Hunting thick stuff

[Austin95]

Okay so my sightings have dropped a decent amount the past few weeks and I read about most of you guys saying they are moving in the thick stuff. Well thinking about my property I'm hunting I can only think of one spot where it is real thick. But I have never really scouted out there and wouldn't know how to hunt it because of the thickness? I have a climber and I doubt there are many trees to climb and if I could my shooting range would suck. How do I go about hunting it?

 

[FARMTOFIELD]

Find where the deer are moving in and out and move as far downwind as a clear shot will allow you and hunt

 

[Winchester]

Hunt the edges of it.

 

[MattR]

Hunt the edge, or find a clear enough place to set up a blind or make a blind. Everything I hunted in east NC was very very think. No kidding, sometimes it would take me 30+ minutes to walk, or crawl maybe a couple hundred yards.

I could only see about 40 yards but had some pretty successful hunts. If you can find a travel cooridor within a thicket it would be best.

Also, your scent has to be well taken care of. Being in close quarters in thick stuff, you have to take care of your scent and make as little noise as possible going in.

 

[McCoy]

Hunt the edges of it.

This

 

[Mike Belt]

I prefer the edges as well. If you have an adjacent area that usually holds a fair amount of does find any potential travel corridor a buck might use connecting those areas with the thick stuff and then hang tight along the edge.

 

[Boll Weevil]

I know you asked about thick stuff but another thought is to look at places that have been overlooked and unhunted. It doesn't have to be big either: a patch of broom straw with a view, a ditch with an easy escape route, the old grown up feedlot right behind the barn the farmer drives by 3 times a week to feed cattle.

At this point in the season if there's been lots of pressure, deer just wanna be left alone. Eat, rest, not get killed. Eat, rest, not get killed. They'll pick some flat out bizarre places to do just this...the last place you'd think to hunt.

Sometime it's thick and sometimes it not...it's just a place where we don't bother'em.

 

[BSK]

Sometime it's thick and sometimes it not...it's just a place where we don't bother'em.

Excellent advice.

 

[TheLBLman]

. . . . deer just wanna be left alone. Eat, rest, not get killed. Eat, rest, not get killed. They'll pick some flat out bizarre places to do just this...the last place you'd think to hunt.

Truly the bottom line and so simple.
Older deer QUICKLY gravitate to the "spots" where they're least disturbed. Most commonly, these spots do not "look" like good places to hunt (from the average hunter's perspective). They are often small in size, often close to something that would "disturb" the hunter more than the deer (such as steady traffic on a busy road). Much of the "concealment" may come in the form of an absence of hunters, as if no hunter is there looking, then the deer is "concealed".

Sometimes, these "spots" will be in very open mature hardwoods, and are not necessarily in "thick" cover. What such spots have in common is the deer is well concealed (may just be a single fallen tree hiding him in an open woodland), and more importantly, seldom intruded by a hunter.

I once stumbled upon a buck's liar while quail hunting. There was what had one time been a very small pond (or watering hole) in the middle of about a 50-acre field. There was nothing but bare ground for several hundred yards surrounding this "spot", which had grown up in weeds from the farmer "going around" it over the years. It was no more than 50 feet in diameter, mostly just a cluster of cattails and weeds.

I had some quail flush about 300 yards away on the fence row separating this field from the next, and noted one of them flew to this "spot", which I discovered was covered in deer droppings and tracks. I killed a buck there (my best to date at the time) a few days later. Had previously been deer hunting only in and along the edge of the "big woods" which began several hundred yards away from this little weed patch in the middle of an open field.

 

[WMAn]

Wes,

Share a little more of your experience hunting out of the way, overlooked, and often small places like the pond you reference.

I find places like the one you described, and I'm often left scratching my head, thinking, "How in the world do I hunt this?"

There are often no trees to climb and the areas are sometimes so thick that being up a tree offers no advantage. I'm left wondering how do I get in here without pushing the deer out and how do I hunt off the ground without the deer knowing I'm there until it's too late for the deer?

