Odd question

[hammer33]

Opposite here in MidTN unit B. Much spookier than normal. The farmer next door has cleared all the fencerows around the picked soybean fields and even weedeats under the trees. I call it the parking lot and driving range. Lol. Naturally deer aren't comfortable being out in the open like that but they are spooked like late season even across the road at our place even during the summer. The travel patterns which have held true for the past 15 years are disrupted as well. Hunting pressure is up a LOT. MZ and gun it was like a war zone with multiple shots coming from every direction. I guess the farmers around us started giving out permission to hunt where for the last 10 they would not. I think its a combination of hunting pressure, the drought or acorn abundance, and habitat. With most of the thick stuff aging into open hardwoods, the farm next door getting a Brazilian wax and the other neighbors thicket aging up into 5" diameter trunks, the deer patterns have shifted.

In Smith Co. hunting at a buddys place, the deer movements seem to be off as well. All the regular spots are a bust and if you even see a deer, they seem to know all the stand locations. Hunting pressure has been up but not crazy. The only explanation is that the deer are bedding under the oak trees and we are spooking them before we ever get to our hunting areas, OR there is some unknown attraction off the property we don't know about that is influencing the deer movement.

I'm not worried about it. Next year the acorn crop will be different and hopefully no drought. The hunters who have been hammering the deer will have a much less productive season and either loose interest, or move on. The WMA's I hunt have a similar boom/bust cycle. A pile of new hunters come in, overwhelm the deer, the next year have a couple hunts with no success and decide the place is shot out and don't come back. Then we have a cycle of improving hunting for the next 4-5 years before the next crop of Youtube influenced hunters swarm back in after seeing a WMA featured on a video.

 

[BSK]

I'm not worried about it. Next year the acorn crop will be different and hopefully no drought. The hunters who have been hammering the deer will have a much less productive season and either loose interest, or move on. The WMA's I hunt have a similar boom/bust cycle. A pile of new hunters come in, overwhelm the deer, the next year have a couple hunts with no success and decide the place is shot out and don't come back. Then we have a cycle of improving hunting for the next 4-5 years before the next crop of Youtube influenced hunters swarm back in after seeing a WMA featured on a video.

This boom-bust cycle in hunting pressure is really interesting hammer33. Thanks for posting about it. I don't hunt any public so I was unaware this pattern occurs.

 

[Gravey]

Haven't been but a couple of times and haven't noticed any substantial difference.

 

[Antler Daddy]

I cut the video down but me and this dude had a 2 min stare down. Once he saw me he just kept coming closer and finally just stopped
View attachment 205367
. Went to scout during juvi so no weapon.

that is a good buck!

 

[Antler Daddy]

I think that I have been busted on every hunt this year. The winds have been light and variable so they wind me or they just work their way downwind.

I also think that they notice that Millennium tree seat more than a person just sitting on the ground. Or, they really are not color blind and see that dang orange.

Of course, most of the places that I have hunted had visibility less than 50 yards.

 

[BSK]

I think that I have been busted on every hunt this year. The winds have been light and variable so they wind me or they just work their way downwind.

I also think that they notice that Millennium tree seat more than a person just sitting on the ground. Or, they really are not color blind and see that dang orange.

Of course, most of the places that I have hunted had visibility less than 50 yards.

The idea that deer are color-blind is an often-repeated old wives' tale. Deer are not color-blind. However, their color vision is quite different than ours. We have three different types of color receptors in our eyes. One sensitive to blue light, one sensitive to yellow light, and one sensitive to red light. This produces our form of color vision. On the other side, deer only have the receptors for blue and yellow light. They do not have a receptor for red light. That means deer see the world as a combination of blue, green and yellow. because they have no red receptor, any color that is a mixture of red and other colors will look very different to them. As the light wavelength gets longer (into the red spectrum), they just see it as an increasingly dull yellow. To a deer, things we see as orange are just a dull yellow. Things we see as red would be just black or a very, very dark, dull yellow to a deer.

 

[beefydeer]

Seem more wary to me in my area this year.

 

[TN Larry]

I've probably been busted and snorted at this year more than the last 5+ years combined. That is also while trying to use the wind and thermals to my advantage which I thought I knew how to do. It just seems for me that the wind and thermals on some days have been totally opposite of history or forecast this year. It just been a very strange and weird year for me.