Lousy Hunter

[Macintosh]

Were I deer hunt, there has NEVER been a 125" buck killed or even on any of our cameras in the past 10 years.

I know that if I want to shoot a buck, I need to be willing to shoot something in the 100-120" range. They will simply NOT live to be bigger than 125" where I hunt. 10 years, meticulous record keeping and 20 trail camera have proven that. We have tried letting deer live and the neighbors kill them. Always hated saying that but in my area it is 100% true.

This is an issue of many factors, hunter preference as well as habitat. Not the least of which is that 99% of the whitetail "media" out there is based on something (private, heavily-managed land in midwest ag areas) that simply isnt even in the same solar system of reality for many of us. It IS easy for a newer hunter to get discouraged because "everyone" says they should be doing this or seeing that, and it simply doesnt apply universally. It sets an unrealistic expectation for tons of folks. Obviously its up to all of us to level-set expectations and apply what we read to our own situation, but I've seen this numerous times, and 100% it is unhelpful.

Example based on actual data here that I saw recently, this post reminded me of it--I have literally seen multiple people APOLOGIZING for taking a "little" 100" deer where I often hunt (basically center of the dark green area at the North end of the 1st map), when in reality that deer might very realistically be fully mature, it just happens to live in an area with a super-short growing season, harsh winters, infertile soil, large Wilderness areas with no logging, and zero agriculture. Context is everything.

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[ctfxd3]

Anyone else love hunting whitetail but are pretty lousy at it? Haha

No matter how much time I do studying, researching, reading about whitetail and what they like as well as finding sign, I’m not good at getting on them.

I do hunt public so that presents its own challenges but still.


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I can relate to this and felt this way for a while. Something I really love but just couldn't make it happen on a decent buck on public land. The public land around me gets hammered with hunting pressure. Year after year I told myself I would scout more in the offseason and put more time in but always ended up getting side tracked or life got in the way. At the end of last season I tagged along on a few shed hunts with a buddy of mine and was blown away by the knowledge I was gaining trying to find bedding etc in search of sheds. It really opened my eyes to how and where these deer are moving in the late season and I was able to start connecting the dots on patterns and movement. Having some success actually finding sheds also helped motivate me to continue putting the miles in during the offseason. Mid summer I identified an area I thought would hold mature bucks and set one cam. Within a few weeks I had a lot of doe movement and come August-September I had consistent mature buck movement on that cam. The very first sit in that tree this year I had multiple deer moving around me at sunrise and shot what I consider a solid 8pt public land deer. When I got down to look for my arrow, I bumped an even bigger buck coming down the same run. My first thought after taking the shot was holy shit all that time and preparation worked. I guess the moral of my rant is that I've learned that boots on the ground and putting in the miles in the offseason is what kills deer. For me, shed hunting gave me a reason to get out there and put the miles in and so far it has paid off.

 

[EdP]

My biggest frustration is the lack of detail in advice given. For example, the advice "Find where they bed and where they feed and set up in between." This commonly given advice is next to worthless to a new hunter without information on what to look for to identify bedding areas and feeding areas. What is missing is EXACTLY what to look for to identify a bedding or feeding area?

 

[Gobihawk]

Public land find less used access points. Example: take boat in backside. Between 10:00 and 2:00, lots of hunters get bored and hungry. Take advantage of their unorganized small deer drives.

Cover scent Dead Down Wind. Spray, boots, legs, hat, and gloves.

Look for parts of deer; legs, ears, nose, horizontal body, etc.

Find a bedding area start near the food source. Follow well used trail going away from the food source. At some point the trail will get hard to follow. Zigzag back and forth looking for fresh sign. Examples: tracks, poop, pee, rubs on trees, deer beds, live deer. There should be multiple trail with less sign. Follow multiple trails to find deer beds. Do this before or after hunting season if possible. This is how I do it. Hope this help. I

 

[Jpsmith1]

All hunters lose game. You have no legal responsibility to fill out a tag on an animal you have not recovered unless your state game laws say so. Your moral responsibility is to make a through search. Then move on if unsuccessful. As far as getting over excited goes, hunting small game can help with that (squirrels, groundhogs, etc).

