Freshie needs some help...

[snooze]

hey peeps,

so this will be my third season bow hunting in New Jersey, there is a ton of nice land and I believe our hunter success rate is in the 85%+ range so there's no lack of deer. i haven't harvested a deer yet, my goals are as natural as possible ( no trail cams, no bait ), they allow baiting here which adds a different type of challenge. anyways i have seen a couple of deer here and there mostly just sitting on anything that looks different from everything else. i spent the majority of the last two years putting miles in on the ground learning the woods and not really sitting in the tree too much. a lot of my friends said I was doing it all wrong and just to sit as much as possible and i think they are right so that's my plan this time around. alright sorry for the rant but on to my question... i've seen through research that if you're in hill country they will sit on the leeward side of hills on things like knobs or obviously any thick cover available. the properties i want to focus on this season honestly have everything in a matter of 200 acres, half will be elevated terrain with thick cover at-least, in the early season, the other half is low land terrain with some ferny, spongy terrain also with thick cover. besides targeting where other hunters will not be should I stick to the high ground cover or the low ground cover? when the late fall comes and most of the cover on the hills are gone will they seek the cover no matter the elevation or still stay up high?

one last question just to get it out of the way as I've been so curious about these things, most of the agg fields available to me are on an elevated plateau with elevation drop offs on all sides. this is super common in my area, most of these dips are low lying creek trenches parallel to the agg also have thick cover. again in this situation should I be focusing on the low ground cover or are they up top next to the field in the limited cover there? everything I've read so far points to deer really liking elevation. thanks for the help.

 

[TommyDee]

My third year as well Here in NJ, but i did hunt PA as a kid many years ago. Here’s how i killed my little yearling doe last year opening day to earn a buck…i made many mistakes on a nice buck in the area, saw one 3 times, just no shot due to various screw ups on my part, but that’s another story. With all this scouting, hopefully you’ve found a stream.

Bring milkweed. eat early lunch, walk in around1 pm, slowly. Walk quietly along stream bed, play the wind, until you cut a deer track.
Find a tree near this deer trail and get in, wait til sunset/last light. Know that the thermals will pull your scent downhill/downstream in the evening, especially if there is little wind, so choose your tree accordingly. If you’re allowed on your land, trim some branches so you have a shooting lane, and only go up as high as needed to get your scent up/gain enough cover.

If this doesn’t work, do what a guy posted a few days ago, especially to shoot a doe, and especially if you’re still a little noisy getting up a tree: walk an evening till you see/bump deer. Set some sticks/stand that evening in a tree nearby. Come back the following afternoon get in tree with bow. Kill deer in evening. A lot of advice about mature bucks that you don’t need. Just find the deer, set up, back out, come back the next day Early afternoon, obviously quietly and down wind. They’ll usually be back Same night early season. Note that this may or may not work on public after the rut/gun season.

 

[neonomad]

One thing I can say is if I had the choice of low ground Ag surrounded by ridges vs high ground Ag surrounded by valleys, I’d take the low ground Ag I think. But where I hunt is high ground Ag. The reason I say this is setting up in evenings is very tricky, you have to use milkweed to get to understand what’s going on. As the air cools those valleys will start pulling air and the deer can head to the fields with the scent moving right to their sniffers.

 

[TommyDee]

One thing I can say is if I had the choice of low ground Ag surrounded by ridges vs high ground Ag surrounded by valleys, I’d take the low ground Ag I think. But where I hunt is high ground Ag. The reason I say this is setting up in evenings is very tricky, you have to use milkweed to get to understand what’s going on. As the air cools those valleys will start pulling air and the deer can head to the fields with the scent moving right to their sniffers.

This was the story of me screwing up not less than 3 encounters a buck in Oct/November, plus 1 encounters due to me remembering that my “regularity” in the woods makes be a bad morning hunter! I screwed up a lot last year, but i learned a lot, and i needed to get those encounters to drive the learning. The whole point of mobile hunting and/or saddle hunting is to move until you are getting encounters. Also, if you’re seeing sign and no deer, make sure you’re moving slowly, stopping often. This way if you are blowing up deer that are bedded on sight alone, you can at least hear the move away. Most deer in NJ public will snort if they wind you, but if your pounding the woods, you may or may not hear it.