This year, late in Aug, I found a bucks bed on this small oak ridge surrounded by CRP & transition areas. It was a bed for a NW wind. During one AM scouting session early in the bow season I watched him head down the route I anticipated him taking (downwind from the NW bed), until the wind shifted at sunrise from NW to SE. The buck turned around, headed back out in the field about 40 yards for 5 minutes to get a feel for the wind and headed off in a different direction to another bedding location.
His actions got me thinking about secondary bedding locations. I had good idea for a SE bedding location on this property and had hunted it opening day in the evening with no resolve, but it was a fair distance away from where this buck was and I didn’t think he would travel that far during daylight hours of early sept. This being said I referred back to the topo map and started looking for possible SE bedding areas close to this NW bedding area (thinking he would want to settle in somewhere close so he wouldn’t have to walk all the way across the property during during daylight hrs).
None of this info really meant anything to me until I went back and looked at the weather the day I hunted the SE bedding location and the buck didn’t show. The weather did the same thing it did on my AM scouting session, shifted from NW to SE at around sunrise. So now, when I plan an evening hunt I’m going to look at what the wind does from an hour or two before sunrise & throughout the day. If the wind keeps a steady direction, I’ll hunt where I know their corresponding bedding areas are. If the wind makes a major shift around sunrise or later, I’ll try to focus my efforts on potential bedding locations near the bucks probable location at the time of the wind shift. Does that make sense?
To wrap this rambling up, I shot a different buck from another public spot a couple days later so I never did get to go back and figure this buck out, but does anyone have any thoughts, besides potential confusion lol
?