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wind, thermals, swirls and terrain

mschultz373

mschultz373

Well-Known Member
SH Member
Joined
May 9, 2023
Messages
409
Location
SE LA
I've been getting burned on some hunts where the wind is shifting, often times to 180 degrees opposite it's stated direction. I'm curious to learn more about how to expect and mitigate this, if at all possible, and what terrain features may contribute or exacerbate this swirling effect.

I'm hunting flat, thick terrain in Louisiana for the most part... the steepest elevation change on any tract I hunt is probably 20-30ft. There are certain areas where the wind is predictable and stable - flat marshes and swamps most often -, but others where I'm just fighting it all the way in, access sucks, and then my sit is getting burned.

This happens most frequently in a dense bottomlands area that is almost entirely flat but is cut by sloughs and bayous. The stated wind is pretty much never the actual wind on the ground, and it is almost never uniform as I access or get to a spot. I'm wondering if there's a way to anticipate shifts or use the sloughs and bayous to my advantage, where a stated wind may dip into the slough and run a predictable direction? the elevation change is about 5-10ft max in this area.

I've observed water helping thermals rise in the morning, which I assume is consistent if I set up against a bayou or pool in a slough. On a marsh sit, as the sun rose and the ground and water heated up, my milkweed was going up and carrying quite far in a way that was stable and predictable. Would that be consistent along a slough or bayou?

Maybe I'm just going to have to sit, observe and learn, but if anyone has any experience or observed principles, any insight is appreciated.
 
Can't comment on flat Louisiana, but here in the Mtns the wind will ruin 5-6 outta 10 hunts guaranteed. Nothing you can do about.
There's no rhyme, reason, understanding, or logic to it.
Just keep trying and maintain positive spirits.
Even when everything goes to crap, I just try the next day and believe today's the day Mr big shows.
Last year a big 9 I hit came downwind of me. Maybe he liked my musk. Strange things happen
 
I'm no expert, but I can tell you some observations from the past several seasons using milkweed on very flat land here in Delaware. I hunt public 99.99% of the time and kill on average, 4 deer a year.

-I hunt a lot near a body of water. My scent is almost always being sucked towards it, regardless of the predominant wind direction that day. Obviously the effect is less, the further away I am. In the AM, the wind seems to swirl in these areas and I have more consistent wind in the evenings

-If you hunt field edge, your scent will likely be blown to the edge of the trees and travel along them. Even recessing yourself 20y more, seems to change your scent direction

-I've seen Dan Infalt state you can get high enough to have your scent "carry over" areas you're hunting. I have yet to experience this phenomenon.

In your case OP, I would stay out of the low lands. The deer like it there for a reason. There's a 6 acre parcel I hunt sometimes that has a 30' high ridge, that drops into a creek bottom. Guess where all the deer bed ?

I have to hunt them on the outskirts to have success.

EDIT: I think Infalt mentioned something about warm bodies of water PUSHING your scent. May want to look it up.

Good luck
 
I go a lot by weather systems.

Due to the way our weather systems come through, this time of year N/W wind is usually pretty reliable in direction, and almost always going to be 5 mph+.

S/SW winds, lighter ones tend to be a tad swirly. Heavier the winds usually, the more consistent the direction. That is one reason I think why I've had a lot of success on high wind days.

Any variation of wind coming from the E or SE, or light and variable, good luck. Rarely do we get consistent easterlies. Those are usually total chaos.

That's just our weather systems. Terrain and thermals are are a whole other impact I don't really feel like getting into now.
 
My experience is that land heats faster than water and that would impact thermals accordingly. You can read about this empirically on NOAA's website.

The swirling wind is typical this time of the year with the seasons (if we can call them that in LA) changing. As an exclusive public land hunter for the past 10 years, I've had to really up my scent control regiment. I've hunted mostly marshy river bottom flat land.

I follow a lot of what John Eberhart recommends, including full ScentLok clothing. I'm not trying to get into the ScentLok / carbon clothing debate. Hunters have to utilize what they have confidence in. However, I think that executing measures to reduce your scent as much as possible (or as much as you feel personally feasible) does help. The frequency with which I see deer from before I started a strict scent control regiment as opposed to after, has increased significantly ( I understand this is anecdotal evidence). It has alleviated anxiety of being winded because 1.) another hunter beat me to the spot I planned to hunt, 2.) the wind changed directions, or 3.) the deer came in from the opposite direction I predicted. If you can predict the direction the wind and the deer are coming from with 100% accuracy, then you can reliably setup and hunt the wind. I just try to mitigate as many variables to remain undetected by reducing my scent as much as possible.

All you can do at the end of the day is setup based on the predicted conditions while minimizing your exposure. Some variables are just out of our control. That's what makes it hunting. :D

Note: Please for the love of all that is holy, do not misconstrue my post and turn this into a John Eberhart vs. Dan Infalt debate..... ;)
 
of course scent matters. Natives were (presumably) very good deer hunters. They did not have a lot of the gear we have today and they still got it done anbd they must have known a lot about wind, terrain, and scent control in whatever way they did (mud bathing, smoking themselves, cover scents). It would be interesting to me to learn more about their methods and tactics in that regard.

my point would simply be that: humans have been able to hunt and kill deer successfully long before scent-lok. what were their methods and knowledge?
 
mschultz373 said:
of course scent matters. Natives were (presumably) very good deer hunters. They did not have a lot of the gear we have today and they still got it done anbd they must have known a lot about wind, terrain, and scent control in whatever way they did (mud bathing, smoking themselves, cover scents). It would be interesting to me to learn more about their methods and tactics in that regard.

my point would simply be that: humans have been able to hunt and kill deer successfully long before scent-lok. what were their methods and knowledge?
Click to expand...