You are correct that I have no legal obligation to do so.

It is, for me equal parts self-flagellation and a way to atone for my mistake and the privilege of living in a state with plentiful game and having 5 tags in my pocket. I feel an obligation to the game that it deserves this level of dedication

 

[LostArra]

My biggest frustration is the lack of detail in advice given. For example, the advice "Find where they bed and where they feed and set up in between." This commonly given advice is next to worthless to a new hunter without information on what to look for to identify bedding areas and feeding areas. What is missing is EXACTLY what to look for to identify a bedding or feeding area?

In some areas I hunt (zero agriculture crops) the deer seem to live on acorns, rocks and maybe a little ragweed or green briar. During big acorn years I've watched them feed on acorns then walk away 10 yards and bed down. Two hours later they are back up, walk 10 yards and eat acorns again. It makes intercepting them kinda tough. They may not move out of the area until dark.

 

[Jpsmith1]

My biggest frustration is the lack of detail in advice given. For example, the advice "Find where they bed and where they feed and set up in between." This commonly given advice is next to worthless to a new hunter without information on what to look for to identify bedding areas and feeding areas. What is missing is EXACTLY what to look for to identify a bedding or

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Worse yet, I've heard advice like "keep at it" or "your deer is out there" these imply that there aren't different or better things you can do to see more deer. I think they come from a good place, I think that people mean well, but they're not helping.

I'm a shit hunter but I am A LOT better than I was 10 and 15 years ago because I've started paying attention. I run several cameras, I spend a lot of time in the woods and I mark sign when I find it and I try to understand it IN CONTEXT rather than "oh, a deer was here" I try to understand why that deer put his foot there or rubbed that tree or scraped that patch of dirt. I'm probably not right but I am learning.

 

[np307]

I dont know much about WV's deer population or the way you hunt, but I hunt pretty much exclusively public land here in NC and kill a few each year. Never killed a big one or even really tried to, so if that's your deal I'm not much help. But the single biggest change I made to help me consistently find deer was to stop hunting from a stand. Don't get tied to a spot. My absolute favorite way to hunt is to go in blind to a section of public in the early afternoon and just work terrain features to find hot sign. Once I find the fresh stuff, I'll make a setup. But I dont care about the clock. Ive kept walking until less than an hour to sundown and then found a spot, sat down, and killed a deer. You have to be where the deer are. Not what looks good.

If you aren't bumping deer, you aren't hunting close enough to them in my opinion.

So often I would feel pressure to get up a tree because "its getting time for the deer to be moving." But 3 hours of sitting in a bad spot is never going to produce better than being able to write off a good bit of acreage due to lack of sign.

 

[Q_Sertorius]

My biggest frustration is the lack of detail in advice given. For example, the advice "Find where they bed and where they feed and set up in between." This commonly given advice is next to worthless to a new hunter without information on what to look for to identify bedding areas and feeding areas. What is missing is EXACTLY what to look for to identify a bedding or feeding area?

Really? Maybe this is just not realizing the benefits of hunting for 42/46 years, but just getting off YouTube and going into the woods a lot tells you that information. People just over complicate this stuff to sell products (including magazines and views).

Not sure if your post was rhetorical or actually looking for an answer, but this isn’t hard.

Whitetails aren’t migratory. Most jurisdictions let you hunt during the rut. If you walk into the woods quietly and see does, they will be within 400 yards of that spot at any given time of the year. The bucks will be near there during the rut. If you spook the does, they will run off a bit, circle around about 400 yards away, and come back to where they were. The bucks, no matter how old or wary, will follow them.

For pre-rut, whitetail bucks have a larger home area than does, but they are still predictable as hell. They leave scrapes along the same paths year after year. Even if you kill a buck one year (or one month), whichever one moves in tends to follow the same geography. As for food, it’s not hard to find acorns, corn fields, or any other sources. If those are lacking, it’s not hard to see where they are nibbling or scraping the ground.

PS - don’t sit in a stand unless someone is intentionally or unintentionally scaring deer to you. Get on your feet and move slowly through the woods. Stop every 2-3 steps and slowly look all around you from right to left, then back again. We tend to look faster and miss things when we look from left to right (we learn to read that way).