Spotlite
Resident Homesteader
now that you have gotten a couple good responses, it is 24/7/365 around the houseoutdoorgirl said:This is probably a stupid question but when exactly is the rut?
Sorry Marathon, forgive me
now that you have gotten a couple good responses, it is 24/7/365 around the houseoutdoorgirl said:This is probably a stupid question but when exactly is the rut?
Spotlite said:now that you have gotten a couple good responses, it is 24/7/365 around the house
Sorry Marathon, forgive me
Thanksmarathon said:Hey man, I just knew YOU couldn't resist. Forgiven my brother.
Now let's get back to business.
DCHunter said:If you're using doe estrus to attract a buck, is it pointless to do this while hunting on the ground? The scent has to be carried to the buck so naturally your human scent would go with it. Also, if you are using scent and you're about 20 feet up in a tree, do you still face into the wind, or do you face the other way?
Sixes said:I work in an LNG plant that is sitting on 950 acres that does not allow hunting, and I see deer every day. Not to argue with anyone, but I see bucks and does bed beside one another almost every day in the fall. Don`t see it as much in spring/summer but lots in the fall.
It`s amazing what we see, especially in the fall, where it is common to see up to 25 deer in an afternoon, with many bucks sparring and pushing one another. This begins in Sept as soon as velvet peels, the bucks begin to get aggressive, and most will stay in their own age class for the sparring, with occassionally a younger buck matching against a larger buck.
The best fight I`ve seen occured in mid-afternoon, when three bucks fought over one doe. The bucks pushed each other around a up a big hill, until the largest got an uphill advantage and rolled one of the other bucks down the hill.
Great place to work and learn about deer.
Another interesting observation is that deer will feed heavily until about 2 hrs after dark, then bed for a few hours and feed again. This cycle goes on all night..
TH
PChunter said:A little bit about the property. Old house place with 6 mature apple trees aprox. 50yrds behind and to the west, with 20yrds to the tree line. 1 1/2 acre old garden area with wild tomatoes and numerous grasses (by the way the turkey love these little tomatoes) tucked into the woods behind and to the south of apple trees. 200yrds to the north of the apple tree are about 15 yards of persimmons along another 2 arce opening surrounded by trees. Off the north side of this opening there is a mature hardwood holler that runs about 800yrds untill it meets a crp field. The rest of the wooded area that runs from the old house to the crp field is make up of mixed hardwoods and pines of all sizes. There is a creek that runs nw to se across the southern property and only has water about half the time. The creek/ditch coming from the crp field has the typical 20yrds of woods around it until it meets the woods then it gets real thick around it once back in the wooded area.
Ok, here's what I did last year. I hunted 75 yrds NW of the 1 1/2 acre opening pretty much in line with the apple trees about 100yrds to my east. I saw a lot of deer during archery season at this location (I can only hunt during archery season because the landowner hunts the rifle season) but never saw anything older then a 2 1/2 yr old buck. I was able to take 2 does but, the landowner is always killing good bucks. Thanks for the help!!!
Sixes said:There is hunting on the surrounding land, but the nearest point is about a half a mile.
I think the deer naturally interact with one another. I`ve seen does nuzzle bucks, fawns nuzzle bucks, bucks nuzzle does and so on with all the deer. The only deer that I do not see intermingle are the 2.5 y/o bucks and the 5.5 y/o bucks. The older larger bucks will not tolerate the younger bucks.
The best example of this is a couple of years ago, about 1.5 hours after dark (our security cameras can be viewed in the dark), there were 21 deer in our front field with 11 of them bucks, the bucks were all staggered in groups sparring, when I see a huge (10 pointer about 200lbs LW) buck jump a guard rail at the furthest part of the field and slowly strut his way through the field, the buck checked every doe group in the field and then proceeded to split every buck group up and send them on their way. He was definitely the boss.
After about an hour, the other bucks began sparring again and big boy joined in for a few minutes. He sparred for about 15 minutes and then strutted to one of the doe groups, scent checked them and bedded down in the middle of about 8 does.
I had all of this recorded on our security camera, but we upgraded our cameras and lost all of the footage.
The neat thing is that this all happened in early Nov during prerut. So, I think deer comingle alot more than I ever thought.
TH
Nice deer !!Sixes said:Here one killed in the rut in a food plot edge.
TH
I think it is more or less a location call. It lets deer in the area know that there is a willing buck working the area, or is in pursuit/chasing a doe.outdoorgirl said:When a buck grunts, what exactly does that mean? ...Why are they grunting?
ok lets seebradpatt03 said:do deer try to cross creeks in one area every time?
will a deer avoid crossing water if its too deep or the current is too strong?
is it true that when a deer is staring at you stomping his foot that it is releasing a "warning scent" to alert other deer in the area of danger? i have had them do this before and then never blow and return to normal behavior
if you jump bedded deer right near your stand on the way in, should you still hunt it or find somewhere else?
do deer and turkeys get along?
do deer listen for sounds of other animals to let them know an area is safe to enter? (ie. would a deer be spooked by the warning chatter of a squirrel??)
i will list some more up here as they come to me
bradpatt03 said:do deer try to cross creeks in one area every time?
will a deer avoid crossing water if its too deep or the current is too strong?
is it true that when a deer is staring at you stomping his foot that it is releasing a "warning scent" to alert other deer in the area of danger? i have had them do this before and then never blow and return to normal behavior
if you jump bedded deer right near your stand on the way in, should you still hunt it or find somewhere else?
do deer and turkeys get along?
do deer listen for sounds of other animals to let them know an area is safe to enter? (ie. would a deer be spooked by the warning chatter of a squirrel??)
i will list some more up here as they come to me
futuredoc said:What are your tactics for hunting feeding areas that are in very close proximity to bedding areas? Say an oak bottom bordered by thick pines that are a well-known bedding area. Would you hunt such a place in the morning and risk running deer out of there on the way in? Do you hunt with the mindset that the deer will feed their way back to bed in the morning or get up at some point in the morning to feed again? Or do you stay out of there all together and only hunt it in the evenings?