Hunting Western PA "mountian Bucks"

[Lungbuster]

Now I know what us western pa'ers call mountains ain't quite like the ones out west, but I'm looking for some help and this is one of the best hunting sites I've found, and I figure there has to be some similarities between it all. I do a good bit of bow and rifle hunting but it's mainly around smaller wooded lots and farm land. The past few years though I've been migrating north to our camp to hunt but it's been a tough transaction. I'm hunting the alleghney national forest, big woods for our part of the state. Grandpa and I use to rifle hunt it but without snow we had limited success.

The areas I hunt I get back in 1-2 miles usually, sometime a little less, some have forest roads you can somewhat access doing the winter. The hunting pressure is very lite if any at all. I know deer are there as I've seen them in trapping season and there's a ton of deer sign from rubs, scrapes, beds and poo. For example I went 2 miles into a creek hollow, after a half mile in I started seeing rubs and scraps. For the next 1.5 miles till I turned around and came back out I seen over 300 buck rubs in the creek bottom and on the mountains sides, numerous scrapes and good used deer trails. I did see two small buck and a doe but nothing like the sign showed or the Bucks I've seen trapping the outer edges of the area. I have 3 areas like this that I hunt, openish creek bottomes with a mix of thick red brush in areas to open timber on the ridges. I have tried slowly stalking along which works ok with snow but not real good without it and sitting in a stand in the creek bottoms, or on stands of oaks that are producing but the area is so big.

So I guess my questions are, how do you hunt big bucks in the big woods? They have so much area they could be in and travel with no defined food source(like corn or bean field). When your seeing that much sign what's your go to hunt first? What's your preferred way to hunt in archery? What about rifle? Thanks for taking the time to read all this, I feel like hunting up there, I'm starting all over again. Any tips or advice is more then welcomed

 

[Glendon Mullins]

I've hunted the mountains of Virginia and West Virginia all my life so I can help you here, from what I have drove through PA our mountains look the same.

I hunt alot like you say, walk in a couple miles, see a bunch of sign but few deer. That's simply mtn hunting the way it is. Unless there are alot of hunters pushing the deer all around.

If there are alot of hunters, try to get in "travel funnels" which would be low spots on ridge tops, gaps, etc. where deer will use as the easiest escape routes.

If there is not many hunters concentrate on areas close to to bedding areas, hard to beat a good acorn flat, right next to a laurel thicket

Also dont overlook clear cuts and get right in them or adjacent to them, you might not be able to see very far in them, but the deer use them...alot

Use maps to your advantage, google earth or topo maps. Try to find the before mentioned areas, gaps, funnels, little finger ridges coming off of big ridges etc. or a flat just below the ridgeline are awesome spots as bucks usually bed there, look 3/4 the way up the ridges. If there are cliffs in your area, a little gap between a set of cliffs makes great travel funnel

One common technique is if you use a climbing stand, get in a laurel thicket super early and try to beat the bucks back to their bedding area from being out all night chasing the girls.

 

[Glendon Mullins]

and as far as food sources, when your deep in the woods, it's just simply acorns. Red Oak, White Oak, Chestnut, Hickory etc.

Whitetail prefer the smaller white oaks, if you find some trees droppin them and fresh sign of deer feeding there, sit there! lol

If the mast crop is a good one and there are acorns everywhere, it makes for tough hunting, you almost have to hunt the bedding areas because they can sleep, stand up, eat, and lay right back down.

If the mast crop is spotty,meaning some acorns here and some there, then scout out where the acorns are and hunt near or under them. Most people consider this the best hunting and usually harvest records show that

 

[PMcGee]

I've hunted up Lycoming and Tioga counties the last couple years in mid October and the hunting is tuff. I think your best bet is in November when the bucks are cruising. Years ago when I hunted the archery bear season up there we would see some big bucks. We see a few big buck when driving for bear in rifle season. I hunt some big woods around home as well and while I see deer pretty much every time out it's not until the last week of October until I start seeing decent buck.


