Beds.

Discuss the science of figuring out our prey through good detective work.
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dan
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Re: Beds.

Unread postby dan » Fri Jan 01, 2016 11:01 pm

fishlips wrote:I struggle with this one a lot. I have found a fair number of beds over the years but have not found many primary beds and don't think I am great at spotting a primary bed.

Not to hijack the thread but how do you guys know you are looking at a primary bed vs a seasonal bed or secondary bed?

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most primary bedding areas have lots of beds in a small area. Most are obvious once you find them because of the amount of bedding. They are usually in small spots people rarely go. There are some cases where they are hard to locate, like in low density areas that don't have a lot of deer. In those cases sometimes it can take hunting time to really figure it out.


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Re: Beds.

Unread postby dan » Fri Jan 01, 2016 11:11 pm

whitetailassasin wrote:
dan wrote:
Bayshorebuck8 wrote:Wondering how one goes about solidly nailing down what time of year a bed gets used,besides actually busting them out. i find alot of beds doe and buck but am newer into hunting beds and am finding myself losing confidence on my setups on beds i found in late winter spring especially around home in the marsh.

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My most success comes from hunting beds used all year... Primary beds. Generally primary bedding areas have a lot of buck beds in a small area... But, I do still have success on seasonal beds. Some are easy, cause they revolve around a certain food source that is only around temporarily, or because its cover based and the cover is only good at a certain time frame... Others are not as easy. In the case where you don't know, or want to confirm your guess, my advice would be to throw a stand at it early season, once during rut, and once late season and see when it has action...


Just to piggy back off what dan said, using trail cameras on the entrance/exit trails of those bedding areas and monitor them from a safe distance. Using rain days and also when you sneak in to hunt that day. If you pull the card and you have photos or you don't you will know. May take a season or two. Also monitor the tracks(fresh) leading into those beds as best you can. I'd also locate the preferred food sources around the areas and pressure. Every little bit helps. Sit some observation stands as well, for go a few hunts until you locate one moving through in daylight hours.

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Agreed... I have used trail cams from a "safe" distance, and observations, but one thing that opened my eyes was seeing how Beast member "Stanley" does it... He will put trail cameras on the exit of a bedding area and leave it there all year just to get intel, and not hunt it till the next year... That was huge to me, because "hunter greed" of wanting success now made it seem like wasting a spot that could be hunted that year...
But the open mind part of me realized that sometimes it takes many years to figure out a bedding area by just throwing a stand or two at it a year... He gets it done in one season and gets a real accurate reflection of whats really going on...
1 hunt can skew that cause its such a tight time frame. It "may" have been the only day a big buck was there all month, but now you believe thats the time to be there. Or you saw nothing and really the deer heard or saw you... With a one season camera history you know how often, and what time frame.
I think there is a good reason Stan has such a huge wall of big bucks...
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Re: Beds.

Unread postby dan » Fri Jan 01, 2016 11:17 pm

That makes sense. Do any of you guys intentionally bust deer out of bedding areas just to figure out when they are using it? I am assuming that this can hinder your success in that area for the year, but may help in future seasons.

I like the trail cam idea and observation sits. I just haven't ever committed to those things. After two years of eating tags, I am getting antsy to push the envelope a little more because what I am currently doing is not getting me all the way there. Definitely am learning that this can be a big mental challenge forcing myself to do things differently and do things that might be counterintuitive. Observation sits seem so logical, yet every time I have considered them, I talk myself out of it because I'd rather go into an area to "hunt".

Andrae intentionally busts deer out of bedding a lot more than I do. It seems to be one of his top ways to find big bucks... As for me, I do it to, but not as much. I love to hunt gun season by sneaking into known and suspected bedding areas, and just scouting for beds with a gun in my hand. When you jump bucks out of beds and really look at where they were it gives you a lot of intel for the next season, and sometimes good intel for this season.

We all struggle with observation sits... A lot of my best observation spots are decent hunting spots anyway, some are some are not... But a lot of the time you see something then you move in and the deer don't show the next day. But, a lot of the time they do... It can be a mental struggle when they don't... My best luck on observation stands has been late season when they really lock into "bed to food" travel patterns.
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Re: Beds.

Unread postby Matty » Sat Jan 02, 2016 8:46 am

Wow Stanleys method is awesome. Never thought to hang a cam for an entire season solely for next years intel. I will have to try that.

As far as the original question goes, let me preface my response with the disclaimer that I'm certainly no Dan or Andrae, but here's my take on this:

RUBS: I'm surprised no one mentioned rubs around the bed. If there are scarred up trees, a buck obviously beds there in hard-horn (which usually overlaps hunting season) and depending on how the trees look, could be a spot that has been a buck bed for years.

TRACKS: Already mentioned... but that's one of the other tell-tale signs I use.

DROPPINGS: I know, sounds crazy right? Hear me out. Deer seem to poop a lot when they first get out of bed and all around where they browse, right? So if there are lot's of really big droppings of various age nearby, I assume that a buck uses the area pretty regularly. Finding big fresh droppings in a nearby food source or even in the staging area during hunting season. He's probably home.

