• The SH Membership has gone live. Only SH Members have access to post in the classifieds. All members can view the classifieds. Starting in 2020 only SH Members will be admitted to the annual hunting contest. Current members will need to follow these steps to upgrade: 1. Click on your username 2. Click on Account upgrades 3. Choose SH Member and purchase.
  • We've been working hard the past few weeks to come up with some big changes to our vendor policies to meet the changing needs of our community. Please see the new vendor rules here: Vendor Access Area Rules

Let’s hope 3rd times the charm

Matki15

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 20, 2019
Messages
450
Location
Denham Springs, Louisiana
So after I shot a buck and never recovered it (believed to be a one lung hit) I decided to go back to the same tree tonight and try my luck again. Sure enough, a big doe and a yearling come out and start working towards me. At 25 yards they both turn and start walking out of the plot. I drew back and the doe caught my movement, but didn’t seem spooked by it. Either way I still held low just in case, and released. Shot was absolutely perfect, all the way until she decided to duck, letting the arrow fly an inch over her back.
The lease I’m on is set up terrible for bowhunting. The entire month of October, the club kills maybe 2 deer with archery equipment. So even seeing a shooter deer is rare when you bowhunt. But now to have had two opportunities, and screw up both of them, its made me really reconsider my plans to bowhunt all season long
 
Stick with it. I shot an 8 point earlier in the season I didn't recover, tracked him to a 1000 acre pasture where the blood went cold so I know your feeling. You'll get it. Why is the parcel so bad for bow hunting?
 
Stick with it. I shot an 8 point earlier in the season I didn't recover, tracked him to a 1000 acre pasture where the blood went cold so I know your feeling. You'll get it. Why is the parcel so bad for bow hunting?
The club is set up entirely for rifle hunting. The foodplots are planted the first few weeks of October, which is also when bow season opens. The majority of the lease is pines, meaning not much food for the deer. Because of that there’s tons of deer in the hardwoods that we do have, but rifle hunters have claimed the spots as their own personal stands, and the club rules say you have to be 300 yards from all members stands, wether or not they actually hunt that stand. So in total, out of the 3000 acres, there’s maybe 9 or 10 spots that I can set up, and out of those, only 5 or 6 of those spots actually have deer using the area
 
The club is set up entirely for rifle hunting. The foodplots are planted the first few weeks of October, which is also when bow season opens. The majority of the lease is pines, meaning not much food for the deer. Because of that there’s tons of deer in the hardwoods that we do have, but rifle hunters have claimed the spots as their own personal stands, and the club rules say you have to be 300 yards from all members stands, wether or not they actually hunt that stand. So in total, out of the 3000 acres, there’s maybe 9 or 10 spots that I can set up, and out of those, only 5 or 6 of those spots actually have deer using the area
Bleh. Me thinks you need some new scenery
 
Next season I’ll definitely be looking into public land around me. I hate being limited to hunting certain areas, especially when I know where the deer actually are but can’t get near them
Unless you join an archery only club its going to favor rifle hunting. If the pines have been thinned they will see a lot more deer activity than most think. They just don’t get concentrated on a natural foot source like they do in the bottoms.
 
Unless you join an archery only club its going to favor rifle hunting. If the pines have been thinned they will see a lot more deer activity than most think. They just don’t get concentrated on a natural foot source like they do in the bottoms.
I understand favoring rifle hunting, but this particular clubs opinion on bowhunting is “who cares”. It took me a year to convince them to allow myself and another hunter to hang lock on stands on the edge of club foodplots. Normally, yes the deer would be in the thinned pines, but this year that’s been screwed up. The logging company who owns the lease drove skidders down every lane spraying pesticides that kill most of the undergrowth to make the line trees grow faster
 
You did mention pines, are the deer using them as a bedding or transition area? One property I hunt they're using them as a bedding area. Another property I used to hunt they used them as travel corridor, I could never figure out why till I actually scouted the property and discovered A. You could see for a couple hundred yards in any direction and B. The pines acted like a natural funnel channeling the wind right along the ground and right into their faces. Like a natural wind tunnel.
 
