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Hunting whitetail going in blind tips?

HuumanCreed

HuumanCreed

Well-Known Member
SH Member
Joined
Aug 21, 2020
Messages
3,223
Location
Westminster Maryland
I'm only a public land hunter. I have a few spots that I usually go to that I'm familiar with. But next season I'm thinking about going to a few new spots that I have never been to. One reason is simple for a change of view. Another is to expand my horizon from my confront zone a little, complacency and being too familiar with the same spot might hinder me from learning. I might do some light online map scouting but pretty much going in without knowledge of area.

I'm most likely going to be using a hunting saddle or a light hang-on stand. If this was a place I been to before, I would be in a pre-selected tree at 6 am waiting for lights. Honestly with a crossbow or compound, I would be pretty confident as my effective range is pretty high. But with a longbow limited to 15 yards max, I know its a different game.

I have no confident walking around with a flashlight at an unknown location, probably going to leave my car when I'm able to see trails and deer signs clearly.

So anyone that hunt locations going in blind have any tips?

Things I have been told so far: -Focus on transitioning features

-When you're walking, don't constantly stop, this is an unnatural sounds to deer. They get suspicious when sound stop/start suddenly.

-Deer do not always go from point A to B in a linear line, sometimes they make a circle track.

Any other tips?

One big question I would like help on is. When to know to leave/abandon an area. Like the deer have you marked and area have been burned. I hear stories that people would see other deer 15-20mins after scaring one away, while other see nothing else all day after scaring one. Or is this something that I just develop a sense for?
 
Add to your list:
- get out and scout before spring green up. (As in: do it now. And the window is closing). The conditions in February, March, and early April look the same as the fall. All of the sign is still there.

- if legal, use a trail camera in a location for a full season before you hunt there. “Let it soak” is a common term. Takes a couple hours to set the camera and then take it down. Will save you the time and effort of hunting a spot. You only really care if deer are in a certain area. Time is precious in the fall, focus your efforts in locations you know where they are and when.

- When actually hunting, try not to backtrack. Go in, find the sign, and setup. (Don’t go in, walk around in circles, and then go back to the spot that looked better. You are just leaving your scent all around and decreasing your chances on that particular hunt. Especially with a longbow.)

- if you are going in after first light, don’t go as high in the tree when setting up. Just takes more time and skylights your movements to every animal within shooting distance. Especially with a longbow.

- I abandon a location after hunting it 2-3 times and not seeing anything. When going in blind. If I’ve setup trail cameras the season before and know there are deer in the area I may give it another sit or two. (The season is short! Depending on how many sits you get, anything beyond that is wasting your time and your season!). Always be in the game, or get out of the game.

- Spend more time scouting than hunting. (Combined scouting time in the spring and in the fall).

Others will chime in. Good luck this fall!
 
I love to hunt feed trees early season. There is no way to really tell what tree will be hot in the fall and which will not. Scout to learn the area, then dive into it during season and hunt down the deer. Their preference will constantly change. I usually start my season like this. I go to an area I know holds deer about a week or so before the opener. I take binoculars. I go to known areas that have been good in the past like a stand of white oaks along a creek. I walk it out and look for smoking hot sign. I want to find a tree that looks like someone ran a tiller under it with old and new deer poops, fresh acorns, and notched acorn caps. When I find it, I look around for the tree or ground spot to set up in and then get out. I then drive to another location and scout some more. I like to have about 4 to 5 spots for opening day. Rank the spots you found and hunt the best one first.

After the morning hunt, come out, eat a little and go to a new area and scout for spots for the next few days. Hunt the spot you hunted in the morning in the evening if you feel it is good or move on to some of the other spots you found on your first trip out.

One of my favorite tactics in low deer density areas is to bump and dump them. To kill a deer you first have to have a deer to kill. On a 600 acre block there might be 3 deer. I want to find where they are hanging out first. I don't care if I bump them. At least I know where they are now. my best success with this is to walk into the wind at an even, relatively slow pace. I want to go fast enough to cover ground but slow enough to bump them. If I bump deer, I drop down and make some turkey calls with my mouth. If they just soft bump, as in not run off at full speed blowing, but rather just bound off a short distance and stop, I move in to where they were and set up on the ground. I've had them come right back in as little as 5 minutes. Sometimes it is 4 hours. But, I'd say 75% of the time they come back to that spot since they assume it was some turkeys they heard that startled them. Plus, I think they associate the presence of turkeys with safety, and I assume deer do not know that turkeys have no sense of smell.

In flat, river environments I like to find slough headers. A lot of animals will go around the tip of where a slough makes a hard bend. This is a good, high percentage spot.

Also, if you find a particular tree being fed on hard, look for similar trees, such as a giant red oak near a year round water source, of a white oak at 200 foot elevation. Other trees that have similar circumstances will likely be hot so look for other giant reds near water or walk the 200 foot elevation line in other areas to find other hot white oaks.
 
Depending on time of year I would hunt know spots in the morning and scout in the afternoon.
I should get picked in Iowa this year. I scouted in March and I hunted this area in 2010, 2014 & 2019.
I have 5 good spots/funnels. I will be their Nov 1st to about the 20th.
I will hunt one of them in the morning and scout new spots/areas in the afternoon. If I find something promising, I will hunt it that evening, and may leave stand and return in the morning.
 
HuumanCreed said:
I'm only a public land hunter. I have a few spots that I usually go to that I'm familiar with. But next season I'm thinking about going to a few new spots that I have never been to. One reason is simple for a change of view. Another is to expand my horizon from my confront zone a little, complacency and being too familiar with the same spot might hinder me from learning. I might do some light online map scouting but pretty much going in without knowledge of area.

