Here’s a rather long winded update: I’ve hunted the Rainy River district in NW Ontario every year (except 2020) since I bought land in 2003. We saw the decline in deer numbers really hit in about 2015 after back to back deep snow winters. It started to rebound a bit but then more snow and 2023 & 2024 were pretty slow. I rarely shoot a buck up here but that said, I haven’t seen a truly good one, say 150 class, since 2015. I hunt shooting lanes I’ve cut in mostly thick areas + a friend’s land with open pasture bordering hundreds of acres of bush. I don’t bait but think all other hunters up here do and many have huge cleared shooting lanes/raised box blinds, and they do see more deer, but for the most part their sightings and success on bigger bucks are also down dramatically since the ~pre-2015 timeframe. A few nice bucks are still taken, with bait and some by sheer perseverance & exploring more territory. One positive change is that with reduced deer numbers + increased enforcement against road hunters, the number of hunters that show up just to road hunt and, in some cases trespass, are way down.
Wolves have been around here forever but now do seem more prevalent than in the past and they do kill mature bucks; I found a fresh pre-rut big one some years back. In the past I mainly hoped they’d at least not move into my areas during season because the deer seemed to lay low even when they were abundant, but now they are spotted regularly by locals. Last season I had 6 wolves chase a doe by me. Three of them were completely naked of fur, two had less mange and one looked “normal” and I figured “good, they’ll start to die out”, but my neighbor has seen packs this year within 1.5 miles of my cabin and also down the road where I hunt, including pups. So things seem still outta balance here.
I just arrived last night for a 10 day hunt. One group hunted north of me and headed back to return in a week. They said hunting “sucked” due to warmth and deer numbers. I also hunt up there and sign is not prolific. Around my camp sign is a bit better and there are some doe groups down the road, but I know it’ll likely be another slow hunt.
I hunt pretty primitively, mostly brush blinds and some with a boulder seat & backrest, but that’s how I learned to hunt deer & how I like it. I like to be out where I can hear and smell everything. I’d probably do better watching a pile of corn but am ok without it. Around my cabin there’s pasture that attracts deer & provides forage, but north of here about 10 miles it’s all bush. There was a tremendous amount of clear cutting up there, mostly poplar, before I started hunting and some afterwards, but the great forage that provided is now grown up and deer numbers just can’t rebound to the early 2000s level. Farther north than I go are more recent cuts that should be relatively better.
I’m nearly 75 and arthritis everywhere tells me I’m nearing the end of this but I wouldn’t have changed a thing, other than taking a few big bucks vs passing shots years ago, when I was not good at judging these big bodied bucks. I’d been on a couple guided hunts before I bought this and while I scored a bear and two caribou I decided I’d rather just hunt my own way, for whitetail bucks. If you like big woods hunting where deer densities are low but there’s a chance at a big heavy buck, you might like this. If you want to see multiple racked bucks while you wait for your big one, there are probably better locations.
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