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[Desk Jockey]

I still hunt in NY and eastern PA including Some state game lands. Walk, sneak, sit 10 minutes to an hour, get impatient, sneak into another area. Mostly with a bow. Unless you are a straight ninja or very very lucky, the chance of sneaking up into bow range on an older, wary buck is pretty low. Based on my 3seasons of hunting I see some decent bucks the first two weeks of season and then they vanish. From what I see from trail cams, they go nocturnal by the first couple of weeks of bow season until the rut because of hunting pressure.

I have jumped a few bucks out of bedding areas but not gotten close enough for a shot with a bow. My most productive spots have been travel corridors. Small valleys. Stream crossings. Bases of cliffs. Oddly enough I have had good luck on “entry points” to Some state game lands. Basically setting up on travel corridors inside the SGL on the way to AG fields or other open areas where deer feed. Catching them on the edge of a sanctuary where they will travel through and stage up late afternoon.

Don’t discount dirt roads and trails. Getting in deep is good but moving quietly is critical. I will walk trails if I want to cover ground more quickly than I can trying to moving quiet through leaf cover.

 

[adamm88]

Look up Wild at Heart on Viemo, They Hunt Allegheny national forest and are very successful at doing so, If for nothing else its a very entertaining and you support someone local.

I would stop at the regional office and talk to one of the forest managers, I stopped at my local state forest office this summer and had a conversation with one of the mangers about bears and one of the fenced clear cuts, Saying i wanted to "see one", he gave me some good info then i asked about deer hunting, Like any hunting enthusiast he went on and on lol, He was a good source of info and i never let on that i was looking for hunting information, i was just asking generalized questions, Plus i had my 1 1/2 and 4 1/2 kids with me top check out what they had to offer, it couldnt have been a better trip. My entire point of stopping that day was looking for hunting info, I didnt leave on what i was looking for because you never know if they are hunters or anti hunters.

I would still hunt personally, during rifle thats how i have seen the most deer, with large vastness of the area and low pressure im sure you can get into them. It gets you to cover ground and instead of them walking to you, you walk to them. I recently heard a pod cast about white tail hunters hunting bucks during the rut in archery like they do elk, Have a caller and and shooter, have the 50-60 yards down wind close to a thick bedding area and the back person rattle/Grunt/Bleet, When the bedded buck hears the rattle they come in from down wind hopefully past the shooter, I have every intention of doing this next year during archery season, Im not sure if its going to work but it cant hurt to try, i can only imagine the adrenaline if it works.

One more thought would be to go with a flintlock, You should have snow cover so you can track and then you can use your buck tag as a doe tag if desired.

If you go post how your tip goes it would be interesting how it goes.

 

[timekiller13]

If you are not seeing deer where the sign is at, then that means the deer are more than likely using the area at night. Deer sign, especially real good deer sign, like tons of rubs and scrapes, can distract you and cause you to hunt the wrong area. When I find an area that is loaded with sign like you are talking about, my immediately thought is "gotta hunt right here!" Then, I step back and take a look at the bigger picture. Is the area that is loaded with sign an area that a big buck would likely show himself in the daylight hours? How far is all the sign from bedding areas, food source etc. Where are all the does at? Where are other hunters likely to be? Tons of sign can often attract other hunters, which means a spot can get heavily pressured and cause the deer to stop using the area or only use it at night. From my experience on both public and private land in WNC (much like your PA mtns, huge tracts of nothing but hardwoods), when I find sign like you are speaking of, I go looking for a laurel thicket, rhododendron thicket, a 3-10 yr old cutover, old burn area (a few years old) or some other thick place. Big old mtn deer want cover and food close by. Especially later in the season like now where they are worn down from chasing, breeding and being shot at.

