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What do you make of this observation?

T

Turkish

5 year old buck +
I was doing some pondering the other day and it dawned on me that you folks may be able to help.

I have hunted a specific lease my whole life. One constant has been the lack of afternoon sightings. The property is virtually all hardwood timber. It’s selectively thinned every 8-10 years and it typically has decent bedding scattered throughout, just more scattered the longer it is after a harvest. We have small food plots but we don’t hunt them and they don’t seem to be a daytime attractant per cameras.

What do you make of the boringly consistent observation that morning sightings are so much more numerous than afternoon? This stretches across decades, deer size and sex, all stand locations. What should that be telling me?
 
Afternoon movement tends to gravitate towards their main food source. If your whole area is hardwood timber, their food source may be the nearest woody browse/regen/clear cut type of area. In mixed ag areas, it could be alfalfa, corn, beans, etc.

What it would tell me personally is that I need to create more feeding opportunities on my (your) lease. If that's not possible, you are severely limiting your huntable areas and the bed to food travel is the most predictable patterns that whitetails make.

Outside of 2-3 (arguably more) weeks of the year, nearly every move made by a whitetail is food related. It is the most important aspect of hunting, knowing where they want to eat.
 
It might have something to do with topography and thermals in the area. If the area they are going to or from is difficult for them to use thermals to their advantage, then they may be moving before or after the thermals shift. An example could be if your food sources are on bench flats at higher elevation then they would feel comfortable staying a little longer and when they leave still get the benefit of rising thermals around them as they head down to a lower elevation to bed. We have areas that have great food that are near where the deer are bedding, but they do not use those sources until after the thermals have shifted - either after mid-morning or sometime after sunset. When temperature shifts are more extreme, the thermals tend to be stronger and deer movement more predictable based on them.
 
I've been in that situation before, and it's tough. You can't control the pressure easily. I believe it is the scattered bedding and scattered food. It's hard to do on a lease, but if you could concentrate highly desired food in one area only, I think you would see more defined movement.
 
Seeing them in the am gives you all day to retrieve them!

U could take up catfishing in the afternoon ?
 
Id say its a transitional property, and probably doesn't have ideal bedding close enough to food if you aren't getting daylight pictures.
 
Primary food sources are woody browse and almost continuous cherrybark and water oak acorns during hunting season. There definitely is no concentration of food, other than the neighbors’ feeders. However as non-ideal as that is, I guess I would expect the morning sightings to be more similar to the afternoon.
 
Are your foodplots scattered across the property?
 
BenAllgood said:
Are your foodplots scattered across the property?
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Yes, but the topography and land use here means that our ‘food plots’ are hidey hole plots to others. They are not productive, not sought out by the deer, and not at all a destination. If I were the only one in charge I wouldn’t use them as plots.
 
Turkish said:
Yes, but the topography and land use here means that our ‘food plots’ are hidey hole plots to others. They are not productive, not sought out by the deer, and not at all a destination. If I were the only one in charge I wouldn’t use them as plots.
Click to expand...
That's what I was thinking. The deer are scattered because there's no definition to movement. The lack of evening movement has me thinking they are sticking tight to cover which has daytime browse. In the mornings, they're taking their time getting back to their daytime loafing areas. They don't have to move much during the day. That's just my thoughts on it. I never really saw those defined bed/food repeatable patterns until I started hunting more north.
 
Go back to the basics, deer need 3 things ... food, water, & cover. If you are not seeing late afternoon movement, there is something missing ...
- Not enough food
- Is there any water?
- Bedding/cover is important
- Too much dropped slash from logging without any easy trails

Deer will follow easy to walk through trails. Find the location they are moving through your property in the am as there is a good chance they are heading to bedding cover. Start your trails in that area to go through your property. Then seed these trails with clover. Keep the sight lines short. Then if you see deer sign, you may be able to add some small transition plots.

The fact that there is baiting with feeders is really a huge issue relative to movement. If there is easy food from baiting, and little pressure, the deer can bed near the feeders. Timing of when the feeders go off can really impact their movement.
 
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Thanks. I feel like I’m pretty self-aware of the biggest shortcomings. I just haven’t been able to reconcile them to what I consider above average morning activity and near lack of evening activity.
 
I had the exact same experience for years on a big woods lease in South Georgia. Zero ag within miles. All production pine and hardwood draws. Evenings were so bad. Never understood when people would talk about liking evenings till I moved to more open ag ground. I don’t have an answers cause I’m still puzzled on what we could have done differently from a hunting perspective
 
Howboutthemdawgs said:
I had the exact same experience for years on a big woods lease in South Georgia. Zero ag within miles. All production pine and hardwood draws. Evenings were so bad. Never understood when people would talk about liking evenings till I moved to more open ag ground. I don’t have an answers cause I’m still puzzled on what we could have done differently from a hunting perspective
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That’s interesting to hear. I’m not complaining. Just really always been puzzled by it. It’s been so consistent for my 30 years hunting there, there’s definitely a reason behind it, whether I’ll figure it out or not.
 
Who ever has the most attractive food source will draw the deer if food is lacking. If the neighboring properties are using feeders about your only option is to try to "out bait" them in my opinion.
 
You say you have "decent bedding", are there better and larger bedding areas nearby?

What kind of activity does the area see? I've been on ground where there is so much human daytime activity that the deer just don't move until after sunset yet they work their way back to their beds during early morning up to as late as 11 or so.
 
The good bedding areas see no human activity, especially as the other members get older and stick to the easy spots. These are ridges, ridge sides with tree tops and briars adjacent to small canyons impassable to humans. With a high degree of confidence, I’d say bedding quality is on par or better than what the neighbors have, due simply to more active timber mgt on our spot.
 
Stand locations could favor morning movement areas over afternoon movement areas. Maybe if stands were closer to the good bedding areas, the evening movement sightings would increase.
 
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