Deeper look at doe harvest w/ bows

[richmanbarbeque]

Without question applying harvest/hunting pressure to a property during bow season reduces daylight buck activity by MZ season. However, one way around this is to set aside sections of your hunting property as "no hunt" zones until MZ season. Deer quickly recognize areas of a property that are not being intruded upon (simply by finding areas with no human scent) and focusing their daylight activity in these areas.

I felt like this could use a seperate thread, so here goes.

I spend about 90% of my season with a bow in my hand. One thing for sure I have seen is the negative effect on deer in general when the guns come out (Mz,gun). This is not a slam just the truth as I percieve it. This probably why I try to kill does early.

I have had 3 hunts on my property (59 acres) with 14 deer observed and another hunter with a seperate sit with 2 observed. One killed and two more that should have.

I have certain areas that I expect to see does and that is where I want/plan to kill them. I have several areas that I am setting aside that I have hopes of killing a buck. These areas in most cases are relatively close to the areas I plan on killing does. The terrain is a little different and most of my shots will be less than 15-20 yards. Very thick and very secluded even though it is just 50-100 yards or so from areas where does are regularly hunted. The areas that I am setting aside usually are in a terrain transition area or easily over looked because it is a 1/2 acre patch or less. Perefect areas for bucks to scent check or skirt a hunter looking for does during pre-rut.

I believe does can be killed early on small properties but feel strongly that HOW/WHERE you do it is very important.

These are just a few thoughts and hopefully many of you will add your ideas.

 

[Greg M]

I did manage to kill a doe on a small 20 acre property last week in basically only one of two small areas cleared to hunt. Unfortunately, we had to drag her right back through the area she was killed, really skunking the place up. I saw deer, does and bucks, the next day, both AM and PM, and the following day. I think, and I know very little, that a bigger problem may lie with where you field dress them. Now, I have a slight advantage over most, in that 30 minutes after she was recovered, she was opened up at the house. However, that's not to say that dragging one in tact a long way until you are way out of your hunting area isn't a great idea. I believe that if you were walking through a parking garage or lot where you work and you saw a big pile of human guts, you might reconsider using said garage or lot, and just park at the meter.

 

[BSK]

I believe does can be killed early on small properties but feel strongly that HOW/WHERE you do it is very important.

You can apply considerable hunting pressure to an area without doing too much harm as long as deer have sanctuary from hunting pressure, and those sanctuaries don't need to be big--just a couple of acres each. And having several of them really helps.

 

[102]

ALWAYS HUNT ANY area that you hunt with the attitudes of hunting MATURE deer (see BSK post about "makes me shake my head"). This will train you to be a better hunter.

102

 

[cfmartin1833]

Im going through this exact situation. I have a 120 Acre farm that Im hunting. About half of it is field and the other half is wooded area. Its also surrounded by woods and fields(about 50-50). The deer have patches of cover but I fear killing an early doe will make them dissappear. I have 3 stands on the property but because of the layout they are all within 150 yards of each other. Most of the woods are located close to each other on one end of the property. What do you do? I think the best advice I have heard so far is in the previous post.

 

[BowGuy84]

My housemate asked me last night "Which zones of your property are open to hunting in early MZL?" I only have 104 acres but I don't allow hunting on at least half of it until late Oct. I want the deer comfortable and moving all through out.

I hunt the property 1 time in Sep. on the day I plant plots then not until early MZL. This year we have permission to hunt the neighboring property. Were hunting it during early mzl and staying off mine...pressure is huge especially early when bucks haven't given us that slight edge of their rut stupidity.

 

[Football Hunter]

I left my place this weekend,a north wind is very iffy there,hated it,but have a place close to the house that works good with a north wind

 

[knightrider]

I did manage to kill a doe on a small 20 acre property last week in basically only one of two small areas cleared to hunt. Unfortunately, we had to drag her right back through the area she was killed, really skunking the place up. I saw deer, does and bucks, the next day, both AM and PM, and the following day. I think, and I know very little, that a bigger problem may lie with where you field dress them. Now, I have a slight advantage over most, in that 30 minutes after she was recovered, she was opened up at the house. However, that's not to say that dragging one in tact a long way until you are way out of your hunting area isn't a great idea. I believe that if you were walking through a parking garage or lot where you work and you saw a big pile of human guts, you might reconsider using said garage or lot, and just park at the meter.

you mean to tell me deer can associate guts[which they dont know what they are]with a hunter killing their long lost kin,come one they are not people and i dont think they can think in this manner,now the scent we leave the times they see us and here us yes is pressure but not seeing their buddies guts.jmho

 

[Loswookie]

I ran a across a study on the net where they were actually trying to test wether gut piles scared the deer or not. They sat up game cams on fresh piles and more often than not the first animals to come investigate the pile were whitetails. apparently their curiosity of the smell outweighed their fear of the unknown. It was a neat study, but that does not mean I am going to field dress every deer under my stand.