'Like modern-day hunters, Native Americans even used cover scents such as the smoke of a red oak fire. Woods fires were common, and the hunters knew the natural smell of smoke would not alarm their prey.'

interesting read

countryroadsmagazine.com

The First Deer Hunters

Sportsmen often imagine hunting deer long ago when the land was wild and untouched by modern civilization. However, if they did have the proverbial time machine they might just be surprised at what they’d find.
countryroadsmagazine.com countryroadsmagazine.com


Ive got a buddy that smokes his clothes and swears by it....one of those his dad did it and his dad, his dad,etc...they kill a ton of deer so who knows...
 
Love that article. wonder if different wood scents would elicit different reactions from deer. I have been smoking my gear and clothes for my hunts and haven't had anything blow at me... but maybe I've not been close enough for any to have smelled me. I have bumped several and they heard me or saw movement - never blew.
 
Unpopular opinion: some spots are just unhuntable at certain times for one reason or another. I know exactly what you speak of. The deer use a spot on a parcel I hunt as a crossing; due to swampy and depressed nature of terrain combined with prevailing winds and cross winds it has vortexes like crazy and is just about unhuntable. I’ve dumped gobs of milkweed into the air to study wind patterns and they literally swirl for 200 yards all over the place like something out of lord of the rings movie. There is literally only one time I can hunt it and that’s middle of the day when the wind currents are shifting. I’ve observed the wind drops to almost nothing at those moments and is for a brief time huntable. But only then.
It may be that for this season you switch to data collection instead. Look up some historical data for the area and start investigating if any matches up with current trends.
 
There isn't much you can do about a bad wind. The things that's in my mind if I encounter a bad wind I wasn't expecting is a very quick way to get down and up into a different tree. I rappel down and one stick up a tree i think will be better to hunt that wind.
 
Thank u... I've been waiting on somebody to say that. Utilize ur saddle system...relocate when the wind swirls. Either in the same area for the wind switch or take off and find something new. I think it takes 2 or 3 seasons to get to were u are really dialed in on ur system but once u get there, jumping trees or bailing to go explore is no big deal.
 
That bear I hit came in downwind yesterday with crazy swirling winds. Like I said, strange things can happen
 
Weldabeast said:
Thank u... I've been waiting on somebody to say that. Utilize ur saddle system...relocate when the wind swirls. Either in the same area for the wind switch or take off and find something new. I think it takes 2 or 3 seasons to get to were u are really dialed in on ur system but once u get there, jumping trees or bailing to go explore is no big deal.
Click to expand...
Old habits of "hunting it out" die hard!! LOL
 
I can definitely say the local NWR I hunt that is mostly bottomland hardwoods, cut by sloughs and bayous and mostly flat... for whatever reason, the forecasted wind is almost NEVER the actual wind. At least so far this season, with the foliage still on the trees and all. I've wondered if there's some reason for this, maybe that the small draws and sloughs somehow funnel or alter the wind - like a S wind hitting a slough that runs SW-NE not only causes the wind to funnel up that slough (effectively making it more like a SW wind), but when that wind hits an opposing bank or line of trees, that causes back-swirl?

It could also be that wind is simply less consistent here 60miles from the coast.
 
@Exhumis @mschultz373 yeah the property I hunt is steep river bottom, with a small amount of woods up top, higher elevation mainly Ag and food plots. Awesome daylight movement down there in the green bottoms, they love the red marked tops at night but way less daylight activity. So I’m forced to head down the hill for most good hunts. I leverage the river, sporadic success here and there, but it’s a real struggle. Darn near unhuntable but it’s what I got.
8DEE585F-9BC7-453A-ABFE-C9F05FF2DB74.png
 
I hunt big flat river bottom ground a lot and I have yet to figure out why the air moves the way it does in the bottoms. It seems once it gets over 5 mph, any change in speed up or down is accompanied with a change of direction. I am purely guessing here but I feel like it has to do with changes in air speed, thermal pull in relation to sun and/or water, changes in canopy height and density as you go across the landscape and mixed in no canopy areas whether they be bodies of water or heavily cut areas. One thing is for absolute certain, the air movement is going to cover most of your compass basically every day. I try to play the highest odds of expected deer movement and air movement. Also this year I am testing the nose jammer wax stick. So far so good with it. Have had a few deer that should have busted but didnt. One big doe definitely reacted to smelling something but she didnt booger up at all.
 
This video at 31 seconds is the top 1 or 2 reason I struggle where I hunt. That's what it does all day long for me. It's brutal
 
A lot of people call things thermals whenever the wind does a weird thing in hilly country. Dan Infalt made this mistake all the time.

When wind hits a ridge where the wind is perpendicular to ridge, then the leeward side (side not getting hit by the wind) experiences the Bernoulli effect, which causes wind to move in the "wrong" direction on that side. It is a much stronger effect than thermals.

Unless you are in a low wind condition, thermals rarely dictate wind direction but rather modifies it somewhat. I actually like low wind and thermals dominating because they are so predictable.

Thermals and the Bernoulli effect are very different and can't be used interchangeably to predict wind direction.
 
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