Long story hunt, I had my best season in a long time without killing a single deer.
I've been pressed for time the last couple of years, and to be honest deer hunting was losing a lot of its luster. Input to output ratio seemed suboptimal compared to other things I could do with my limited time. I've honestly seriously entertained walking away from the pastime for a variety of reasons.
Not being motivated to spend lots of time deer hunting this year, but not wanting to give it up entirely (it's been a big part of my life for decades), I took a new approach. I picked up 6 cellular trail cameras, hung them in my best areas back in early Nov, and just watched until the last two weeks of season.
The cameras were all hung in either pinch points between food/bedding or bedding/bedding, or in what Eberhart describes as primary scrape areas. Places in remote areas with thick cover where I've killed bucks before. They all got good deer activity, and around Jan 10 I began to get good bucks (according to MSU, a deer with 12" inside spread and 15" main beams in my area is likely 3.5 yo at least, and I was getting deer in excess of 14" inside and 16" main that I'm confident were 4.5 yo and at 90% of their peak) visiting these areas in daylight.
I didn't hunt at all until Jan 30th. I hunted every day until Feb 9th. I saw deer nearly every sit. During that time, I passed several young bucks and herds of does, and had good encounters with four mature bucks. I loosed one arrow at a buck at 20 yards that I did not recover (hard quartering shot that I think hit brisket).
Lessons learned:
I've been pressed for time the last couple of years, and to be honest deer hunting was losing a lot of its luster. Input to output ratio seemed suboptimal compared to other things I could do with my limited time. I've honestly seriously entertained walking away from the pastime for a variety of reasons.
Not being motivated to spend lots of time deer hunting this year, but not wanting to give it up entirely (it's been a big part of my life for decades), I took a new approach. I picked up 6 cellular trail cameras, hung them in my best areas back in early Nov, and just watched until the last two weeks of season.
The cameras were all hung in either pinch points between food/bedding or bedding/bedding, or in what Eberhart describes as primary scrape areas. Places in remote areas with thick cover where I've killed bucks before. They all got good deer activity, and around Jan 10 I began to get good bucks (according to MSU, a deer with 12" inside spread and 15" main beams in my area is likely 3.5 yo at least, and I was getting deer in excess of 14" inside and 16" main that I'm confident were 4.5 yo and at 90% of their peak) visiting these areas in daylight.
I didn't hunt at all until Jan 30th. I hunted every day until Feb 9th. I saw deer nearly every sit. During that time, I passed several young bucks and herds of does, and had good encounters with four mature bucks. I loosed one arrow at a buck at 20 yards that I did not recover (hard quartering shot that I think hit brisket).
Lessons learned:
- Cellular cameras are amazing. I made several stand choices based on almost real-time camera information. I think money spent on travel or a lease is money better spent if you're smart about it, but if you're just hunting local public, 100% money spent of cell cams is valuable assuming you have rudimentary knowledge about how deer move. The ability to monitor them without disturbing an area is huge. It's also fun. I got beavers, otters, coyotes, bobcats, turkeys, and other cool stuff on cam.
- Areas that are very hard to access (combination of boat ride, long walk, and swamp crossing) and that hold heavy scrape/rub concentrations will absolutely produce daylight buck sightings if left alone until prime time.
- Our season starts in October, but running cell cams confirmed what I already strongly suspected; that you're just screwing yourself hunting when its 90 degrees.
- The Eberhart tactic of hunting super-high presets with good shooting lanes is superior to the whole hang low and hunt mobile thing. That works fine for shooting the first deer you see. But if you're trying to get 3-4 sits in an area without burning it waiting for the big one to step out, you want to lowest impact you can get away with.
- Scent control may make more sense than I've historically thought. This year, I'd have felt much better about my odds of connecting with a buck if I could get in/out with less scent. It absolutely doesn't matter if you just want to shoot "deer." But the cameras showed that your odds of connecting with the bucks was much higher if you sat the same spot 2-4 days in a row. I know that I burned a couple of spots overhunting them (4-5 sits).
- Daylight deer activity starts a couple of weeks earlier than I suspected. I've read up a lot more on what MSU has to say about our rut timing, and in a nutshell our rut is nowhere near as intense as it is in areas with harsher winters. It's longer and more spread out, and there seems to absolutely be a correlation between cold temperatures and daylight rutting activity. They move every day to check scrapes and does, but they're much more likely to do so during the day when the highs stay below 70 degrees.
- daylight to 2pm is the optimal sit time. Very little buck activity on 6 cams between 2 and dark. With ingress/egress being so difficult in these areas (5 mile boat ride, two mile brush-bust with 300 yard swamp crossing in one area) it makes more sense to sit longer once you're in there. Trading evening sits for afternoon sits improves odds of connecting and decreases family burnout, since I can be home for dinner and evening routines.
- This spring I'm going to prep several stands with clear shooting lanes and hang high. Every time I was spotted, I'm confident that a higher hang would have avoided it. And 3/4 times I had a buck cruise by, I never had a clear shot. I've enjoyed mobile hunting, but in these areas I feel like good lanes and quiet ingress/egress/setup/breakdown beats mobility.
- I'm picking up a Scentlok suit and getting anal about scent control. I'm fairly confident that even if you're just reducing scent footprint by, say, 50%, there's value in being able to hunt a stand an extra sit or two because of that.
- Next year, I'm going to stay out of the woods until the first daylight buck camera sighting in Jan. I expect that'll be around the 10th. At that point, I'll start hunting every time I can when the highs stay at least below 70.
- I also kept a journal for the first time this year, and am working on reviewing camera footage to isolate mature buck sightings during daylight hours. I'm very confident that if I do this for the next 3 seasons and accumulate 4 years of information, I can pin down activity and hunting times to a degree that more than makes up for reducing my season from 4 months to 1.
