Creek bottoms impossible to hunt?
- Thread starter Bszweda
- Start date
pinetag14
5 year old buck +
Take some cotton balls or milkweed seeds in with you and test out what the wind is truly doing in the bottom. For the cotton balls just rip a tiny, feathery piece off and it will float the wind just like the milkweed. Prior to walking in, use an app like Huntstand to check what the predominate wind direction will be for that day and then you can get a feel for what sort (if any) of swirling there might be. Ideally you could check it multiple times with different winds (ie.. wind from the W one day, from the S on another day, etc) to see what types of wind will accommodate a sit.
j-bird
Moderator
Milkweed pods are great for monitoring wind patterns because they stay in the air for a long distance. Go in with a positive attitude and be prepared to at least mark some good trees to hunt from. Get your scent to blow out into those larger fields and don't go any deeper into the cover than you have to. Look for the existing deer trails and beds and look for a good funnel...it looks like that area should see movement as the deer move thru the area and follow the cover in the process...
Bill
Administrator
When you walk it don't neglect the small field to the s west side of what you have outlined. Particularly the SW corner of said small field. Deer will pop that corner from the timber and cut through the little field heading into that finger.
The wind blows from the SE too. May just have to pick your times.
The wind blows from the SE too. May just have to pick your times.
Tap
5 year old buck +
Waiting for a SSW wind to hunt it is one option. That creek bottom should have some up-draft behaviors with a SSW wind.
With a N or W wind, there will most likely be some bit of swirling, but the amount of swirl will vary as wind speed changes. Even swirling winds are usually part of a pattern. Not an easy to predict pattern, but none the less, the patterns are still there. Swirling is a pattern in of itself. It's an eddy. But every eddy, whether its a water eddy in a stream or a wind eddy in the woods, has an edge. There are seams where an eddy begins and where it ends. You may have to move out a little from the spot that you would like to hunt in order to find the areas where wind is a little more stable.
Swirling winds may be an eddy, but eventually that wind has to exit the eddy and there will be an updraft where it sucks up toward the prevailing winds.
In places like yours, wind speed is a critical ingredient. Prevailing wind direction comes into play, but speed will have as much, or more, influence on what the surface wind is actually doing.
You need to get in there during the off season and do some wind studies. Do it under as many different conditions as you can. Use milkweed. You'll find predictable patterns.
Booner21
5 year old buck +
Another thing is if the spot is dynamite set it up to hunt a time or two a year even if the wind swirls. Save it for when you have absolutely nothing else left to throw at the deer and it is thst perfect time of the year and you cannot think of a place to kill him.
Risk vs reward know it is high impact but high reward., I have a stand in a bottom that the wind swirls pretty bad I have had a stand down there for 6 years now and have hunted it exactly 1 time. Last year I was out of options had a decent wind and killed a mature buck from it and almost killed another an hour later.
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Risk vs reward know it is high impact but high reward., I have a stand in a bottom that the wind swirls pretty bad I have had a stand down there for 6 years now and have hunted it exactly 1 time. Last year I was out of options had a decent wind and killed a mature buck from it and almost killed another an hour later.
Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
