Tackling heavy gun season pressure

[Bowhunter99]

Question for the guys who deal with heavy gun season pressure. How do you guys typically handle all of the people? It’s pretty obvious that most of the “natural” movement disappears after the first day or two. Do you continue to hunt the way you have all bow season? Try to completely remove yourself from the large majority of gun hunters by getting to very hard to access locations? Or stick to driving bedding areas?

[d_rek]

The majority of gun hunters are generally very patternable - hunting the same blinds/stands/spots throughout the duration of their gun season. Like other seasons, you can use this to your advantage and hunt the areas they either can't or wont go to.

I will say the biggest difference that gun season makes in deer movement, that i've observed, is to make them mostly nocturnal outside of unpressured areas - thick bedding, private land with no hunting pressure, difficult to access locations - even more so than what you might experience earlier in the season.

[backstraps]

I think you have to continuously change your tactics throughout the season.

Deer are changing their patterns with or without hunting pressure.
Gun season with all the increased hunter numbers, deer drives etc will definitely move deer around.

What I have noticed is, the bucks often will circle back into their core areas. Late season will find them residing as close to food sources as they can. This helps conserve energy and minimize their daytime movements.

I often begin catching bucks back on cameras in the same areas as late August. I dont hunt any agriculture areas, so late season food sources are similar to early season....any natural browse !! Especially late season, honey suckle (or anything green and pliable)

Known bedding areas that are close to food gets my attention. That being said...even if those beds aren’t wind specific beds, I try and key in on them. Late season with zero foliage offers a long range visual for bucks

Sorry to chase after rabbits there...maybe something typed will be helpful

[1STRANGEWILDERNESS]

In my experience a lot of pieces of public didnt have enough acreage or did not offer the cover needed to have any safe zones for deer. Had a lot of small parcels of hardwoods around. I’d check those off the list or do a speed scout if we had snow, just in case.. I guess I always had somewhat of a generic approach. Find heavy cover, hole in the wall spots, and spots I needed my boat or canoe to get to. Better than half of those areas would be crap but seemed I’d always get on deer eventually.

In the bigwoods now the pressure I deal with is very spread out and it’s short and sweet. I have found most of the deer in generally the same areas they were at the start of hunting season. They are on pins and needles though, moving late. Lots of does bedded right up tight to food sources making it tougher yet. Been thinking on an approach to one spot for a week now haha