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Deep South early season

and now for a musical interlude ----

big bill broonzy sings of the poor possum down on the ground, and the lucky coon up the 'simmon tree----

One day I was riding along on my old mule,
Minding my own business and I wasn't bothering a soul.
So I seed a raccoon and a possum.
The raccoon was up the 'simmon tree and the poor possum he was on the ground.
And I heard the possum holler up to the raccoon,
Say, "Hey, Bub, will you throw me some 'simmons down?"
And the raccoon hollered down to the possum,
Say, "Look, Bub," say, "You in the shade laying down. Now what you worried about?"

mule riding blues is well worth adding to your playlist if you enjoy old blues, and a good story with a sly and salty ending.

but if you want the possum in the 'simmon tree, you can tune to the traditional fiddle or bluegrass versions, or this much more funner version from snooks eaglin, and dont forget your code book ....



 
BTaylor said:
Have you tried using a compass possum yet? They will either take you straight to a road to get run over or straight to a persimmon tree.
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a compass possum seems more useful -- at least some of the time--than a ridge gator

those bastards are just trouble 100 percent of the time
 
oceans of rain here spring and summer until late august.. pretty dry since.


still lots of skeeters and spiders and roaches ... oh my

i wouldn't deliberately go looking for persimmon trees, but if i found one that had fruit i would remember it. i'd scout out my wild grapes big-time, though. not many left by october 1 here, and some acorns are already dropping by then, but i can hunt grapes early.
 
Season kickoff hunt went great. Took it slow and quiet, which meant I didn’t make it back to where I wanted to hunt until sunset. I bumped a deer in a low spot just before my final approach, the same spot I had bumped one scouting I think. Made it, ground set, got my leafy top on, sweating buckets… and a lone doe drifts by at 30 yards thru two tree trunks that formed a wicked small shooting window. She stopped with just her haunches visible, maybe browsing or maybe trying to check me out. I thought she might go into the thicket and reemerge, but she disappeared. She didn’t smell me.

They are heavy in there, lots of poop piled on trails leading out of that thicket.

I had half a mind to go back before sunrise, but I may let it rest for another evening hunt next week.
 
Do yall observe that deer only blow if they catch your scent? Or will they blow if they catch 2/3 (scent, sight, sound)?

Went out this evening, bumped two deer. first one blew - idk if she caught some of scent or if our deer just do that? Milkweed didn’t indicate my scent was going her direction. Couldn’t lay eyes on her: she bust out of a thicket >40yards off. 2nd deer I bumped within 30yards of its bedding thicket; it sounded like it got up and bounded only a bit aways. Didn’t bust out of there. So I set up thinking it may come back thru by two water oaks dropping. No such luck.

We’re in a moderate drought; moving thru the woods sounds like Godzilla moving thru Tokyo. May be time to key in on water. Water and overcups dropping but many trees’ acorns are bad. Likely stress dropped.

Pretty evening tho:
 
Hunting multiple southern states but predominantly Alabama and Louisiana. I can say deer blow when they blow.

If a nanny doe smells you and sees you, I usually get blown at. If the smell you but don’t see you, that aggravating heifer usually stomps and blows for 5 minutes.

I don’t recall many ever blowing at me because they heard me. Run out of dodge, yes, but not blowing.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
mschultz373 said:
Do yall observe that deer only blow if they catch your scent? Or will they blow if they catch 2/3 (scent, sight, sound)?

Went out this evening, bumped two deer. first one blew - idk if she caught some of scent or if our deer just do that? Milkweed didn’t indicate my scent was going her direction. Couldn’t lay eyes on her: she bust out of a thicket >40yards off. 2nd deer I bumped within 30yards of its bedding thicket; it sounded like it got up and bounded only a bit aways. Didn’t bust out of there. So I set up thinking it may come back thru by two water oaks dropping. No such luck.

We’re in a moderate drought; moving thru the woods sounds like Godzilla moving thru Tokyo. May be time to key in on water. Water and overcups dropping but many trees’ acorns are bad. Likely stress dropped.

Pretty evening tho:
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I think some doe (the really high strung ones) blow at their own shadows. Most only blow if they 1. Smell you, or 2. See what they definitely think is a predator.

We are in a heavy drought around here. I've checked a ton of trees and I've logged miles and I've only seen a couple with even moderate feed sign. One area I hunt seems completely devoid of deer. I've seen very few if any tracks crossing creeks or roads (normal track traps where you can catch tracks), no poop, no bumping deer.

I'm moving operations this week to an area that has some hills. The lowland I hunt seems dead right now. The little feed sign I found opening week was 200 feet higher above sea level that where I was last week. Maybe that's the key. We'll see.
 
my milkweed must not be telling the whole story then - the wind must be swirling even worse than I observe. Yesterday I think I observed almost every wind direction at one point or another; it did settle into a steady N wind at 6p.

I have some more scouting I need to do before hunting these bottoms again.

Keep at it guys!
 
mschultz373 said:
my milkweed must not be telling the whole story then - the wind must be swirling even worse than I observe. Yesterday I think I observed almost every wind direction at one point or another; it did settle into a steady N wind at 6p.

I have some more scouting I need to do before hunting these bottoms again.

Keep at it guys!
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Yes, that's why I often say we had a nice steady NorthSouthEastWest wind today.
 
