Hunter behavior vs hiker behavior on seeing game

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Aug 25, 2019
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Central Asia for the next 3 years
This last fall I thought that I am going about whitetail hunting all wrong. The kid whose dad's land I hunt on would see a lot of deer while he was pushing a wheelbarrow around and chopping wood. More than I ever did while hunting there twice a week. Obviously, the deer were used to seeing him, his scent, and the fact that he wore bright clothing and listened to music had little to no effect on the deer. I thought next year I will just wear jeans and a Carhartt and chop wood until they get used to be hanging around and I can get my bow out of the wheelbarrow. This made me think a lot on how much hunter behavior (staying quiet or stationary, staying off trails, stalking movements, etc.) vs non-hunter (not quiet, bright colors, stay on trails) behavior affects game behavior.

I guarantee if I the next time I go into the woods, have a loud conversation with regular selfie photo breaks, wear bright-colored, ethically sourced clothing from eco-friendly stores and a pack made from recycled water bottles, and arrive at the trailhead in a Prius with COEXIST bumper stickers, I will probably end up seeing more deer than i currently do. Maybe it's the positive energy crystals...

But seriously, I wonder if deer and other game just realize that a human walking on a path talking represents less of a threat that a human hanging off the side of a tree or attempting to quietly move through the underbrush like any 4-legged predator would do. Obviously at rifle distances the effect could be negligible.

I tried an experiment on my dog. If my hound pup is playing with his toy or just laying around, I can walk up to him and right past him without him looking at me or stopping to see what I am doing. But if I peek around the corner, and then approach him slowly, especially trying to stay out of his direct line of sight, he stops whatever he is doing an perks right up. I've seen the same behavior with horses. So the act of stalking is something that even domestic animals can pick up on.

What are your thoughts on if/how hunter's physical behavior spooks or influences game?
 
Act like a predator and your seen as a predator.

I have noticed this with eye contact in game, if you stare them down they get nervous and will leave, look down, use your peripherals and they don't seem to care as much.

Cut the distance as well in archery by not going in straight at the animal, a predator will stalk right in, I act like I am just going by, if I get busted... nothing to see here just out for a walk....
 
I move sprinklers on the farm and we get a pretty solid amount of deer in the fields. Especially the one on the base of the mountain. I’ve seen when I’m moving sprinklers I can dive the 4-wheeler in the field walk around the sprinkler even start it up and move it and the deer don’t get too worried. They might run up to the top of the field but they’ll come right back down. If I try to be sneaky and quiet they’ll run off as soon as they see or smell me and not come back down for a while if at all. If they do they’ll walk through the draw and watch the field for a while before coming back, or they’ll just run straight down into the lower massive open field where there’s no way for anything to get close to them.
 
Here in the glorious republic of ca lol what you said is a constant joke for us. Should wear bright blue red and yellow colors from REI, be obnoxiously loud in my mask and stay on trail.

The test you did makes sense on both domestic and wild animals - they sense a predator. Doesnt seem that it matters what you wear though since they are picking up on body language. Maybe all those guys wearing blue jeans and red plaid shirts killing game in the past were not great hunters!! They were just out casually walking their gun in the woods…

Theres no way the hippie hikers see the amount of game a hunter sees. Ive watched animals stay just far enough off the trails to see people on them, but not be seen. Its also why almost all human trails have parallel game trails nearby. You can try staying on the human trail and spotting the animals but thats the predator instinct they look for, so Id rather be on their trails moving slow when needed, knowing that if they see me I screwed up, but if they dont, they better hope they arent what im looking for.

The real smart animals dont even use visual cues. There was this one deer in MT that would hang out just off a trail past the trailhead every day I went there, downhill to catch the thermals before light. Damn thing would snort wheeze at the first sniff of anyone every single time. Big, distinct, consistent sound it made. Pissed me off cause it knew the game so well and made sure we know it knows. Tried hitting it with a headlamp too just to see it but nope, off the hill in the brush out of sight.
 
Comparing whitetail deer on a farm and then generalizing that with big game in the mountains is laughable.
 
I bowhunted blacktails a few years back in a local wilderness area very popular with backpackers. I would bump into the same group of does every day in the same patch of woods right off a very popular trail. At one point I was at full draw on one of them maybe 50 yards off of that trail. 3 different groups of hikers walked by before I let down.

There was an absolutely giant buck in the same area whose behavior was radically different than the does and smaller bucks. This is an area where animals see tons of hikers but almost no hunting pressure. He was as paranoid as you'd expect a big blacktail to be anywhere.

The main thing I noticed is that the deer up there were more likely to blow out if they saw you approaching than if they winded you. They just smelled humans all the time and had been acclimated to it. If they ran every time they winded a human they'd be running all day.

I quit hunting up there because I didn't like running into so many hikers. But it definitely had advantages.