About 10 years ago I was hunting an area on public land similar to what you described. Loads of buck sign, huge rubs, scrapes the size of car hoods. I spent weeks hunting that area and only saw a few small bucks and does. Yet, I knew a big buck was using the area because I would find fresh sign every few days. Finally, I got down after one uneventful morning hunt and started scout/hunting my way through the woods. About 800 yds from where all the sign was, I found an area that had been severely damaged by an ice storm several years earlier. Many large trees had fell down, limbs broken off. The canopy had opened up and allowed new, young growth. It was about a 2 acre area that was thick with fallen trees, briars and new young growth. From the ground you couldn't see 30 feet. I found a tree along the edge that was still standing and climbed up in and could see pretty well. Lo and behold, about 30 minutes before dark, a beautiful 10pt popped up out of a nasty tangle of fallen trees and briars. Unfortunately for me, I blew the shot and watched as one of the biggest deer I have ever seen run off, unscathed but more educated.

Think of it this way. It's like if you are looking for a particular person. You know that they like to go the mall and a couple restaurants, but you never know exactly when they are going to be there. But, if you can find out where they live, you go to their house, because more than likely they will be there everyday.

 

[ResearchinStuff]

Get some buddies and do drives until you're all tagged out. There is a very good reason that drives were the go to method for 70 years in PA, during rifle and muzzleloader seasons it just flat out works.

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[Desk Jockey]

Get some buddies and do drives until you're all tagged out. There is a very good reason that drives were the go to method for 70 years in PA, during rifle and muzzleloader seasons it just flat out works.

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This. A groups of guys drives a ridge that includes a small piece of my property every year during flintlock. That apparently tag out every year. I have never been able to join but hear it is fun as well.

 

[Lungbuster]

Thanks everyone, you guys have given me a ton of info and I feel I have a place to at least start now. I'm going up for our flint lock season to hunt but my days will be limited due to work. Of coarse now that rifle season is over we have 8" of nice snow that be great for stalking along slow hunting. Once work slows a bit this winter and we got some snow on the ground I'm going to go back in and start scouting and to run some trail cameras. Try to key in on the areas you've suggested and go from there. I'll be sure to post updates and I'm sure I'll have more questions along the way. Thanks again everyone!

 

[elkyinzer]

Creek bottoms can be extremely tough to hunt because of wind and thermals. They are often loaded with sign but despite the temptation, I only have a couple setups and they need the absolute ideal, consistent wind direction to even think about hunting them. A lot of creek bottom sign is nighttime sign too. Due to falling thermals at night and rising thermals during the day, most mountain deer have a general pattern of up-down travel. Even come the rut, if does are bedded down in thicker bottoms such as around beaver ponds, bucks will cruise the surrounding ridges because they scent any does down in the bottom.

Otherwise, for archery, hunt the rut is my advice. October 25 to end of season. Because you don't have those reliable bedding to food patterns, and deer are more nomadic, early season is extremely tough. A hard cold snap a little earlier in October can get the deer on their feet, but otherwise they really don't move much and you need to be hunting extremely tight to their beds to have any chance. It would be really great if PA would give us one more week of archery season because I like the week after our season goes out the best, but really starting about Oct 25, every year, you are into that "anything can happen" timeframe. If you can be responsive and plan around weather conditions, great, the colder the weather the more daylight activity you are going to see.

In the rut I mostly hunt the does. Focus on their bedding areas. I have a few areas that are reliable every year, others can shift around. A good indication of these areas, aside from just finding doe beds, is that they won't have much buck sign, then overnight they will just blow up with rubs and scrapes. Conventional wisdom always says to hunt downwind of their bedding areas. I don't take that approach. I don't think bucks randomly cruise downwind of them. I hunt right up tight to them. I think bucks scent check the does' travel routes, even to the point of trying to intercept them. I've seen a few of the classic rut chases start, and that is how it happened every time.

Be patient, as in spend a shit ton of time in the tree, but be decisive and aggressive. Be mobile, hunt fresh sign. Pre-set stand locations have their place, and guys kill deer out of them, but you'll kill more deer in the big woods if you are mobile and responsive to fresh sign. Just be in a tree a lot during the rut. Bucks are on their feet and can cruise through any time of day. I either do all day sits or get down between 1 and 3 PM and make a quick move.

