Totally depends on how many other good bedding areas are within his core area. The more options he has to bed in, the more apt that if you spook him, he may not return. Also depends on the size and make-up of the bedding area and when your opener is.
If it were me and this was a new option, and I hate going into bedding areas this close to season, I would wait for a hard rain and go in asap and as quietly as possible set something up in the rain. Hunting within bedding areas with evening entries are not conducive for killing big bucks as bedding areas should be hunted in mornings with very early arrivals so as not to spook deer going into them just before daylight with your entry.
I will post an article I wrote on hunting bedding areas and it might take a couple posts.
Sanctuary Death Traps
Ever sat along the perimeter of a bedding area during the rut phases only to suffer through the telltale sounds of bucks chasing does within them? If you’ve been hunting very long, you certainly have.
Here’s a hypothetical question. If I wanted to take an individual out, wouldn’t my best plan be to get inside their house while their not there and wait in ambush for them to come home? After all, they would come into their house at some point and I would be patiently waiting. Many movies have been produced using the same plot.
Notice I mentioned in their home and not at one of the two or three entry doors. My house has a front door, back door, and entry door from the garage so the odds of an encounter at a door would be 33% as opposed to inside where the odds would be 100%. A bedding area is definitely larger than the inside of a house but there are typically dozens of entry and exit routes or doors leading into and out of them.
Our homes offer us the same securities that interiors of bedding areas offer deer, secure places to move around in, bed down, and have sex or breed. If that hypothetical plan works for humans, hunting within bedding areas will and have certainly proven to work for mature bucks during the rut phases.
Bucks and particularly does typically bed in known bedding areas and during the rut phases bucks search for and breed does, therefore bucks search bedding areas for estrous does. Once found, most breeding takes place within the confines of the secure cover of bedding areas. If you don’t believe this, count the actual times you have witnessed a mature buck breed a doe in an area with minimal if any security cover. Even though mature bucks breed throughout the day when with a ready doe, I bet it isn’t many.
To the best of my recollection in Michigan, within the confines of bedding areas I have taken two mature bucks while they were on top of and breeding does, two while chasing past me, three at active primary scrape areas, three others were enticed within range using soft sparring sequences, one by using a Quaker Boy Bleat-In-Heat doe call, and one followed a real (cut from a deer) buck tarsal drag line to my tree. That’s 12 CBM bucks taken within bedding areas and I only hunt interiors of bedding areas on a very limited basis making them my highest percentage areas to hunt.
Bedding areas have many perimeter runways that traverse into a network of interior trails. I am a percentage hunter that sets up in areas and specific locations offering the best odds for the time of season and time of day and the odds of intercepting a buck along a perimeter runway leading into a bedding area is far lower than within the core of the bedding area where the many perimeter runways intermingle. The closer you can get to the core of any known destination location, the better your odds, and a bedding area is a destination area for mature bucks during the rut phases.
So why do so many hunters obsess about staying out of bedding areas and treat them as sacred sanctuaries? The answer to that question is simple and should totally depend on the nature of their hunting area.
What is meant by “the nature of their (your) hunting area”? Having bowhunted in several low hunter density states and many differing hunting density areas within Michigan I can state without reservation that the type of hunting pressure or lack thereof has more to do with how, when, and where, mature bucks move during daylight hours, than any other factor, period, end of discussion! So the nature of your hunting area should be based on the type and quantity of hunting pressure it receives.
Hunting areas differ tremendously and all anyone has to do is watch a hunting TV show or video for confirmation of that fact. As hunting personalities and large parcel high end management hunters prove year after year, when there is little or no hunter competition, or their area has kill criteria’s in place, they do not need to hunt interiors of bedding areas because; there are many mature bucks in the area, they will roam outside security cover at will during daylight hours due to lack of danger from previous hunter encounters while growing to maturity, and there is stiff competition for breeding rights.
For those that have the luxury of owning or leasing enough land or hunt where somebody else does, they don’t have to be concerned about a buck leaving a bedding area and getting taken by a neighbor. They can feel comfortable leaving bedding areas as sanctuary havens where hunting within them is shunned and usually prohibited. Any hunter that thinks heavy consequential hunting pressure has nothing to do with the amount of time mature bucks move during daylight obviously isn’t hunting in such areas.
as much as I hate to admit it, I choked.....
