-
The SH Membership has gone live. Only SH Members have access to post in the classifieds. All members can view the classifieds. Starting in 2020 only SH Members will be admitted to the annual hunting contest. Current members will need to follow these steps to upgrade: 1. Click on your username 2. Click on Account upgrades 3. Choose SH Member and purchase.
-
We've been working hard the past few weeks to come up with some big changes to our vendor policies to meet the changing needs of our community. Please see the new vendor rules here: Vendor Access Area Rules
Best book
- Thread starter wardergy
- Start date
Flint
Active Member
Good read. Explains a lot of why deer do what they do. It makes understanding their patterns easier.
Amazon.com: Whitetails: A Research Based Hunting Model eBook : Sheppard M.D., A. Robert: Kindle Store
Buy Whitetails: A Research Based Hunting Model: Read Kindle Store Reviews - Amazon.com
www.amazon.com
michigandrake
Well-Known Member
Rue and Ozoga are a couple of good authors for deer biology and behavior.
Not trying to hijack this thread or anything just want to throw this out there if you are relatively new or completely new to hunting deer. While it’s absolutely a good idea to learn as much as possible about deer behavior and to continue to learn as long as you’re alive...
A man can literally drive himself nuts trying to figure out every type of natural browse and vegetation a deer will eat. Easiest thing to do is learn your trees. The different oak varieties are pretty easy to find info on and are all pretty easy to identify once you know what you’re looking for. Then there are plenty of other nut producing trees that may be prevalent in your area. Learn those and keep some notes, mental or written down, on what you find as far as deer feeding sign around them. It’s a year by year thing and you are only going to learn a little bit by books in comparison to your own observations. I’m assuming you may not have access to much in the way of crop fields. Just a guess...
If not start with the different oaks and when you scout dedicate your scouting time to finding all the deers little hiding places (bedding areas), look at the trails going in and out of them and setup on the best looking oaks or native mast producing tree within 50-100 yards of the bedding areas. The very best looking feeding area you find will be useless to you if they don’t hit it in daylight and it’s easy to be fooled by abundant deer sign in a place where a deer won’t spend any of its time in daylight.
A man can literally drive himself nuts trying to figure out every type of natural browse and vegetation a deer will eat. Easiest thing to do is learn your trees. The different oak varieties are pretty easy to find info on and are all pretty easy to identify once you know what you’re looking for. Then there are plenty of other nut producing trees that may be prevalent in your area. Learn those and keep some notes, mental or written down, on what you find as far as deer feeding sign around them. It’s a year by year thing and you are only going to learn a little bit by books in comparison to your own observations. I’m assuming you may not have access to much in the way of crop fields. Just a guess...
If not start with the different oaks and when you scout dedicate your scouting time to finding all the deers little hiding places (bedding areas), look at the trails going in and out of them and setup on the best looking oaks or native mast producing tree within 50-100 yards of the bedding areas. The very best looking feeding area you find will be useless to you if they don’t hit it in daylight and it’s easy to be fooled by abundant deer sign in a place where a deer won’t spend any of its time in daylight.