You did mention pines, are the deer using them as a bedding or transition area? One property I hunt they're using them as a bedding area. Another property I used to hunt they used them as travel corridor, I could never figure out why till I actually scouted the property and discovered A. You could see for a couple hundred yards in any direction and B. The pines acted like a natural funnel channeling the wind right along the ground and right into their faces. Like a natural wind tunnel.
The deer are using the young planted pine thickets and older clear cuts as bedding, and 75% of the movement and sign I’ve seen has been along creek bottoms where the loggers aren’t allowed to cut. They do move through the pines but typically it’s on fire break trails between pine stands that are different sizes
 
9353D347-3580-4F56-87BC-E607FA5E27B8.jpeg
this is an example of what I’m talking about. The marker in the middle of the map is a preset platform over a plot and the marker besides it is a feeder. The deer are bedding in the clearcut to the north (can’t hunt the edge because someone has a box stand in the area) andthe majority of their movement is focused in the hardwoods you can see. The deer do go to the feeder in the pines, but they approach it from literally all directions
 
Keep grinding away man, it's the only way. It sucks more but imagine how great it'll feel when you do harvest a deer with your bow while everyone else is relying on a gun.
 
Yeah that does suck man. I'd do what you've probably already considered, pick one of those paths on the east side that has traffic and hang. Good thing is it's rut and all bets are off so you might be able to call one in.
 
I never understood, nor will I participate in, leasing, or as I refer to it, pay to play. With that said, I would never lease a place that would tell me where I could & could not hunt within that lease. I give you my money, the whole place should be open to me as long as I beat you there that day. Also, just because there is pressure doesn't mean deer completely abandon an area. Good luck, your plan for next season sounds solid, although what is stopping you from hitting it now?
 
Last edited:
I never understood, nor will I participate in, leasing, or as I refer to it, pay to play. With that said, I would never lease a place that would tell me where I could & could not hunt within that lease. I give you my money, the whole place should be open to me as long as I beat you there that day. Also, just because there is pressure doesn't mean deer completely abandon an area. Good luck, your plan for next season sounds solid, although what is stopping you from hitting it now?
I agree with your thoughts on how it should be first come, first serve. The reason I’ve been hesitant to leave this club is mostly just its location. It’s 20 minutes from my apartment so once I’m done with classes for the day I can head up there for a quick evening hunt. The reason I haven’t jumped into public land yet this season is mostly due to self-doubt if I’m being honest. This is only my 3rd year seriously bowhunting and based on how much I’ve struggled on this piece of land I figured i would be even worse on public. My plan for this year is to wait until season ends at my lease on January 31st, and one piece of public an hour from me has a season that ends February 15th. So for those two weeks I would focus entirely on public since I wouldn’t have any other options
 
Don't doubt yourself because you don't know the land, whether it's public, private, it's your first time there whatever. When you walk any land look for signs of deer presence be it droppings, scrapes, rubs or actual deer. Once you find sign the rest is trial and error to pinpoint their travel routes and patterns but at the least you have put yourself in an area that deer frequent which gives you a higher probability for an encounter. What most hunters fail to realize is that they hunt an area that "looks good" without any sign rather than finding sign first and then hunt that area. Deer don't go by how an area looks but how it serves their needs (food, security, cover etc). Find the sign and have confidence the deer will show up.
 
Don't doubt yourself because you don't know the land, whether it's public, private, it's your first time there whatever. When you walk any land look for signs of deer presence be it droppings, scrapes, rubs or actual deer. Once you find sign the rest is trial and error to pinpoint their travel routes and patterns but at the least you have put yourself in an area that deer frequent which gives you a higher probability for an encounter. What most hunters fail to realize is that they hunt an area that "looks good" without any sign rather than finding sign first and then hunt that area. Deer don't go by how an area looks but how it serves their needs (food, security, cover etc). Find the sign and have confidence the deer will show up.
This particular piece of public is 40,000 acres so I’ve been scouting a lot on aerial maps to try and help pinpoint starting points for actual boots on the ground scouting. I’m just having trouble finding spots that look like deer would actually be using the area. Obviously they’re not going to always be in an area that looks good on a map but I’m trying to at least narrow down a few areas to concentrate on
 
Back
Top