Some guys use being non-threatening as a tactic. They call it the "lost wallet" method. You just wander around acting like you're looking for something you dropped. I've played with it and it can definitely work on does/smaller deer. I listened to a podcast where a guy who hunted with a stickbow would find groups of does who stayed in the foothills all year and acclimate them to his presence. When big bucks dropped down for the rut the does would be used to the guy, which got him opportunities on the bucks.
 
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Not totally on topic, but some granola type friends went on a week long guided backpacking trip in the Maroon Bells wilderness. They didn’t see a single deer, elk, or bear all week. It makes me think they weren’t even looking. Or, they were moving after animals already bedded, and also the animals have naturally shied away from these popular trails.
 
All game animals get used to certain things and are less effected by that activity. They get used to hikers and pay little attention to them after they have experienced no threat from them.

At the ranch I hunt tanks with cattle are checked by pickup once a day as long as cattle are in the pasture. Both bucks and does mulies and whitetails will bed undisturbed in the same area between 100-250 yards off the road, as long as I use the ranch pickup truck they are used to. It's loud the mufflers been ripped off they don't even bother getting up. Occasionally I take my hunting pickup which isn't loud and it's a whole different deal they are gone on first sight of the pickup. My opinion is that they recognize the ranch pickup as no threat and my pickup as something that could be a threat. The same way with hikers who they perceive as not a threat because of how they walk and move and hunters are perceived as predators because of how they move and look.
 
I think there’s some validity to this.

I proved it to my brother one day when we were out dove hunting.

I started noticing that as we were caught changing our positions in the field, say between two stands of trees, I noticed dove flying right to us, but as soon as we stopped and slowly crouched down, the dove would do the famous jive and dive and turn away from us.

So next time, I told him, let’s just keep walking, act like we don't see them coming. So next opportunity comes to reposition, we see dove coming our way and we keep walking. Dove continue flying straight towards us, so we keep walking and they‘re still coming straight at us. Eventually, the range is perfect, we stop, but it’s too late for the dove and we both fire. Boom, worked great.

Maybe they think we’re just the farmers walking the fields, but we’re both sold on this strategy! haha
 
I used to ride horses a lot, in a local mountain range that’s full of mule deer. Being horse back if we were quiet you could ride right up on them. They don’t actually know when opening day is, But they’re not terribly stupid. They do know when the woods are full of guys skulking around in camo, touching off their bang sticks, and leaving the carcasses of their friends strewn around the hillsides.

All that being said, I had a small two year-old four-point buck walk right up to me in the Jarbidge mountains last year. This was at least 45 days into the season. I was waving my arms and talking to him, and he still kept coming. I could’ve shot him with my 9 mm. For the rest of the trip we called him Gary. I’m thinking the other bucks also call him Gary. “ Hey Gary, there’s some of those ape critters with bang sticks. Why don’t you go see what they want?”

My apologies to anyone actually named Gary, or Karen for that matter.
 
Jeez just look at turkeys. They are the dumbest damn critters on the planet ……..until you put on some camo and start sneaking around.
 
A few years ago, I was hunting with my buddy at his place. I had to go back to his cabin and was going to meet up with him later. He told me that he wanted me to “just walk regular” up his 1/3 mile driveway because he’d been seeing deer near the cabin.

His place. His rules. OK.

So, as I walked into the driveway from the road, I started whistling a tune as I tromped toward the cabin. And I walked right up on a small buck and shot him from less than twenty yards. He ran right up the driveway and tipped over ten yards from the cabin and, maybe, five yards from the hitch-n-haul on the back of my truck.

I don’t think it’d work with a mature buck and I don’t know that I want to limit myself to that style of “hunting” on driveways, but anecdotally, it worked and it amused me.
 
Fire up a chainsaw and deer will come watch

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Deer and women are the same for me. If they’re too easy to catch I don’t want them…. I wont shoot a deer in camp, and all my women have been a little unhinged lets say. I had one once who was sane and solid as a rock. I got bored I guess. Like Forrest Gump, I am not a smart man.
 
Deer are interesting creatures. The wooded acreage behind my home supports a small herd. Nobody hunts them, at least not on that 75 acres as the land owner won’t allow it, but still they are skittish during season. I’ll still see them grazing in my back yard occasionally but it’s mostly after dark. Yet this afternoon, like most afternoons lately, there were several grazing next to the kids’ trampoline not 50 feet from my back door. They cautiously watched me unload groceries from the wife’s car but kept right on grazing.
 
The first deer my brother and I ever shot we shot at the same time. I had just walked into the woods, found him, and we were talking at a normal volume when a little buck walked 25 yards in front of us.

I am absolutely convinced animals are tuned in well beyond what we think. Old African PHs like Taylor or Destro avoided looking directly at animals when they were close as they felt it invoked the 6th sense.
 
Fire up a chainsaw and deer will come watch

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True story, we shot a deer like that a few times, chainsaw, fire, joking and a few times a rutty whitetail has popped out to take a peak. Put coffee down, shoot, finish coffee and off to gut/load it.

Mind you this is very remote area where they rarely see a human.
 
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