I would rather overplay my hand and bounce to another area than be overly conservative and just sit some theoretical travel route and hope a buck wanders by. If I am sitting up in the tree and I see a lot of deer activity out of range, I'll make a quick adjustment to where I am seeing the deer. For a week of rut hunting I'll want at least a half dozen, maybe a dozen good stand locations generally planned out, for different wind directions and so that I can do some rotating around. Obviously for morning sits I will have a pre-planned tree picked out, but in the evenings I prefer to just have a general area in mind and scout with the stand on my back to set up on the freshest sign possible. Don't just move for the sake of it though, if you are having good action in an area, hunt it.

In rifle you can't dispute the effectiveness of drives, but I've never been a part of a gang that does it. Opposite of archery season where I try to get away from everyone, I like to look for areas that have some pressure that bumps deer around. I usually sit thick bedding areas the busy days. I take my vacation during archery season, but if I had to hunt the weekdays I would still hunt/bump shoot. Guys in PA like to hoot and holler on their drives and if I hear one going I'll hustle over and set up on the backside of their drive in escape cover, a lot of deer circle back on drivers and very few of the drives set up for that.

 

[Ratamahatta]

I hunt this way in Daniel Boone National Forest and I feel everyone's pain. I hunt these hills rokslide style by hiking in and setting up camp and hunting from ridge tops down. This year we got hit hard by ehd and I got a big goose egg. The bucks weren't cruising during the day at all and I heard them moving around midnight to 2 am.

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[TauPhi111]

I grew up in PA and have hunted Allegheny National forest several times growing up. Shot my first buck there when I was 16 or 17. Several friends who have camps up there say the deer herd is not what it used to be though. Deer numbers have been down. I've also hunted a great deal in the areas around and just south of PSU in my years there as a student, and I come back every year to hunt deer and bears with friends.

As said before, in the big woods, stands of acorn producing oaks is a key food source. As for habitat, if there are any clear cuts, I'd hunt those. We do a lot of drives, and what we drive is the nastiest, thickest, thorniest crap we can find, and we push out tons of deer (whether or not we shoot them is a different story). If you're solo, find a way to hunt those areas or maybe hunt an edge where they're moving from their sanctuary to feeding areas. We also find lots of deer in thick laurel and rhodo. If you have a crew of guys, driving clear cuts and hillsides choked in laurel can be really effective.

In recent years, I have tried hunting the thick stuff solo, because I know deer are there. I still hunt, but until recently I didn't see many deer. I've found that I was moving way too fast, and deer would probably see or hear me before I see them. Now I've learned to move excruciatingly slow. If you're thinking "at this pace, I'm never going to cover this area by X time" that's probably about the correct speed. Move slow enough that every step is deliberate and you can slip around branches and briars without making noise while constantly picking apart the landscape in front of you, and you can walk up on a lot of deer.

As far as deer biology and behavior, Penn State has put out several good journal articles on deer behavior during hunting season compared to the rest of the year. Look some of those up and you will learn a lot.

 

[juan trueno]

Hunting Western PA "mountian Bucks"

Depending on time of year- and what the hard mast is doing/ has done. I either hunt between the highest water I can find and a bedding area in an area where white oaks are dropping.

Or I get up above that creek bottom somewhere where halfway up a spur or whatever where the thermals can protect me from the swirling wind and wait where I can see down in to that highway and they cruise.

Start figuring out where those seeps and springs come out of the ground right below a gap and watch the busiest ones.


Edit: if I only want deer I might watch that bottom exclusively. Lots of times you shoot a bear up in the gap.

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[7mmremmag]

Rifle hunting with no snow: Still hunt fingers in the nastiest stuff you can find. Get away from all the other hunters. Mature bucks are typically nocturnal hate other deer unless its the rut. If you watch the wind and move slow you can sometimes get a quick shot off before they head to the next ridge/finger/etc.

With Snow: Walk until you find an abnormally large set of tracks and track it. If the deer is walking straight, walk fast. If it is meandering, slow down and glass ahead.

Oak flats almost always hold deer, especially the smaller thick growth intertwined with large trees.

I have killed legal PA bucks in Northwest PA 10 out of the last 12 seasons using these two tactics.