gamehog
Active Member
saw seven bucks in a group this morning ,only three had lost one side of rack
bucks grouped ip
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gamehog
Active Member
sorry for the spelling error "up"
MickThompson
Well-Known Member
Yesterday on my way out to haul trash. I'd imagine they're about as sick of the ice as I am now.
BSK
Well-Known Member
My local bucks definitely started to group back up by mid-December. I would get 3-5 in a food plot at a time, all sparring and chasing each other around.
TheLBLman
Well-Known Member
Mine also began grouping back up in mid-December (Stewart Co.).
However, about the only time ANY deer were visiting our fields & food plots was after dark. Near zero daylight observations of any adult deer in food plots & fields.
We killed 2 does in last week of season, and both had stomachs full of acorns & honeysuckle. Never mind there was nearby standing corn and some nice winter wheat fields. No corn, no wheat in their stomachs.
The deer are just now starting to hit the fields and food plots more during daylight.
We just had a large area with a huge surplus of acorns (many didn't even fall until mid-December), and the amount of young honeysuckle in some 2 to 5-yr-old clear-cuts has been unprecedented.
I'm sure many areas (even parts of Stewart Co.) didn't have such an abundance of acorns and young honeysuckle. But for us, time & money of food plots was near a total waste of time & money.
BSK
Well-Known Member
Same. Almost all activity in plots at night.
For some strange reason, our deer were on the plots from day one and never stopped, even with a near record-breaking acorn crop. But then we've never had such productive clover plots as this year.
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TheLBLman
Well-Known Member
For us (and I'm talking on thousands of acres, not just a few hundred) we had an incredible production of very widespread young honeysuckle in some 2 to 8-yr-old clear-cuts. These brushy clear-cuts might as well have been soybean or cornfields.
I suspect much of these food sources will more or less disappear in the next couple years as the trees become bigger, little sun will hit the ground, and the deer may become a bit more acorn-driven in terms of herd health (or lack thereof). And to add to this, most of our larger oaks will be cut this spring, so fewer acorns in next many years.
But in fall/winter 2023, the deer would feed every afternoon, and into the night on acorns, then lay around for many hours chewing their cud (acorns take a very long time to digest), then move around in brushy areas eating honeysuckle a bit during the day, then back to acorns late afternoon, to repeat this daily cycle.
Occasionally, some might venture into a food plot or field, but it was obvious they had more than enough to eat without every exposing themselves to the dangers of being out "in the open". It wasn't a hunting pressure thing so much as just the normal ingrained behavior of deer (especially where coyotes and dogs exist). And I'm afraid, the future only holds more coyotes and more dogs.
