North side hills during winter

[gunther89]

In our area, deer seem to prefer to bed on a north long drawn out side hill. Our land has a south side hill that gets used some but not nearly as much as our neighbors north side hill. Both woods are roughly the same type of hardwoods. We have roughly 4-5 acres of standing crops which I would think would encourage the deer to use our side hill more.
Has anyone else seen this happen on there land or does anyone have a theory as to why this happens?

 

[Native Hunter]

My theory would be the possibility of less pressure from human (or canine) activity on the other side of the hill. The fact that you have standing crops probably means a lot of human presence at times (hunting, checking cameras, taking pictures, etc), and it might be enough to push them to the other side. Deer generally prefer to bed on a southern slope in the winter so that they can move into a sunny spot if they desire, but security is even more important. Since you say both sides have similar types of cover/terrain, I'm guessing that some type of human disturbance may be the cause. What about roaming dogs...would the two sides of the hill be similar in that regard?

 

[gunther89]

We had roaming dogs for about 2 days during November otherwise we never see any dogs on our property. Yes we do check cameras every 2 weeks roughly and during summer we have food plots that we are planting. I know the neighbor has his cattle roam his property. I've thought about pressure but I didn't think we put THAT much pressure on our land. I could be wrong though.

 

[Native Hunter]

Yea, that puzzles me. I've been around cattle a lot, and as a general rule, deer don't like to bed where cattle run.