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Studying hunting pressure
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<blockquote data-quote="Ski" data-source="post: 5847611" data-attributes="member: 20583"><p>Have you considered other possible scenarios besides pressure that could explain a reduction of deer sightings? Have you placed cameras to watch stand sites continuously to monitor the ebbs & flows of movement to see if they could be correlated with hunting? That would seem a reasonably easy experiment for anybody wishing to test their hunting pressure theories. I've done it. In fact I have cams running at several of my common stand sites that run 24/7/365. </p><p></p><p>What I see is that deer are there at times & not there at times regardless if I hunt or not. Some of the sites I've not hunted in years. And not all the cycles of movement are predictable like mineral sites being hit hard during summer or doe bedding areas being visited by bucks during rut. Most cycles are seemingly random, or at least random inside a single season. Then it hit me. Deer are nomads who travel following the food, and by far & large their staple food is browse. Not food plots, not acorns, not fruit trees. Their diet is nearly entirely comprised of browse and all that other stuff supplements it. They eat until an area is depleted and then they move. When they do they don't only stop walking in front of that stand site but they quit using those trails and pinch points or anything else until they come back around again. </p><p></p><p>If you were sitting a stand and each consecutive day you saw fewer deer it would be easy to blame yourself for over hunting the spot. But the reality is that those deer would be shifting in then out whether you were there or not. I think this is exactly how a lot of hunters interpret what they see. And to be fair I believe human presence could accelerate the process, especially if the deer saw you on stand. They may leave the area sooner than they would have, but they would have left regardless. </p><p></p><p>Being selective browsers they can deplete an area fairly quick. And it accelerates as the season progresses. In early season there's still a lot of green so they can stay in one area for awhile. But as season progresses and green turns brown, they are forced to move more often and stay in any one spot for shorter periods of time. There are an awful lot of parallels between what deer already do naturally and what we hunters blame ourselves for causing. I really believe what hunters blame on hunting pressure is nothing more than the natural nomadic nature of deer. I don't completely discount hunting pressure as a factor for a stand site going cold. I just don't buy that it's nearly the major factor we tend to think it is.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ski, post: 5847611, member: 20583"] Have you considered other possible scenarios besides pressure that could explain a reduction of deer sightings? Have you placed cameras to watch stand sites continuously to monitor the ebbs & flows of movement to see if they could be correlated with hunting? That would seem a reasonably easy experiment for anybody wishing to test their hunting pressure theories. I've done it. In fact I have cams running at several of my common stand sites that run 24/7/365. What I see is that deer are there at times & not there at times regardless if I hunt or not. Some of the sites I've not hunted in years. And not all the cycles of movement are predictable like mineral sites being hit hard during summer or doe bedding areas being visited by bucks during rut. Most cycles are seemingly random, or at least random inside a single season. Then it hit me. Deer are nomads who travel following the food, and by far & large their staple food is browse. Not food plots, not acorns, not fruit trees. Their diet is nearly entirely comprised of browse and all that other stuff supplements it. They eat until an area is depleted and then they move. When they do they don't only stop walking in front of that stand site but they quit using those trails and pinch points or anything else until they come back around again. If you were sitting a stand and each consecutive day you saw fewer deer it would be easy to blame yourself for over hunting the spot. But the reality is that those deer would be shifting in then out whether you were there or not. I think this is exactly how a lot of hunters interpret what they see. And to be fair I believe human presence could accelerate the process, especially if the deer saw you on stand. They may leave the area sooner than they would have, but they would have left regardless. Being selective browsers they can deplete an area fairly quick. And it accelerates as the season progresses. In early season there's still a lot of green so they can stay in one area for awhile. But as season progresses and green turns brown, they are forced to move more often and stay in any one spot for shorter periods of time. There are an awful lot of parallels between what deer already do naturally and what we hunters blame ourselves for causing. I really believe what hunters blame on hunting pressure is nothing more than the natural nomadic nature of deer. I don't completely discount hunting pressure as a factor for a stand site going cold. I just don't buy that it's nearly the major factor we tend to think it is. [/QUOTE]
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