#2052802 - 08/31/10 04:28 PM
Re: ATTENTION THICKET HUNTERS!!!!!
[Re: BUCKTOOF]
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Mike Belt
TnDeer Old Timer
16 Point
Registered: 03/26/99
Posts: 16933
Loc: Lakeland, Tn.
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You want to hold deer? Get thick. Put a little pressure on them and watch where they head. That being said, I love hunting edges of thickets especially when certain terrain features line up just right. When thicket space is limited the best way to run your deer away from the immediate area is to penetrate those thickets. You can have too much of a good thing however. At Ames where I hunt there are thousands of acres of thickets and pine plantings. Some of those pine plantings have been thinned and are mature enough to see into but many of them are fairly young and thick in the 5-10 year range. Along the outside edges it's easy to step from one fresh scrape into the next all the way around them. Once the deer react to hunting pressure and go into the avoidance mode and they have 100 acre thickets butting up to other 100 acre thickets to others, sometimes you have to jump into the middle of them...at least that's my game plan this season. Much of this is point blank sighting and shooting but we have so much of them there's almost no alternative. The good thing is we have so much of it we don't fear losing our deer.
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BONE HEAD HUNTER
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#2052855 - 08/31/10 05:38 PM
Re: ATTENTION THICKET HUNTERS!!!!!
[Re: Mike Belt]
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Andy S.
TnDeer Old Timer
12 Point
Registered: 07/26/99
Posts: 7203
Loc: Atoka, TN
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You can have too much of a good thing however. At Ames where I hunt there are thousands of acres of thickets and pine plantings.
I could not agree more Mike. This "overabundance of thickets" makes for some hard hunting for us. Once the deer sense our presence, they hardly ever show their face during daylight hours. The fact that we have absolutely HAMMERED the does for several years does not help either. The deer have hundreds of acres of prime "sanctuary" to hide in, and they do a good job of it!
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Andy S.
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#2052858 - 08/31/10 05:46 PM
Re: ATTENTION THICKET HUNTERS!!!!!
[Re: Andy S.]
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BSK
Jerkasourous of the non-typical kind
Non-Typical
Registered: 03/11/99
Posts: 59548
Loc: Nashville, TN
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And that's why I recommend small scattered sanctuary thickets instead of a big sanctuary in the middle of a property. It's darn hard to entice a hunter-wary older buck out of a big thicket once the guns start going off. I would rather have lots of little thickets a buck can't possibly live in full time. Then try to catch him moving from thicket to thicket.
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"Know where you stand, and stand there" --Jesuit Father Daniel Berrigan
"There is no reasoning someone out of a position he has not reasoned himself into." --Clive James
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#2053313 - 08/31/10 10:25 PM
Re: ATTENTION THICKET HUNTERS!!!!!
[Re: BSK]
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RKenney
10 Point
Registered: 03/15/08
Posts: 3633
Loc: Maury Co.
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A fairly open area within a thicket is good, but you must enter
the area under the right conditions.
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