Rut help

[hokiehunter373]

It’s a bow hunt. Public land around me has some terrain features and maybe a ridge but it’s not hill country where you’re surrounded by ridges and valleys. It’s a lot of hardwoods and mostly subtle elevation changes with a lot of thickets and edge created by vegetation. Maybe a very small subtle bench and some saddles but they tend to get hit hard when the pressure kicks in. The one piece I’m looking at now has a small mountain with a ridge system and the top 1/3 is difficult to get through and has a lot of vegetation/terrain transition that’s perfect for buck bedding but recent scouting didn’t show a lot of doe bedding or feeding areas

Everybody here already has you headed in the right direction. Fantastic advice. I agree that you're off during better dates this year. Your timeframe last year can be good but lots of does are actively getting bred during those dates so there can be less action. I wanted to point out one thing you mentioned in the above quote, "lot of thickets and edge created by vegetation.". That sounds like the key to me since you don't have a lot of big terrain change. Find a spot where there's multiple edges in one spot. If there's a subtle change/pinch of some point as well, even better. Water nearby? Even better. No matter how your days off are going remember that things can change in the blink of an eye.

 

[neonomad]

Thanks man. Love the Lateralus icon. Spiral out

Like others have said, my best hunts that time of year have been on my neighbors (private) at kind of the “entrance” to a doe bedding area, and several bucks were after 10:30 AM. If it’s warm I wonder if you could bias to shadier areas? Also, that time of year is when I’ve had the most encounters that could have been successful from the ground. The deer are less aware, and so IMO you shouldn’t feel like you HAVE to get in a tree, as long as it’s open enough to shoot through some lanes. I would bet that if you were slowly slowly still hunting through the right areas, you could have opportunities. Let’s say you’re nestled against a tree and some brush looking at an obvious trail along a transition line to a bedding thicket, maybe you see some scrapes, and there are some shots available, that’s a good setup there may be no reason to go up a tree. Many times with my friends and I the day felt hopeless and then boom the deer show up, you never know, good luck!

Here’s an example from today: