fishin coyote
5 year old buck +
Gravel, looks like he has a bad eye also
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- Thread starter Catscratch
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BuckSutherland
5 year old buck +
That's a big 10-4.
I haven't made the hunting opener in about 5 years. This year was no different. I had 5 cameras out from Labor Day until the rifle season closed last Sunday and then I finally checked them. My 40 was not hunted for the first 5 days of the season and had no human intrusion for nearly 65 days. By the time I got there it was completely blown out by everyone else in the neighborhood. My cameras showed pretty good activity all the way to opening day and then action slowed dramatically. Give me superior cover over all the food in the world cause when the shit hits the fan the deer by us are completely hidden and gone until 12-3am. The few deer that I did see this year were the most skittish deer I have ever seen.
Monday morning I woke up to 3" of fresh snow. I went for a walk in the woods to see what the deer were doing. They were mostly headed 1/2-3/4 of a mile away from everyone deep into the Chippewa forest. The stuff they were moving through was so thick it was hard to walk in. You couldn't shoot 10 feet in the stuff they were in. Good news is we have a fair amount of very educated bucks that survived. Doe and fawn population is very thin in the area and a far cry from what it used to be. Wish our zone was bucks only. We could sure use it. People would actually be seeing some deer if our population wasn't completely in the toilet. The MN DNR shit sandwiches continues for our hunters.
BuckSutherland
5 year old buck +
You are taking the tree tubes vs cages argument to the extreme!
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Foggy47
5 year old buck +
I've been thinking about starting a new thread on "how to provide cover in foodplots to prevent nocturnal deer issues".........or something to that effect. It's just amazing how few deer present themselves as the gun season starts. I have not had a single photo of a daytime deer (buck, doe, or fawn) in three plus weeks. Firearms opening weekend has become the only chance to shoot a deer without being a violator......unless you hunt deep cover. <----that is almost a must these days.
Bowsnbucks
5 year old buck +
Deer go nocturnal here in Pa. too. It usually starts when archery season is a few days old in October, when daylight sightings go down the tube. The evening food plot visits with light are mostly young deer. Backtracking the trails that come to food plots / orchards will tell you where the deer are hiding out until a couple hours after dark - and it may be a good distance. Gun season here ........ I swear they go underground in tunnels. Even crews of drivers often don't jump any deer. Spring, summer, early fall - - - live deer sightings are easy, on cams too. Put some human activity & "people stink" in the woods ..... nocturnal they go.
Feelslikefar.
5 year old buck +
Now that I have a small patch of land I can finally start my experiments. lol
I took a bar of Irish Spring soap, rubbed it all over a tree, then stuck the rest in the crotch of the tree. Checked the cam three weeks later and there wasn't any less or any more pictures than usual. (surprised) I want to try some dirty socks and underwear, maybe an old pair of shoes.
I've always semi joked about putting aftershave in a drip bottle and leaving it in the woods year round. Get the deer used to it. Then on opening day you slap some on and head out.
Sort of reverse psychology / gorilla warfare.
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Gravel Road
5 year old buck +
Yes, he only has one eye.I guess the depth perception isn't too bad
It's funny how someone says the rut is late or they didn't have a rut.It happens every year and depending on weather and pressure determines alot of how much is seen during the day.If you aren't seeing deer on cams I would put up more cams in other directions and see if there are still deer there.More and more deer are avoiding cams,especially flash cams.Pre rut was the same as always and lock down happened and then alot of bucks were moving again during what is usually thanksgiving week which fell alittle on late side this year.
Foggy47
5 year old buck +
I've got plenty of deer around.....but they do not enter a food plot or use any trails during daylight hours. They keep a pretty low profile for the past few weeks. I do not have a daylight pic of a deer in over three weeks. Making me re-think our hunting strategies and stand placement going forward. Not to mention adding more tall vegetation to our food plots for better security. Less food / more cover.
We did have quite a few active daytime pics and deer through opening weekend. Nobody hunted for 10 days that followed. Then my son in law and a freind spent 3 days hunting......and saw none. And my cameras remain in the same place they were.....and now deliver no daytime pics. There is a definite pattern here.....and it happens each year. We need to hunt heavier cover....and I made some changes to that idea this year that paid off. Next year gonna do more. Hunting more cover is our future. Maybe some still hunts too? Dunno. I used to hunt that way.....with a degree of success.
