I was surprised at how much deer will hit newly mowed areas, especially considering my local acorn crop. A couple weeks ago I mowed all our roads to make hunting access easier without having to wade through waist-high weeds. In a few places, I have cameras pointed across the roads to capture specific movement patterns. But instead of just movement on these roads, what I got was deer feeding up and down the roads as they browsed on the fresh growth after mowing.
BSK is right, when the acorns are abundant in fall they will be preferred over corn. My buddies that hunt over corn piles in KY are seeing deer avoid corn to eat acorns. Now that temps are dropping to 40s at night the deer are returning to the corn piles. Always been like that over the years.
This is interesting. id say in line with what ive found scouting but ive just never put it into words like this. Well done SKi. ill find a lone oak way out there no where near a field and think, here we go, this is gonna be money. But little or no deer sign under it. Oaks that are still in cover but within 100 yards of the next field will have deer bedding impressions all over since they hang out so much there.
I think your right on, I mainly only hunt public land and usually they are scarfing up every last bit of green right before its gone then I think they turn to acorns hard, I see them eating the craziest things, random green stuff, leaf here branch there, grass over there just picking and walking.
Do you have better luck with clover plots, or cereal grain plots as far as deer usage? Do you plant your clover in October when you do plant?
Normally, I plant my plots mid-August, and use a mixture of Buckwheat, Austrian Winter Peas, Crimson Clover and Wheat. The deer hit the plants in a very predictable pattern. First the Buckwheat until the first frost kills it, then the Austrian Winter Peas, then the clover, and last the cereal grain.
This ^^^ it's a common fact if you have a bumper crop of acorns deer hunting is harder . They eat around you hunting them. They either eat where hunters are not or at night because they don't have to hunt the acorns they are everywhere.
Agreed. Makes hunting harder. Deer don't move as far or as often (acorns digest slowly) when we have a bumper crop.
Love hate relationship with acorns. Hunting harder, but much better for deer in the long run.
Exactly. Plus, in my case, the more acorns, the more deer I have to hunt (draws more deer to my hill-country hardwoods versus the neighboring bottomland ag). But again, a double-edged sword. My censuses show we have more deer in a bumper acorn year, but we see fewer of them because of the "acorn effect" (less movement).