 

[woodchuckc]

I know that on a couple of occasions I have killed a doe on a morning hunt, field dressed it and had does and immature bucks walking around and eating all around the gut pile that afternoon / evening, not paying any attention to it at all. I have never seen a mature buck do that, but I'm talking about around field edges where I don't see mature bucks anyway.

 

[East10buck]

Our farm is 450 acres that consists of about 60 percent hardwood ridges and 40 percent fields. The pattern over the past few years is we have been killing does out of the pinch points from the woods to the field edges that totals out to about 130acres. The rest of the property we just leave alone til about halloween or so. Doe management is a key component of a good buck to doe ratio on our farm but stayin out of the sanctuaries is another thing that is just important

 

[Greg M]

you mean to tell me deer can associate guts[which they dont know what they are]with a hunter killing their long lost kin,come one they are not people and i dont think they can think in this manner,now the scent we leave the times they see us and here us yes is pressure but not seeing their buddies guts.jmho [/quote]
I'm not saying it matters where you field dress them. I'm saying that it's an intrusive new smell. I won't do it. I saw deer the next two days after dragging her dead carcass through my shooting area. Do they think it's their long lost uncle Teddy? No, of course not. Do they know the smell? Maybe. All I was doing was making the suggestion to reconsider where you dress them at to avoid too much foreign smell. All everyone talks about is smell and scent and wind and.......so what makes you think that a strange new smell wouldn't cause them to be on DefCon5? After 2 weeks laying there, they probably don't care. Further, if you think they have no memory or intelligence then I disagree. That's precisely why deer get bumped to new areas. Their memory tells them that a particular area is unsafe. Maybe I sound stupid, but I don't think you are giving them enough credit.

 

[102]

FACT,
Gut piles are COYOTE BAIT. Deer don't like coyote. Or the piss they mark all their "bait piles" with.

Do what you want...but I will drag a deer a long way with its' guts inside to avoid a bait pile for coyotes. Unless I am not planning on coming back any time soon.

102

 

[PickettSFHunter]

Close to 95% of my 85 acres doesnt get hunted or even really entered much during bow season. I have no need for doe harvest though, never have killed a doe there. I have observed 1 doe, 1 fawn, and 1 5 point there in 2 evening hunts. Thats actually much better than normal. When gun opens up, Ill be hunting around 50% of that property at different times.

I use my other 55 acre place as the place to go during bow season, see a few more deer and not really worry about the pressure because I dont care about hunting it during gun( its a young buck slaughterhouse in Morgan County, an Orange army invades the woods)Its pitiful over there come gun season. So I pretty well hunt all over it during bow.

 

[Football Hunter]

FACT,
Gut piles are COYOTE BAIT. Deer don't like coyote. Or the piss they mark all their "bait piles" with.

Do what you want...but I will drag a deer a long way with its' guts inside to avoid a bait pile for coyotes. Unless I am not planning on coming back any time soon.

102

someone will soon post a pic of a deer with its nose in a gut pile,Ive seen many

 

[102]

I have NO DOUBT that deer could care less about a gut pile. But they DO NOT like gut piles being tended and frequented by COYOTES. Coyotes wreak havoc on gut piles and leave scat and pee EVERYWHERE around the carcass or gut pile. THIS DOES SCARE OFF DEER, at least for a while.

102

 

[Andy S.]

FACT,
Gut piles are COYOTE BAIT.

I thought this too until we did a small scale camera census of gut piles a few years back. Much to our surprise, coyotes made up a very small percentage of the animals frequenting the gut piles. Buzzards, opossums and a myriad of other critters did the majority of the eating according to our trail camera photos.

 

[102]

Like killing large antlered bucks, it all depends on where you hunt and resident populatios. Where I hunt, gut piles bring in packs of coyotes!

 

[richmanbarbeque]

I wish we could stay on topic at least every once in a while. Someone start a gut pile thread. Geez

 

[East10buck]

I wish we could stay on topic at least every once in a while. Someone start a gut pile thread. Geez

Lmao u would think they got A.D.D

 

[Andy S.]

I wish we could stay on topic at least every once in a while. Someone start a gut pile thread. Geez

Lmao u would think they got A.D.D

Geeez someone is starting an A.D.D thread.......... I could not resist. :)

 

[BSK]

Stovepipe,

You've just asked the most important--but also unanswerable--question. How much pressure does it take to affect daylight deer activity? And I say that's an "unanswerable" question because first, we can't get inside a deer's head and ask them; and 2) the answer is always going to be "It depends." It will depend on many factors: 1) the hunter density, the hunting "style" of the hunters, the age/experience of the deer, the habitat, etc.

I've watched major habitat changes allow hunters to apply far more hunting pressure to a property without affecting deer movement patterns. I've also watched a habitat degrade (shifted from early stage regrowth [great cover] to pole timber [poor cover]) and seen the same number of hunters hunting the same way suddenly see very rapid adjustment of the deer to hunting pressure.