BROWSE: I'm by far no expert on deer nutrition, but here's my take. Most of the hunting season, they eat woody browse, right? So if I see a lot of heavy browsing, I know they probably spend at least mid-fall and/or winter in the area. The rest of the year they don't eat the woody browse and instead munch on leaves and forbs more (as far as I know). Maybe I'm wrong, but that has always helped me narrow down seasonal use of areas.

JUMPING THEM: I had never heard of Andrae DAquisto until maybe the mid to late 90's (I think)... and never heard of any of his techniques until recently when I joined here. Turns out I stumbled on a few of the same general tactics these guys do just because I didn't know any better. By the late 90's I had already bumbled around the woods like a moron for a decade. I had no idea what I was doing, was too stubborn to read up on it and didn't know any people that would teach me. So I would stumble around and eventually into bedding areas and jump deer. I would then figure that was a good spot and either set up and hunt it or come back some other time to hunt it. Killed a lot of deer without knowing any better. Many of them returned the same evening. I gradually learned to use it to locate bucks. I still use it to this day and I'm not afraid of jumping most bucks once even during the season. As long as I don't appear like a threat, it doesn't seem to matter too much. Some don't return, but the majority of them do. Some of them allow you to constantly harass them....as long as it's not in a "threatening manner"....like if they catch you in a stand, or sneaking around, that's a lot more bothersome to them than just taking a "dopey walk" like you're a lost bird-watcher. Might sound stupid, but that's what I've seen over the years.

Now...I'm not hanging the quality of bucks that these guys do, so maybe my advice is deemed worthless. But it's really just my observations from years of taking this sport way too seriously...and if it matters at all, I have done ok for my area over the years. Not the best, not the worst. There are a few guys around this area that are lights out stone cold monster buck killers...I am not one of them. Then again, if I didn't "choke" so much, I'd have a lot more "woods cred". Instead I am haunted by an unfortunate past filled with misses and even worse big wounded bucks. :oops: Anyway, going off topic...Hope some of what I wrote helps.
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Re: Beds.

Unread postby RidgeReaper » Sat Jan 02, 2016 12:35 pm

dan wrote:
Bayshorebuck8 wrote:Wondering how one goes about solidly nailing down what time of year a bed gets used,besides actually busting them out. i find alot of beds doe and buck but am newer into hunting beds and am finding myself losing confidence on my setups on beds i found in late winter spring especially around home in the marsh.

[ Post made via Android ] Image

My most success comes from hunting beds used all year... Primary beds. Generally primary bedding areas have a lot of buck beds in a small area... But, I do still have success on seasonal beds. Some are easy, cause they revolve around a certain food source that is only around temporarily, or because its cover based and the cover is only good at a certain time frame... Others are not as easy. In the case where you don't know, or want to confirm your guess, my advice would be to throw a stand at it early season, once during rut, and once late season and see when it has action...


I hear a good bit about primary beds, I was talking to my old man today about all this stuff and told him about finding primary beds. To that he asked how to tell if its a primary bed? Well i had a tough time trying to explain it. Im not fully sure how you can tell without experience per say. What do you look for...other than multiple buck beds clustered together?
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Re: Beds.

Unread postby RidgeReaper » Sat Jan 02, 2016 12:43 pm

Now i realize my last question was pretty well answered. My bad for not reading ahead before I tossed my question out there. An other input is always helpful tho. Thanks!
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Re: Beds.

Unread postby dan » Sat Jan 02, 2016 10:03 pm

RidgeReaper wrote:Now i realize my last question was pretty well answered. My bad for not reading ahead before I tossed my question out there. An other input is always helpful tho. Thanks!

No problem... It ain't easy to describe, and its a question I get asked a lot... I struggle to explain it myself. Sometimes its quite obvious, other times even the best of us read the sign wrong and think its primary, or not primary, and we are wrong.

When I get into the "all about bedding" chapter of the new DVD book, I am hoping I answer that question cause I have some real good bedding area comparison video footage. Actually there is some real good primary bedding footage in the swamp bedding section too... I know it don't help you now... But it should when its done.

When I think of the best primary spots I have, they are obvious once there found, but finding them can be tough. Usually over looked spots. But you get in there and there are lots of beds and deer sign. I think sometimes they are mistaken for just doe bedding areas because there often is not a lot of rubs in these spots depending on how much competition there is for the bedding. Some of them are tore up with rubs, some only the entrance and exits have rubs...

At Daves farm the primary bedding is really hard to see, and has not had hardly any rubbing in recent years, and the beds are real hard to see. This is because there is a real low deer density there creating no competition for the beds. And we only get bucks bedding there some of the time cause of the low numbers. But, when there on the farm, they are bedded in those spots 90% of the time.
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Re: Beds.

Unread postby fishlips » Sun Jan 03, 2016 7:18 am

I think some posts on this thread hit right home that not all scouting will pay off this year necessarily. I think I have been impatient with some properties. Some may take a few years of scouting and hunting to kind of figure out unless I devote 100% of my time to it.

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Re: Beds.

Unread postby EthanHogan1 » Mon Jan 04, 2016 3:18 am

Great thread from everyone

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