 

[Crosshairy]

I normally hunt in areas similar to what's shown in Poser's pic, because that's about the only way I can hunt on public land without being overrun with other hunters and still see deer.

 

[hunter0925]

Hunt the edge, or find a clear enough place to set up a blind or make a blind. Everything I hunted in east NC was very very think. No kidding, sometimes it would take me 30+ minutes to walk, or crawl maybe a couple hundred yards.

I could only see about 40 yards but had some pretty successful hunts. If you can find a travel cooridor within a thicket it would be best.

Also, your scent has to be well taken care of. Being in close quarters in thick stuff, you have to take care of your scent and make as little noise as possible going in.

Ahh the thicket called Lejeune/ Croatan.

 

[Lost Lake]

I know you asked about thick stuff but another thought is to look at places that have been overlooked and unhunted. It doesn't have to be big either: a patch of broom straw with a view, a ditch with an easy escape route, the old grown up feedlot right behind the barn the farmer drives by 3 times a week to feed cattle.

At this point in the season if there's been lots of pressure, deer just wanna be left alone. Eat, rest, not get killed. Eat, rest, not get killed. They'll pick some flat out bizarre places to do just this...the last place you'd think to hunt.

Sometime it's thick and sometimes it not...it's just a place where we don't bother'em.

Exactly

 

[Vermin93]

This picture doesn't do the area so much justice, but:


While hunting the Hatchie Refuge hunt (3rd year doing so, haven't killed a mature buck yet.... sore subject), I jumped a buck from a bed in this slough after I got down from my tree in the midafternoon and decided to investigate the area I had seem deer come from. The slough bed was dry with dead grass only about 3-4 inches tall. I came to a circular opening about 100 yards in diameter. While I didn't not pay attention to the the 1 patch of weeds around a Cypress sapling (literally, the entire patch of brush as 2 feet by 2 feet), I stopped to check my GPS and see where I was relative to some other features when a mature buck stands up from the little patch of weeds and trots off. Had I not had my GPS in my hand, I could have easily shot him on the move. I was literally 4 feet from him when he stood up. If you look to the right of the dead tree in the center, you will see the tiny "patch" of weeds I am talking about.

What I couldn't believe was, given the ultra dense cypress thickets surrounding the slough, why in the world he would choose to bed out in the middle of a open field. My eyes had been busy scanning the edges of the cypress thickets for spooked deer. Mature bucks seem to find places that you would never consider and there was definitely NO ONE hunting out in this stuff.

I found a place almost exactly like this last weekend. A small, grassy open area with random saplings here and there and some small patches of weed and briars. It's surrounded by pretty thick cover, but it's also surprisingly close to an access road that gets occassional vehicle travel. The grassy area was loaded with smaller deer beds on one end. I stopped counting at 20 beds. At the other end, near a patch of saplings, weeds and briars, was an obvious buck bed. The worn down, physical impression in the grass was noticeably larger than the doe beds, and every sapling and small tree in the immediate area was rubbed up. I could see a very narrow trail through the briars that he was using to get in and out of his bedroom. I spotted a large pine about 40 yds away at the edge of the grassy area. It has a clear shot of his bed to the southeast and the doe beds to the northeast. I backed out and I'm letting it cool off for 2 weeks. Then the only question for me is gun or bow...

 

[Mike Belt]

I have a place I'm thinking about trying similar to the "no previous pressure" theory. We have 18,600 acres at AMES. One of the parking areas lies off a blacktop road. Everyone hunting there leaves from that point and heads into the hunting area. Directly across the road from this spot is a small triangle of woods. Between the road and this woods is a grown up area of pines and grass and on the other side of the woods is our boundary line bordered by a private land pasture. Our land there probably encompasses no more than 30 acres but no one ever hunts it. There are heavy trails leading from the road into it and a few scrapes and rubs inside it. I suspect because of that it's possible a big buck can lay there laughing at all of us as we head directly away from him every time we park and hunt there.

 

[BSK]

That's a great idea Mike. My attempt at hunting the "craziest" unhunted location I could think of (right next to our cabin with kids running around and family members chatting and chopping wood, etc.) sure turned out well!