The hunter who is very mobile and does not hunt the same stand locations will certainly produce far less perceived pressure on the deer than the hunter hunting the same stand day after day. The hunter being very scent concious will produce far less perceived pressure than the hunter who wears the same dirty hunting clothes every day and smokes on the stand.

In addition, deer have an amazing ability to differentiate between human activity they perceive as harmless and human activity they perceive as dangerous. Deer will ignore the farmer on his tractor, but will nearly jump out of their skin when confronted with a walking person in the woods. Deer will rapidly become accustomed to human scent in one location, but nearly jump out of their skin when they encounter that same person's scent in an area where humans rarely frequent.

Deer are amazingly perceptive. They will ignore the ATV rider and the hay wagon as long as those human activities have never proven dangerous. They will even ignore the scent of a person who checks trail-cameras all year long. For the vast majority of the year, that scent does not equal "danger."

But anything they perceive as "dangerous" will produce very rapid adjustments in behavior, and the older and more experienced a deer is, the less it takes to make them think "danger."

 

[Andy S.]

Stovepipe,

You've just asked the most important--but also unanswerable--question. How much pressure does it take to affect daylight deer activity? And I say that's an "unanswerable" question because first, we can't get inside a deer's head and ask them; and 2) the answer is always going to be "It depends." It will depend on many factors: 1) the hunter density, the hunting "style" of the hunters, the age/experience of the deer, the habitat, etc.

I've watched major habitat changes allow hunters to apply far more hunting pressure to a property without affecting deer movement patterns. I've also watched a habitat degrade (shifted from early stage regrowth [great cover] to pole timber [poor cover]) and seen the same number of hunters hunting the same way suddenly see very rapid adjustment of the deer to hunting pressure.

The hunter who is very mobile and does not hunt the same stand locations will certainly produce far less perceived pressure on the deer than the hunter hunting the same stand day after day. The hunter being very scent concious will produce far less perceived pressure than the hunter who wears the same dirty hunting clothes every day and smokes on the stand.

In addition, deer have an amazing ability to differentiate between human activity they perceive as harmless and human activity they perceive as dangerous. Deer will ignore the farmer on his tractor, but will nearly jump out of their skin when confronted with a walking person in the woods. Deer will rapidly become accustomed to human scent in one location, but nearly jump out of their skin when they encounter that same person's scent in an area where humans rarely frequent.

Deer are amazingly perceptive. They will ignore the ATV rider and the hay wagon as long as those human activities have never proven dangerous. They will even ignore the scent of a person who checks trail-cameras all year long. For the vast majority of the year, that scent does not equal "danger."

But anything they perceive as "dangerous" will produce very rapid adjustments in behavior, and the older and more experienced a deer is, the less it takes to make them think "danger."

Very well said Bryan, I agree 100%.

 

[woodchuckc]

Yep - they are not intelligent as such, but they sure can associate certain sights / sounds with danger. I was bushhogging the field behind the house several days last week in the short hour of daylight left after getting home before it got dark, and all 3 evenings I had deer come out and visit the salt lick in the corner of the field. One night there were 3 does and a small yearling buck that got within 30 yards of the tractor as I made my rounds in the field. The last evening a nice 9 point buck that I have posted pictures of here came out to the salt lick and hung around for about 10 minutes. Every time I came around to the closest point, he would raise his head from the salt block or nibbling around it and stare at me for a few seconds, then lower his head and continue. He finally just wandered back into the woods nonchalantly. If anything happens up at the house (just opening a door on the house or talking in the driveway) which is about 300 yards away from the salt lick, when there are deer in the field, white flags are raised and they are gone immediately.

 

[Winchester]

I will agree that how and where you apply the pressure on the deer makes a difference. I am of the opinion that you can bow hunt many properties a fair amount without doing too much damage, as far as pressure goes on the daily deer movement. Now you get too many hunters on a tract or a sloppy/stinky hunter roaming aimlessly through bedding areas and such and you will amplify your problems quickly. Also when/how you kill your does even makes a difference imo. I never liked shooting one out of a large group, i would much rather kill a lone doe. You get 7 or 8 does spooked and running circles scent checking and looking for the source of a problem and its hard to stay undetected! There are many ways to achieve the same thing, some just work better than others in different areas, IMO.

 

[fishboy1]

Good post Winchester.

Passed up a shot at a fat doe this AM. Didn't want her 6 friends to know what was going on. She got a whiff of me and blew but hung around for 30 minutes stomping. Hated that and just wanted her and her 2 fawns to leave. (the others had already passed through)

2 hours later a 3 pt came through and was nice and relaxed. When he hit the spot where the does where stomping the ground looking for me, he got kinda spooky. Tracked around the area where she was doing the stomp and blow and finally followed her tracks back to where she cut across a power line. She had settled down about 10 yds from the power line and quit stomping.

I think by stomping the ground she was leaving a "caution" scent/sign that he picked up on. It was amazing to watch that little buck relax when he got out of the "danger" zone and followed the doe's trail out into the power line. I wonder if they have some sort of scent/gland they lay down for the "all clear" signal.

 

[Boone 58]

Good post and good point!