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Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
That’s interesting. Hows the pressure around you? Unfortunately deer dont operate in a vacuum so while you may have been careful on your place the neighbors could have been relentless and it has them tunneling like the viet cong. I would think they would return to a more normal pattern within a few days after the pressure subsiding. I’ve listened to some researchers say even deer on heavily hunted public land generally return to a normal pattern mid week after a heavily hunted weekend. I don’t think deer naturally want to be nocturnal so it would seem to me there’s something making them.
I’m in a heavily hunted area and rifle season just ended Sunday. I’m still getting plenty of daylight activity, even mid day stuff
I’m in a heavily hunted area and rifle season just ended Sunday. I’m still getting plenty of daylight activity, even mid day stuff
I went a different direction, I slather myself in deer piss all year long. I figured why not....Now that I have a small patch of land I can finally start my experiments. lol
I took a bar of Irish Spring soap, rubbed it all over a tree, then stuck the rest in the crotch of the tree. Checked the cam three weeks later and there wasn't any less or any more pictures than usual. (surprised) I want to try some dirty socks and underwear, maybe an old pair of shoes.
I've always semi joked about putting aftershave in a drip bottle and leaving it in the woods year round. Get the deer used to it. Then on opening day you slap some on and head out.
BuckSutherland
5 year old buck +
I liked how this ended.
PatinPA
5 year old buck +
I tried washing my hunting clothes in normal detergent this year. My neighbors are always outdoors and the deer bed right up against their houses so I thought maybe it's weirder to the deer trying to be scentless or having a cover scent. It was inconclusive. I don't feel that I saw any more or less deer and I don't feel I was winded anymore than normal.Now that I have a small patch of land I can finally start my experiments. lol
I took a bar of Irish Spring soap, rubbed it all over a tree, then stuck the rest in the crotch of the tree. Checked the cam three weeks later and there wasn't any less or any more pictures than usual. (surprised) I want to try some dirty socks and underwear, maybe an old pair of shoes.
I've always semi joked about putting aftershave in a drip bottle and leaving it in the woods year round. Get the deer used to it. Then on opening day you slap some on and head out.
Feelslikefar.
5 year old buck +
I can only imagine what deer smell and what they must do or not do with that information. I have smelled deer in the woods several times. Every time I have it's been sort of like "the idea of a smell". Usually I think to myself "you're nuts, there's no way you smelled a deer you're crazy". And then sure enough a minute or two later...
Same with when you shoot one, they stink. You think "how can they smell anything else, stinking like that?" I guess like your own bad breath, the brain shuts it off. We get so used to things like laundry soap the same way that we barely smell it. I've had that a couple times while hunting, "thought" I got a whiff of laundry soap, then thought it must be my imagination. Only to bump into a woman walking her dog about 20 minutes later. Thought to myself "How far away did I smell her that it took that long to walk into her, heading towards the each other on the same trail? If I could smell her, imagine how far away a dog or a deer can". Had the same thing with another hunter's residual cologne. "You're crazy." thinking it must have been a brain/memory thing, since I'd slept near (smelling) their jacket the night before. Found out later they were about 400-500 yards up the hill from me.
What I do now is, for about 3 weeks before season I wash all my clothes in scent free soap, so I don't accidentally bring things "stinking" like underwear that went through the regular wash. It's also amazing how long stuff holds the smell. Holding a hunting sock to my nose, I don't smell anything. Stretch the sock out and suddenly I'm whacked in the face with the smell of laundry soap. (Despite it having been washed in scent free stuff several times, and it been years since it was washed with regular soap.) Or when I'm in camp and can smell the laundry detergent, so I'll dig through my bag of hunting clothes and find the one sock that accidentally got in the regular wash. "If I can smell it that strong, good lord what the deer must smell." That's why I thought I'm never going to have them not smell me, maybe I can get them used to smelling me. If you lived in a state where baiting was legal, this would probably be pretty easy to do. Get them to associate certain smells with food.
Then we have other things, scent issues we can't do anything about and I've always wondered how the effected deer travel. The cabin is heated by an old kerosene stove. You can't help but smell the chimney exhaust when you're in the yard or down wind of the cabin. And that time of year and where we are, they wind direction is constantly changing. Are we causing a giant plume of new unusual, unnatural stink around the property that keeps the deer away and changes their normal travel routes? Wouldn't surprise me. But we can't really do anything about it.
