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Bedding in valleys and ridge spurs

elk yinzer said:
Honestly, anytime before about, October 20, probably not well. I'm a remarkably lousy early-season hunter. That's where I've gone to school trying to pick up some of the aggressive bedding-based tactics from Infalt et. al.

I will say just absorbing all that leeward/windward stuff and trying to apply it in a very prescribed manner, it kinda got in my head for a couple of years there. It was to the point that I would kind of ignore the big picture of woods sense and fresh sign and sightings and just sit there staring at maps on my computer screen trying to figure out what beds I had marked that were leeward and upper 1/3 that particular day cause that could be the ticket. Took me some trial and error to wake up from that little daze.

But at the same time, I've always hunted bedding areas dating back to when my old man first started showing me the ropes. We just didn't necessarily call it that, we were just hunting where deer hang out during the day.

Early season, big bucks in the big woods are still frustrating as heck to me. I find them isolated, nomadic, for all intents and purposes practically nocturnal, and frankly quite random. Once the rut switch flips though, they start making some mistakes and hanging out around other deer, creeping on the area does more. That's when I've always made my hay.
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Good posts.

The "influencers" don't always state that they are looking at typical behaviors.

It's like a doctor telling you "you can't get that side effect from that medicine because it's not on the little sheet of paper they sent with the medicine". Those studies are just trying to get at a representative group and look at averages. Everyone is different slightly, just like deer and hunting landscapes.
 
@BTaylor it was a “sunnier” day not overly sunny as it was February in WNY but a nice day for the time period.

@Jammintree I was scouting in the area between the two ridge spurs. The deer that spooked back up toward the main ridge was presumably bedded on the easternmost ridge spur just above the point of it and a bit to the eastern side. I don’t know 100% as I just saw it run back up the side hill toward the top of the main east-west ridge line. I found a”flat” just up backthe edge of that point and I had my scouting buddy (my dog) with me and she started getting really gamey and snorkin’ in scent when we were checking out that little flat. I love taking her with me as it helps me identify where deer were actually bedded after spooking them. And yes, we have a very healthy population of coyotes in this area!! The food sources down along those side hills and in and around those spurs are red oaks, beech, and other non-mast bearing hardwoods. There are a few hickory’s in there too though as evidenced by the few hickory nuts I found as well as the acorns.
 
Nosaj said:
Great thread, I am going down the same rabbit hole or should I say ravine myself. I shot a buck last year in a similar area in late November. I was on top of the plateau/hill and he bailed off 400'+ straight down to the bottom of the ravine. We recovered him in a bedding area that was on a bench 15' off the bottom of the ravine in an area that was thick with hemlocks. I am pretty sure he was bedding there because he felt secure in an area with tight cover and little pressure. I have hunted the bottom of these ravines very little due to swirling wind currents and the difficulty of hunting them and retrieving a deer out of them. In the past I was only rifle hunting so the bucks would come out of the ravine chasing doe's, which is how I shot this one. While tracking the deer, I found the area in the bottom of the ravine all ripped up and a lot of deer activity so I decided to spend more time figuring out the bottoms/sides of these ravines.

My plan for now is to hunt near the bedding areas in the early season at times when the wind/wind currents tend to be more steady which I am sure will be a relative thing and catch them moving to feed. My hope is that they will be bedding there due to lack of pressure and the cover, not necessarily due to wind direction. This spring and early summer I will spend some time down in the ravines to start to see how the different winds are acting down in the bottom as compared to up above as well as starting to figure out the specific deer runs.

I used a tracking dog to find the deer I shot last fall and one of the things that the handler said before we started the track is that it can be hard for the dog to sent track deer in the bottom of ravines because the scent will pool in the bottom of the ravine so the dog has a hard time determining the specific direction of where the scent is coming from. We did see this play out as the dog worked the area of last blood in circles for an hour before we found the deer on a bench above us. A few times in a certain area she would lift her nose like a bird dog catching a wind scent however then she would want to follow the blood trail backwards as it had the strongest scent. After a while we decided to go back where she looked like she was catching a faint wind scent and that where she found the deer above us on the bench. I am not quite sure yet how I can use that scent pooling effect to my advantage however it is something to think about and keep in mind.

I look forward to hear how others are making this work.

I also have a better plan for getting another one out of there if I am successful.

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That is all very interesting honestly. I would love to see that winch in action pulling a big buck up a mountain before I committed to it. Cool idea!
 
