tough season

[hunter 740]

Have'nt seen a deer in my last dozen or so hunts.I'm wondering if any body else thinks deer numbers are down.I read in the paper the count is up in Ohio,must be somewhere other than around here.Four hundred acres of clear cut around our farm propably does'nt help.Next year I think we'll try food plots since all we have are hay fields and pasture.The corn piles are'nt even helping ,there getting used but must be at night.

[wabi]

Not sure where in Ohio you're at, but here in southern Ohio it been a bit different this year. The dry weather kept the food plot from producing much and I'm not seeing nearly as many deer as usual. It seems to me they just aren't moving as much this year - they are using a smaller home territory, and sticking to it unless forced to move to seek water & food. The pre-rut & rut produced some movement, but right now they are back to their disappearing act for me, too.

[Hoss]

hang in there bud ---Ive had those kinda spells myself..heres hoping the big boy comes right to ya..

[Grizzly Adam]

We have plenty of deer ... I often see 15 to 25 run out of the field in front of me when I drive out or in at night. Some good bucks, too.

BUT THEY SEEM TO HAVE GONE COMPLETELY NOCTURNAL!

April and I were discussing this the other day. This is the first hunting season in eight years of living out here that we haven't see A DEER in the fields in the daytime. Well, I take that back. I saw one, and I've already eaten most of it!

Usually, we'll see some crossing the field, or perhaps out in it in very early morning or late evening ... but we've not seen one so far this year. I work at home, and I look ... and we have LOTS of windows. It's truly bizzarre.

Every time I've been hunting, I've seen several bear within easy range ... but in six or seven hunts, only that one doe. Wierd.

Just goes to show: With the whitetail, never say never!

[vixenmaster]

they are just slick about getting around. i have only seen about 10 deer since Sept. 27th. there is a beanfield 1/4 mile from my bit of land i get to hunt. i trail watch in the mornings from just before light til 10 or 11 am or if i can't handle the cold anymore.

[B-Logger]

Michigan has a very mixed bag. As for our place, the numbers aren't just down, they've almost hit the bottom!

For many years I could hunt next to our open area and see from 20-50 deer almost every time I hunted. Not so this year! Many times this year I got totally skunked and saw nothing. It appears that right now we have one doe and 4 fawns left on our place. That is sad. We needed it down some but not to this extent.

Our DNR, in their wisdom, thought an early doe season would really help things because we just had so darned many deer. Problem is, they didn't go by just the areas that needed it. They drew a line and said every place south of there needs the does shot...and a bunch of them were. Then came archery season. I've never seen the deer so spooky as they were this year.

Another really odd thing is the number of buck pictures I got this year. The most I'd ever got for sure. However, immediately after the early doe season, even the bucks disappeared.

Now we could say that they just went nocturnal because of all the hunters and shooting. However, if that were so, they would still show up on our trail cams, but they didn't. And very few does showed up on the trail cams. Hum. Makes one wonder what happened....

In defense of the DNR though, some areas needed thinned for sure and some areas the people have reported great hunting this fall. But overall, it appears most areas were down. But what I found this year was almost unbelievable! How could I go from seeing up to 50 deer to many days seeing none?!

[Limbs and Sticks]

We hunt a farm that we would see 50/60 deer in most of the time some varmets got perm. to hunt this land all they did was walk, little man drives two way radios nobody seen any deer to amount to any thing until we got rid of them took a whole season but the deer are back I think if you stay on them day after day the deer learn how to deal with it. just my opinion.


WES

[Boo]

From what I read when we get a warm spell the deer do not venture far because it is too warm or uncomfortable to move a lot as well as they don't need as much food to keep warm with their thick cold weather coats and extra fat. Apparently they do what they have to during the evening because it is cooler. My buddies in northern Alberta had good success during a cold period previous to us coming up.
I've had a crappy season because the days were really windy during the few days I had available to deer hunt.

[Grizzly Adam]

I've had a crappy season because the days were really windy during the few days I had available to deer hunt.

I know about wind. It's nearly always windy here ... that's why the Wright brothers came! Around here, people will say, "Boy, it sure is calm today" ... rather than "Boy, it sure is windy today!"