Same with when you shoot one, they stink. You think "how can they smell anything else, stinking like that?" I guess like your own bad breath, the brain shuts it off. We get so used to things like laundry soap the same way that we barely smell it. I've had that a couple times while hunting, "thought" I got a whiff of laundry soap, then thought it must be my imagination. Only to bump into a woman walking her dog about 20 minutes later. Thought to myself "How far away did I smell her that it took that long to walk into her, heading towards the each other on the same trail? If I could smell her, imagine how far away a dog or a deer can". Had the same thing with another hunter's residual cologne. "You're crazy." thinking it must have been a brain/memory thing, since I'd slept near (smelling) their jacket the night before. Found out later they were about 400-500 yards up the hill from me.
What I do now is, for about 3 weeks before season I wash all my clothes in scent free soap, so I don't accidentally bring things "stinking" like underwear that went through the regular wash. It's also amazing how long stuff holds the smell. Holding a hunting sock to my nose, I don't smell anything. Stretch the sock out and suddenly I'm whacked in the face with the smell of laundry soap. (Despite it having been washed in scent free stuff several times, and it been years since it was washed with regular soap.) Or when I'm in camp and can smell the laundry detergent, so I'll dig through my bag of hunting clothes and find the one sock that accidentally got in the regular wash. "If I can smell it that strong, good lord what the deer must smell." That's why I thought I'm never going to have them not smell me, maybe I can get them used to smelling me. If you lived in a state where baiting was legal, this would probably be pretty easy to do. Get them to associate certain smells with food.
Then we have other things, scent issues we can't do anything about and I've always wondered how the effected deer travel. The cabin is heated by an old kerosene stove. You can't help but smell the chimney exhaust when you're in the yard or down wind of the cabin. And that time of year and where we are, they wind direction is constantly changing. Are we causing a giant plume of new unusual, unnatural stink around the property that keeps the deer away and changes their normal travel routes? Wouldn't surprise me. But we can't really do anything about it.
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Feelslikefar.
5 year old buck +
Zippity-do-dah The first deer on my cell cam since Nov. 14th. The mountain is just bustling with deer activity! lol
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
I went hard down the wormhole of scent this year (maybe we can make a thread about this not on trail cam section). I was getting busted despite having a crazy scent routine, it was driving me insane. Listened to a couple podcasts with a guy who trains trailing dogs particularly for law enforcement. The gist of it, you can’t fool a deers noise. That soap, smoke, cover scent, all being smelled by that deer, dog, bear, etc BUT he also smelling you. I think he said 88% of human scent is just a genetic footprint we all have, in fact certain European countries carry a “scent bank” of criminals in case they ever need to track them later on. This is our odor from hair, skin, breath, farts and so on. Then a certain amount is from diet and last a small percentage from soaps and deodorants and the like. So animals like deer have the ability to break down each individual scent and react without processing it. This particular olfactory organ they have (we don’t) is hardwired directly to their brain. So they don’t think about scent, they react. You can fool their eyes and ears because they have to go through multiple processes before the brain interprets it. Essentially our eyes are more like their noses. We see something and we don’t have to break it down. We see and react.
So if you covered your self in coon piss to mask your scent you aren’t. The deer will smell the coon piss and you. He can smell both plain as day. If by some means you were to overpower a deers noise, he will likely get spooked by that and leave anyway. He can’t use his number one like of defense. This is above my scientific pay grade, but scent molecules attach at the atomic level not the molecular level. So without some ability to change scent particles atomically we are just introducing other scents as opposed to actually changing what is being distributed through air currents. The example was, we walk into a kitchen and someone has just baked a cake, we smell a cake. A deer or dog walks in and he smells the egg and the flour and the icing, etc.
Sorry long winded but scent control fascinates me. I would go through all these painstaking steps as a bow hunter to try to make myself indistinguishable to deer and was still getting popped. The morale of the story, understand wind and thermals and play them to the best of your ability. Everything else is most likely comfort food.
So if you covered your self in coon piss to mask your scent you aren’t. The deer will smell the coon piss and you. He can smell both plain as day. If by some means you were to overpower a deers noise, he will likely get spooked by that and leave anyway. He can’t use his number one like of defense. This is above my scientific pay grade, but scent molecules attach at the atomic level not the molecular level. So without some ability to change scent particles atomically we are just introducing other scents as opposed to actually changing what is being distributed through air currents. The example was, we walk into a kitchen and someone has just baked a cake, we smell a cake. A deer or dog walks in and he smells the egg and the flour and the icing, etc.
Sorry long winded but scent control fascinates me. I would go through all these painstaking steps as a bow hunter to try to make myself indistinguishable to deer and was still getting popped. The morale of the story, understand wind and thermals and play them to the best of your ability. Everything else is most likely comfort food.
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