Anytime I kick a buck I find exactly where he was laying and then try to figure out why. There are correlations to certain things sure, but all bucks are different. OP what are you seeing that makes you think the sign down low is bedding sign? Im not saying it isn't, just seems unlikely to me based on that topo that deer are bedding low. If I were scouting that I'd hit the low ground only if I didn't find anything worthwhile higher up.
 
will4554 said:
Anytime I kick a buck I find exactly where he was laying and then try to figure out why. There are correlations to certain things sure, but all bucks are different. OP what are you seeing that makes you think the sign down low is bedding sign? Im not saying it isn't, just seems unlikely to me based on that topo that deer are bedding low. If I were scouting that I'd hit the low ground only if I didn't find anything worthwhile higher up.
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The map is a little deceiving but if you look closely, those ridge spurs are still up pretty high above the creek ravine, and very steep. Plus that’s where a lot of the deer head too in my trail cams but it is lower than the main east~wet running ridge for sure. We do still hunt the tops of the ridges and I also hunt the side hills ( the area between the top of the ridge and the first major plateau before a lot of the topography almost careens straight down to the creek.) We see virtually see no daylight mature buck movement on top with the exception of the rut.
 
What direction do you access this from? Which block(s) do you have permission to hunt?
 
I’m thinking about your question: which side of
The ridge is he bedded on. The answer would be very dependent on what season are we thinking about? Is this before, during or after the primary rut? Depending on that answer I’d be asking: what are the bucks monitoring? Does, coyotes, human hunters, various food and water?
 
Jammintree said:
I’m thinking about your question: which side of
The ridge is he bedded on. The answer would be very dependent on what season are we thinking about? Is this before, during or after the primary rut? Depending on that answer I’d be asking: what are the bucks monitoring? Does, coyotes, human hunters, various food and water?
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That’s what I’m trying to figure out…… the south side of the creek it’s actually steeper for the most part than the side I hunt on….. I’m suspecting that’s a lot of reason for why a buck just wouldn’t be bedded on that opposite south side with a south or southwest wind and he’s facing north. Access from the top which I plan on doing that differently too. Sidehilling in.
 
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It's easy to get sucked in to the wind rules the experts come up with. Wind is a factor in where deer bed but so is pressure, topography, cover, food, and doe bedding. When I first started reading about leeward slopes, wind tunnels and what not I got sucked in. I was hunting the wind for a while instead of using the wind to hunt the deer. I find it much easier and have been more successful when I switched focus on finding where the deer is or where I think he is and then using whatever winds I can to hunt him instead of using the winds to try to find the deer. I've killed several nice bucks on windward slopes and have plenty of evidence that you should not overlook the windward sides.

So February bedding probably isn't gonna mean much during the season but you know he is at least willing to bed there. If you have acorns dropping or some sort of food there, does bedding there or below there, or pressure on the other hillside it may be time to give it a shot. If does travel up to the top in the evenings then you may catch bucks working that hill side cutting their trails. If you get a north wind then that's just one more factor in your favor for the deer to be on that side, but it'll also make the wind more fickle. There's just so many factors that could put the deer there that I don't think you're going to be able to look at wind alone and determine what side they'll be on that day. If your hunting a windward side you can usually get above the deer without too much wind trouble, just be aware that your scent can still get sucked down especially in the mornings and evenings.
 
If I was scouting that area, and had no limitations id be scouring those steep slopes south of the creek - regardless of prevailing wind. Those spines, ravines, shelf’s, and saddles would be high on my list of places to study. I’m fortunate to have a lot of public and open private and I like to see every square inch so I can figure out what’s going on. Any chance those landowners would grant you one time access in the off-season to go for a “hike” or “forage” or looks for pretty rocks - anything you can imagine that they’d be supportive of?
 
What is the forest makeup? Is it all open hardwoods? Is it really open, or thick, or covered in conifers? Any idea where the doe bedding is?
 
Without knowing anything about the area, if I was confined to north of the creek, I’d start by exploring the areas I circled in red. (I’m injured and stuck at home dreaming about hunting, so forgive my detailed responses)

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Jammintree said:
What is the forest makeup? Is it all open hardwoods? Is it really open, or thick, or covered in conifers? Any idea where the doe bedding is?
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Ag is on top or the “flats” corn/beans every other year it will be beans this year. The forest is managed for timber sustainability with a harvest approximately every 10 years. It’s all mixed hardwoods, timbering has opened up the canopy nicely increasing overall stem count but there are still some areas less think than others. Where the ridge spurs are is a mixture of hardwoods and hemlock. It was timbered in the long past so some nice old logging roads on natural flats or benches. Doe bedding is also on the hillsides. With timbering though more bedding seems to be occurring closer to the Ag but the biggest bucks still go “down in the gorge.”
 
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