This is an unpopular opinion, but THP has become the thing everybody who likes them hates. It's not a "real" view of hunting. The guys do it full time, edit out the boring stuff, and travel to the best locations available. Same as "conventional" hunting TV, for the most part just with public land. Nothing against them but comparing your hunts to theirs is just gonna leave you upset.
I’m in eastern Kentucky so it’s very little agriculture and more woods and terrain hunting. We have a lot of elevation changes here in the mountains. I have access to a lot of fields but never hunt them. The best thing to do is find deer trails on the edge of fields and then follow them back into the woods (preferably immediately after season so you can still see the fall sign) and hunt the timber, not the fields. The deer use those fields at night but most of their activity is going to take place in the woods. I try to hunt several hundred yards to a mile away from fields so I can avoid other hunters and have continuous deer movement instead of the very early morning and very late evening. Deer move in cover pretty much the entire day. Once you’re in the woods deep enough get on top of the ridges and just walk looking for sign. Be sure to pay attention to the benches (flat trails like logging roads) that are on the sides of the ridges or hills because those tend to be the best travel corridors. Once I’m on the ridge tops it becomes all about looking for deer funnels such as saddles or low spots on the ridge tops where deer will cross the ridge. The other terrain feature you’ll want to find is where two or more ridges come together. If you can find a saddle or low spot where two ridges come together that’s where you need to be. You might not see much sign but that’s where they will cross from one ridge to the next (especially when bucks are cruising). Once I forgot about food sources and began hunting terrain features that funnel deer travel my deer sightings not only increased but shot opportunities went way up because I wasn’t on the edge of a field watching deer feed hundreds of yards away. The only time I consider food sources now is looking for acorns. If you can find trees dropping white oak acorns on a ridge top that’s an all day spot until the acorns are gone. Now here is the unpopular opinion part of my strategy, I don’t own a trail camera. Once you find those spots in the timber they produce year after year as long as you hunt them cautiously, which means you don’t want to be in there checking trail cams and crap. I have spots that I only go into the last week of October and see deer all day because I haven’t been in there messing around. I go hunt and don’t worry about which deer I have pics of or any of that stuff and I’m much happier because I shoot deer that I’m happy with when I see them, instead of passing deer I should have shot so I can save my buck tag for that monster I have one 3am picture of. But I also don’t watch hunting shows which give people unrealistic expectations.I need help finding deer and turkeys but it’s hard to me to find anything much off satellite maps when everything looks virtually the same
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Hows the CWD up there? I know the bordering states up their have it bad. Surprised baiting is legal. CWD i heard from a state park police officer came from a pen deer farm in WV near berkley springs.
I second these locations. And on the opposing ridge on the other side. This looks similar to where I hunt deer and turkey. I follow the little creek up the gorge. The running water helps disguise my noisy walking. Then scout off to the sides of it.
