moon phase simplified

[longbow joe]

I definately belive in the moon phases for fishing and hunting. But after all the technical jargon i read a book .it was a longbow book by byron ferguson "become the arrow" in a nutshell he goes on to simply say anytime the moon is out during the day is good hunting n fishing .after reading this everything made more sense n ive found it to be so true. The other part of the equasion is the people factor i dont know how many deer i killed due to a bozo walking thru the woods driving a buck to me of kids playing paintball 200 yards away scaring a giant 8 my way. Wen you hunt a more suburbon area like myself i think the moon phases are less important than My more remote spots . So on bad moon days i hunt my suburbon spots hoping for a little people deer push. ......... but then theres the 3rd factor n most important "theres never a bad day to be hunting period!!!!! To hell with the phases

[xcaliber]

It's something to read, but I don't plan my vacation days around it. One rule an old timer taught me many years ago is that nobody kills a deer sitting on the sofa. I hunt as often as possible, and treat every minute as it could happen now!

[galamb]

I have been hunting the same piece of property now for about 8 years.

For the first five years myself and my hunting buddy had a total of seven game camera's out all year. Some on (apparent) game trails, a couple over "mineral stations" (that we serviced with blocks, powdered minerals) and a couple over feed piles (corn or commercial horse/deer feed).

Needless to say we got thousands of pictures.

In the off season I tried to see if I could detect some "patterns". All the date/time etc was loaded into a spreadsheet and then it was charted.

Well, from all that I learned two things about the property we hunt (which is hardwoods without any adjacent agriculture land - so "no reason" for Bambi to go to the "west field" or whatever).

First - I couldn't pattern the deer. There was no rhyme or reason as to when they would show up, at what interval, zip - nada (like I said, it's not like they were going to the corn field every night, because one does not exist).

Second - the activity did always increase around the full moon. Again, couldn't pattern anything. But in any given three day period where we might see a few deer, the number always doubled or tripled for the three days on either side of the full moon.

So at least where I hunt, the "activity level" seems to increase around the full moon, all else being equal - just don't know that it translates into "opportunity" - the vast majority of activity occurred OUTSIDE of shoot hours.

While this information for me was "interesting", my 2013 buck was arrowed 4 days before the "new moon" (almost as far from the full moon as you could get) and my 2014 buck 4 days after the full moon (and I was out those all four of those "prime days" and saw nothing) - go figure.

[foofoo]

i see action and better luck mostly 5 days before or 5 days after a full moon.i still hunt in between though

[Sooner44]

Through the years I heard a lot of wives tales and misinformation regarding deer activity. The best advice has already been stated above "get off the couch"
I've heard deer are not as active during windy days, rainy days, moon phase
and so-on.
Wouldn't it be nice if someone would actually track hundreds of deer and verify there movement and habits ?
The Sam Noble Foundation has been involved in the research and study of deer habits, movement, and overall deer management for decades. I would recommend this link for actual documented data regarding deer activity.
http://www.noble.org/ag/research/usinggps/

One article:
Generally speaking, movements of both sexes were greatest around sunrise and sunset; however, this trend was less prominent for females during the fawning and lactation phases of summer. Average total daily movement of females was greatest from February-April (Figure 1). Female movement sharply declined in May (pre-fawning) and continued to gradually decline until August. Females likely moved less because they were confined to smaller areas due to fawn immobility. This emphasizes the importance of maintaining undisturbed, high quality habitats that provide most requirements in a relatively small area. Average total daily movement of males was greatest in November (corresponding to pre-rut and rut), showing a sharp decline in December, then gradually declining until reaching a low in May (Figure 2). Many hunting seasons correspond to the period of greatest movement which could result in increased vulnerability of bucks to hunters and harvest. Management strategies aimed at improving buck age structure may need to account for this with various harvest restrictions.

We also examined deer movements with respect to time period, moon phase and weather variables. Females moved more during daylight hours than nighttime hours during both spring and summer. Males moved more in daylight hours during spring and nighttime hours during winter. This change in male movement patterns was probably a result of changes in male breeding season behavior and possibly a response to changes in female movement patterns associated with the breeding season. Many people believe that moon phase has a dramatic impact on deer movement; however, the data collected throughout our study indicate that moon phase had no effect on movements of deer of either sex. In general, weather conditions had little effect on deer movements. Of the weather variables tested throughout our study (barometric pressure, precipitation, temperature, wind speed and relative humidity), temperature was the only variable showing any consistent effect on deer movements. While female deer moved less during summer than other seasons, during the summer, they moved greater distances at times with normal to high temperatures and less when temperatures were coolest. Females could have been seeking more favorable thermal habitats during periods of extreme heat, where they could maintain higher rates of movement. Males moved more during winter when temperatures were lowest, possibly to forage more extensively or access more favorable thermal habitats for protection from cold.

[bob watkins]

i am with foofoo on this one my son and have tracked this way quite a bit. i cant even tell you how many deer we were lucky on .a few times we both shot deer on the same evening just lucky maybe////

[GROOTSKY]

I used to avoid hunting the full moon but have since changed my mind. There seems to be a lot night activity during the full moon but even daylight hours activity seems to pick up. A few weeks ago during the super moon animals were everywhere.