How sensitive are your deer?

[DroptineKrazy]

No I'm not talking about if your deer watch a chick flick and start then start crying.
This weekend I pulled a sd card at my stand where I killed my eight pointer on September 26. That was almost a month ago. On October 5th another hunter stumbled through my set up at prime time. About 45 minutes before dark. I had 2 blank videos on my camera 40 minutes before he came through the bedding area and right down the trail I killed my buck on. There were running tracks in front of my camera so it was quite obvious to me that he pushed some deer from the bedding area.
It was 5 or 6 days later before I got even 1 deer pic on camera after that and I still have only gotten 1 daylight pic since then. Before the season I had at least 6 different bucks on camera there as well as several does and skippers. (fawns)
My question to you then is, Are the deer in your area this sensitive to pressure? This particular area I hunt generally doesn't get much pressure at all so I was surprised that this guys spooked the locals so bad.

 

[neonomad]

Yes a few years of more serious trailcam data are teaching me that, particularly the bucks and particularly in the earlier part of the season, are very very sensitive.

 

[Jimdude]

I had a similar experience this year. Put the camera on a community scrape July 2. Non stop pictures of 6 bucks sometimes 2x a day. September 23 two guys walk past and haven’t had any action since. I jumped the bachelor group with the 3 biggest bucks 2 weeks after the guys showed up and they were about 1/4-1/2 mile away. I don’t think they are coming back.

 

[Mitchellfarmer1982]

I am seeing the same in a spot I thought was a honey hole I've killed 4 bucks within about 200 yards but this year more people = few to no deer at all. I've keeping a camera in there just to see if the pressure drys up they will return.

 

[Bowmanmike]

Hard telling if the deer vacated the area or just shifted 50 yds behind your cam. I placed one a few years back and got a some pics of a mature buck looking right at the cam in the dark and that one time was it for him. I saw him later a couple hundred yards from the cam and i don't think he shifted his range,just his immediate travel pattern.
I never checked the cam,just took it down after a month,so there was no ground scent involved...

 

[DroptineKrazy]

I don't think they're skirting my cam because it is located in a very tight pinch point and they would have to go through about 150 yards of blow downs from a micro burst that hit that area about 5 or 6 years ago.in order to bypass it.

 

[bigbuck247]

I haven't had that experience to that extent. In fact I had them pegged as more sensitive than I have seen but it all depends how you push them out/scare them and when and where. If they never know what you were isn't as big of a deal as them nailing your scent and shadow/outline in your stand. Also seems that if you scare or walk up on them at night opposed to the day it has less effect and then location matters like did you scare them out of their bedroom or out of a feeding area type scenario.

Also this last weekend I got to hunt some public land that is newish in OK and hasn't had roads until this draw hunt. It was a timber company before this that owned it. These deer were not scared of us at all. They would see us and sit for a long time before they would casually move on. No running, no jumping and bolting, no tails flagging, etc. Pretty neat to see deer that have likely never seen a human before.

 

[DroptineKrazy]

I haven't had that experience to that extent. In fact I had them pegged as more sensitive than I have seen but it all depends how you push them out/scare them and when and where. If they never know what you were isn't as big of a deal as them nailing your scent and shadow/outline in your stand. Also seems that if you scare or walk up on them at night opposed to the day it has less effect and then location matters like did you scare them out of their bedroom or out of a feeding area type scenario.

Also this last weekend I got to hunt some public land that is newish in OK and hasn't had roads until this draw hunt. It was a timber company before this that owned it. These deer were not scared of us at all. They would see us and sit for a long time before they would casually move on. No running, no jumping and bolting, no tails flagging, etc. Pretty neat to see deer that have likely never seen a human before.

I agree. I have seen deer in the northern Maine woods that I think I could have killed with a rock.

 

[Exhumis]

It depends for me. I have two parcels I hunt, one is a farm and one is next to a very busy tree nursery.
The farm parcel has humans walking around on it constantly whereas the nursery has traffic but not through the parcel.
The farm the deer seem to be more tolerant of human intrusion. I’ve got deer and farm hands on my cam within hours of each other and deer and livestock on same cam within hours as well. However never at the same time. So if I climb and sit and then the cattle mosey over I’ve gotta move, the deer won’t show. Or if the farmer comes out with a bale of hay. But then hours later the deer might come through if the presence is gone.
The nursery the deer are less tolerant. I hunt the parcel with another fella and we’re always texting each other to find out when the other is gonna hunt. So if he was gonna hunt tomorrow I wouldn’t go today as the deer won’t tolerate that behavior and he wouldn’t see any deer, probably not for a few days. He might see a really young dumb doe or buck but certainly not a mature animal and definitely no buck older than 2. My cam pictures support that as well as we’ve had land surveyors walk through and cam pics are dead for a week at least in a spot where we’d normally have 10ish pics a day.

 

[kbetts]

I can say that the does I'm seeing are looking skittish. Seems they're constantly on edge. IMO it's partly due to the pending breeding season. They either want to be where you can't see 10 feet or out in the wide open.

 

[neonomad]

One end of our property is adjacent to a river / public park… I’ve started running more trail cameras there looking for good spots, theory being that if those deer are ok with the frequent wafts of scent from hikers and fisherman along the river it might be an opportunity to hunt deer a little more forgiving of wind scent. But I don’t have enough cam intel yet to know if the mature bucks are relaxed over there. Seems what this thread is showing is that there is a lot of variation in tolerance, or at least perceived tolerance, so you have to pay attention to your area trying to learn what works and what doesn’t.

Edit: one thing to re-consider though is cameras are a very small sample, you might think they’re blown out but they’re only making small adjustments. I will say when we timbered 3 years ago that massive in season intrusion had almost 0 effect on the hunting, but in that case you’re bringing a lot of food - tree tops - to the ground. So there’s a repellant mixed with an attractant.

 

[goodfelg]

I hunt on a Army Training Post so hunting areas are open or closed based on what training is happening. One of my favorite areas also happens to contain a Land Navigation course, so picture 200+ people stumbling through the woods (usually lost) both day and night. The deer seem to be mostly used to people in the woods, often just moving calmly off as you approach. This changes during hunting season, but they don't seem to spook off far. Still not easy to get into bow range (they are deer after all). I think the difference is someone just tromping through the woods versus trying to sneak through the woods. I'll have to test that the next time it's open.
The areas where they conduct FTX's area a different story. For some reason the deer are spooked easier. Might have something to do with the all the blanks and pyro being used.