward wind tunnel effect just enough that they feel protected. And DO NOT forget thermals and how they play into that. I believe the windward/leeward hill country mantra was formed on little 300 foot hills, and mountain deer are a whole different scope. Similarly on a ridge that is 1,000 feet from valley to ridge, I don’t find that the upper 1/3 rule applies nearly as strictly as it does in smaller foothills, especially when they are focused on lower food sources.

Similarly when thinking of points, saddles, benches, you have to really appreciate the subtlety. The smallest little terrain undulation can form these points/benches. A lot of these features you won’t see at all on topos, maybe to some degree with lidar imagery, but mostly you need to see them in person. Mountains may look completely featureless on a topo, but you get there in person and start looking at the undulations, and it’s anything but. There are tons of points that deer love to bed on that just don’t show up on topo maps. Don’t forget your edges too. Mountains have a ton of edge habitat, from the types and ages of trees, laurel thickets, rocks, when you see edges meeting with subtle features you know you’ve got potential.

You often won’t find the perfect buck bed used all the time in the mountains. It’s just the way it is. Mountain deer are more nomadic by nature. If you haven’t definitely look into the PSU deer forest study blog and some of the videos they put out of GPS collared bucks. You’ll pick up pretty quickly bed hunting is a tough proposition, but that’s certainly not to say you can’t hunt bedding areas or occasionally find a killer bed. Food sources are everything but you often won’t find strict bedding-feeding patterns as often they can find enough cover to plop right down where they eat. At the same time bucks have to travel a lot farther in low deer densities keeping a tab on their does, and hunting pressure is lower so they tend to move more during daylight and that’s where we can take advantage. Again like Ghoast said by finding these concentrated areas of higher deer density and putting your time in, because the age structure of mountain deer is generally so awesome, you are eventually going to run into some mature bucks especially when the rut gets going if there are does around.

[bass28]

Here is an example of a buck bedding area I found this February in PA mountains. I jumped him from the bed at way point #115 on a SSE wind (arrow indicates wind direction). He was facing NNW with the wind at his back. It is easy to assume he would be facing directly down the mountain but he was not. Is this a leeward side? Eh, not so sure you can call it that.

Another clue to the mountain bedding puzzle from this example, it appeared that he was bedding at way point #116 earlier in the day. This bed faces directly North and I can recall that earlier in the morning we had a more direct South wind. The wind shifted to slightly from the east an hour into my scouting trip which I am assuming is why he adjusted to #115.

I believe in the strictest sense of beast tactics this buck should have been bedded more toward the ridge point and further up the mountain. I have found lots of bedding like this in the public mountains I hunt.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d770yhidvuetgmg/s%20bed.png?dl=0

[brancher147]

I believe the windward/leeward hill country mantra was formed on little 300 foot hills, and mountain deer are a whole different scope.

Yep. 4000+ft mountains are a whole other ballgame. I do agree that the subtle terrain features are where bucks often bed. The one thing I see consistently is bedding on the military crest. A lot of times this is doe bedding, but the bucks are usually not far off, and that is where those subtle points and benches come into play that you will never find on a topo. You are not going to find the military crest on a topo either necessarily, sometimes you have to walk it. Most of the good buck beds I find are just on a little flat spot maybe 10 feet wide. These flat spots are created when a tree uproots and rots away-what is left is this little flat spot perfect for a deer to lay on. It looks like this.


Flat spot and bed with back cover


Exit trail uphill


Exit trail downhill

This bed was on the east side of a ridge near the top of the ridge. On the west side of the ridge 200 yards away was an identical bed, and there were beds in between. My guess is when a buck is using this spot he is bedding within those 200 yards depending on what the wind is doing, and may move multiple times during the day.

[Mountainpublic]

Thanks, this is helpful. Elk Yinzer that pretty much sums up exact;ly the way I see it too. It just seems like I've had the odd luck since I've been bed hunting that the we had some really backwards winds. This morning it is 9mph from the southeast.
I'll try to figure out the photos for this forum. I have some nice deer on my cams.
Tedd

[brancher147]

I use postimages.org to post images. Upload photos to postimage then copy hotlink for fourms, and paste in the message on this page.

[Mountainpublic]

I'll try to get a pc of map up so you can see topography. In the meantime here are some photos from cameras hung near bedding. I have not been able to put an arrow through one of these. But It's good to know they are there.

Tedd

[ghoasthunter]

these are 4 any wind beds in Appalachian mountains the last pic is what they are overlooking they are about half way up mountain in ledges and saddles with a long running shelf below in thick laural




and these are wind specific the last bed is just above the big tree it has a blow down and cliff as a back stop and is located in cliffs on a narrow ledge others are on points cliff is a west wind and others are south west and north west my longbow marks the bed they like the hemlock trees for over head cover so they can get out of sun or precipitation.

[ghoasthunter]

i also find the bigger bucks using the cliff side beds and any wind beds more the more open wind specific beds will hold bucks and does more often resoning is bucks like to have the vantage and cover as they move around there bedding area during daylight and they do wander but in security only for most part.

[Mountainpublic]

Gohsthunter, those are good ones! Thank you for posting. Those beds are really used. I'll look lower on the hill for those any wind beds.
What side of the hill are you finding them on? Sunny/east side? or the dark side? I have a map I'll mark up to show where I did find beds so far.

Thanks,
Tedd

[Mountainpublic]

Map with the beds I found so far.