I'm most likely going to be using a hunting saddle or a light hang-on stand. If this was a place I been to before, I would be in a pre-selected tree at 6 am waiting for lights. Honestly with a crossbow or compound, I would be pretty confident as my effective range is pretty high. But with a longbow limited to 15 yards max, I know its a different game.

I have no confident walking around with a flashlight at an unknown location, probably going to leave my car when I'm able to see trails and deer signs clearly.

So anyone that hunt locations going in blind have any tips?

Things I have been told so far: -Focus on transitioning features

-When you're walking, don't constantly stop, this is an unnatural sounds to deer. They get suspicious when sound stop/start suddenly.

-Deer do not always go from point A to B in a linear line, sometimes they make a circle track.

Any other tips?

One big question I would like help on is. When to know to leave/abandon an area. Like the deer have you marked and area have been burned. I hear stories that people would see other deer 15-20mins after scaring one away, while other see nothing else all day after scaring one. Or is this something that I just develop a sense for?
Click to expand...
If you have spots now that consistently produce deer sighting and shot opportunities, get online and study the maps for those spots. Then scour the surrounding areas for other spots that have the same features. Then go scout them any time from now until you are ready to hunt. You have to build the knowledge of the area and that takes time and effort. There is no substitute for knowing the ground you want to hunt. The mountain WMA I have started messing with is almost 200k acres. I have been running cams the last two season letting them soak in what I thought were promising locations and I am at roughly 200 miles of scouting but only have about 4-5 half days of hunting so far. I am just starting to get to the point that I feel I can start productively hunting it. This approach is for a home area hunting location that I can hunt for years to come.

If we were talking about an out of state or far off spot, I am going to do a lot of map scouting to key in on a small handful of what I think are the highest odds spots and the first day there I am going to go look at each of them and pick the one or two where I will spend the rest of the hunt hanging. The second "no substitute" is for time in the tree. On an away hunt, the more time you can spend in the tree in a good spot the more you improve your chances.
 
NMSbowhunter said:
In flat, river environments I like to find slough headers. A lot of animals will go around the tip of where a slough makes a hard bend. This is a good, high percentage spot.
Click to expand...
What is a slough and a slough header? Pictures help.
 
ed8128c8f0c988beb08bb62e2f2ac4e6.jpg

@Red Beard this is the best example I have a pic of. They also aren’t all open like this one and some will be full of cypress, at least around here.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
This is perfect. I now know what a slough is! So in reference to what @NMSbowhunter was saying, where would they travel?

Here?
ed8128c8f0c988beb08bb62e2f2ac4e6.jpg
 
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GeoFish said:
  1. A depression or hollow, usually filled with deep mud or mire.
  2. A stagnant swamp, marsh, bog, or pond, especially as part of a bayou, inlet, or backwater.
  3. A state of deep despair or moral degradation.
Click to expand...
A slough is a wide, shallow ditch, usually forming a backwater of a larger river or creek. They can snake through low areas making lots of twists and turns. A header is a spot where a sharp bend in the slough makes a spot where animals moving from one area to another will hug the outside bend to go around, instead of swinging way out into the woods. Many times, you will find deer and pig trails right at the tips of these headers.

In the image below, you will see several examples of what likely slough headers are as seen on a topo map, and then what they look like with foliage. Boots on the ground are the only way to determine if the slough header is a great spot or not.
 

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What a trail around a slough header often looks like. The trail will often wrap around the point of the header. This makes for an area of confined deer and hog activity for getting close shots.
 

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Red Beard said:
Or are we saying they'll likely travel like this because they don't want to get stuck in the mud?
View attachment 116586
Click to expand...
The more consistent travel around that slough is along the edge where the button and buck brush meets the timber. But they will move out into that open area to water. Depending on time of year and rainfall this slough can get fairly deep with water. Put 4" of water in there and you could lose a hip boot sinking in that mud. It has no bottom. When it dries out like in the pic you can walk in there for the most part, just stay off the damp or wet looking dirt. Sloughs vary a lot, that's just one example. Around here you can find them that have closed canopies and are mostly full of cypress and/or tupelo gum. Some will have overcup oaks in or around the edges. Some will have lots of brush and other will have hardly any around the edges. Like @NMSbowhunter said, hard bends that make a point or the head end are good places to check for travel pinches but deer walk the edges a good bit too. The edges are good places to find oaks, persimmon and honey locust with more defined travel than those just out in the woods somewhere.
 
NMSbowhunter said:
A slough is a wide, shallow ditch, usually forming a backwater of a larger river or creek. They can snake through low areas making lots of twists and turns. A header is a spot where a sharp bend in the slough makes a spot where animals moving from one area to another will hug the outside bend to go around, instead of swinging way out into the woods. Many times, you will find deer and pig trails right at the tips of these headers.

In the image below, you will see several examples of what likely slough headers are as seen on a topo map, and then what they look like with foliage. Boots on the ground are the only way to determine if the slough header is a great spot or not.
Click to expand...
This is perfect! Thank you
 
I believe your Maryland?

This is easy and i will give you my opinion. If your hunting mornings, do it in the dark, get to a creek, preferably one with a slight bank on the sides. Wear boots high enough to walk directly in the water. Even if the creek is 2 foot wide. Follow that creek and check every trail that crosses it for fresh tracks. When you find multiple trails crossing within a 50 yard area, set up in a tree that you can reach from the creek. One hanging over creek is perfect, but try and stay as close to the water as possible. Not to leave any scent on the ground. Wind doesnt matter, as long its not blowing directly down a trail.

If no deer seen that morning, scout your way out to truck. Move on to the next creek for future hunts. And repeat. Easy way to hunt new spots and give you the best chance if you never stepped foot on the area before.

Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk
 
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