Milkweed won’t paint full thermal picture, will it? As in, your scent “floats” longer than milkweed and thus is carried further. Or that thermals can pull small amounts of scent even if prevailing wind carries milkweed a certain direction? Or ?
 
mschultz373 said:
Milkweed won’t paint full thermal picture, will it? As in, your scent “floats” longer than milkweed and thus is carried further. Or that thermals can pull small amounts of scent even if prevailing wind carries milkweed a certain direction? Or ?
Click to expand...
Yes.
 
walked ~5mi across the bottoms this morning. i was hoping to get a SRT set ready for Thursday morning, but I didn't find anything I felt super-solid on. i bumped one deer out of a low thicket; he stayed put as I nearly J-hooked around it then sprang out behind me when I passed. but that was the only deer (or big game for that matter) i saw.

i was mainly working along a slough system that I bumped deer along my previous hunts, so I was surprised to see only the one today. I wonder if my presence has registered and they're skittish of that area now; I'm not sure. overcups and water oaks are raining but most of them are bad, and I couldn't find a single one with deer poops under it. some cow oaks are starting to come in, but no poops near any that were dropping.

i looped S of the slough system and found ~4acre span of viney, low, dark thickets, there were two paw-outs that were totally dry, but interesting to see nonetheless. the surrounding woods were more open and sunny than along the sloughs.

being that it's so dry, i thought keying in on water might be fruitful; but there's many small pools in the smaller sloughs, and the bigger creeks still have water in them. i had no luck identifying a distinct creek crossing. so for thursday I may bounce up to a pine clear cut area where I previously found a small isolated pool in a breakline. I had a cell cam on it that (of course) stopped updating so i'm not sure how much action it's getting, but it was fairly consistent a couple weeks ago.
 

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mschultz373 said:
walked ~5mi across the bottoms this morning. i was hoping to get a SRT set ready for Thursday morning, but I didn't find anything I felt super-solid on. i bumped one deer out of a low thicket; he stayed put as I nearly J-hooked around it then sprang out behind me when I passed. but that was the only deer (or big game for that matter) i saw.

i was mainly working along a slough system that I bumped deer along my previous hunts, so I was surprised to see only the one today. I wonder if my presence registered and they're skittish of that area now; I'm not sure. overcups and water oaks are raining but most of them are bad, and I couldn't find a single one with deer poops under it. some cow oaks are starting to come in, but no poops near any that were dropping.

i looped S of the slough system and found ~4acre span of viney, low, dark thickets, there were two paw-outs that were totally dry, but interesting to see nonetheless. the surrounding woods were more open and sunny than along the sloughs.

being that it's so dry, i thought keying in on water might be fruitful; but there's many small pools in the smaller sloughs, and the bigger creeks still have water in them. i had no luck identifying a distinct creek crossing. so for thursday I may bounce up to a pine clear cut area where I previously found a small isolated pool in a breakline. I had a cell cam on it that (of course) stopped updating so i'm not sure how much action it's getting, but it was fairly consistent a couple weeks ago.
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That's pretty much the story I was seeing in the marsh areas I have been hunting. The drought seems to have pushed them out of the marshes here since there is really no mast crops in there right now. The white oaks and chestnut oaks dropped dried out acorns. I've moved to the hills and I'm seeing deer up there, just not many (as usual). I've had to cover some miles to find them. Do you have some hills to hunt? You might try there if so.
 
There is some upland habitat that butts up against the bottoms in this tract I described; I've not focused much on them recently, but maybe I ought to give that a whirl. My theory was that the bottoms would hold more deer as there is water nearby and it tends to be darker/cooler; the upland areas get more sunlight and are further from sloughs/creeks.

The piney tracts locally are 'hilly' insofar as anywhere in SE LA could be considered hilly. so some 10-20' elevation changes.

It's this game every year! hopefully once it cools off and the deer begin moving more, the scouting will have some good payout.
 
mschultz373 said:
There is some upland habitat that butts up against the bottoms in this tract I described; I've not focused much on them recently, but maybe I ought to give that a whirl. My theory was that the bottoms would hold more deer as there is water nearby and it tends to be darker/cooler; the upland areas get more sunlight and are further from sloughs/creeks.

The piney tracts locally are 'hilly' insofar as anywhere in SE LA could be considered hilly. so some 10-20' elevation changes.

It's this game every year! hopefully once it cools off and the deer begin moving more, the scouting will have some good payout.
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Deer get the majority of their water from consuming vegetation and so don't have to drink as much water directly as we do. They do like water sources but aren't tied to them as much as some animals. Check out the uplands. If nothing else you can mark off areas where the deer aren't, but if your deer are like the one's around here they are hanging out at higher elevations. The deer I found bedded today in the rain were a good 60 feet higher than the bottoms below, and 200 feet above sea level higher than the lowland areas that are dead right now on that other property.
 
check this out (I didn't know this and it intrigues me): our bottoms are roughly ~48' above sea level (and roughly 40-50mi from the Gulf). the upland areas are about 58' - so 10' higher.

the piney woods are 150' above sea level, so maybe that's closer to like you're saying!
 
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it has to be really dry for deer to key on a water source intensely enough to hunt them there or that way, but when it works it's gold. but i mean really dry.

and i do think deer sometimes like a little elevation and more open woods for bedding if the alternative is buggy marsh or swamp bottom that is not significantly cooler. even more so if the bottom is stagnant and the rise gets a breeze. you just have to try both and see at any particular time.
 
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