Bryan - any correlation between the years immediately before and immediately after EHD outbreaks? Seems like 2007 and 2018 or so was outbreak years in your area. Just a random thought.
Variability of older buck sightings, mornings versus evenings
- Thread starter BSK
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BSK
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I get you! Sort of a running joke in our camp that others will have to go collect one of my brothers from his stand after each hunt because he's probably curled up on the ground under the stand sound asleep!I find it easier to take a nap mid-morning than on an afternoon sit. If I was a data contributor for the study, you would have to account for the time when I was on-stand with my eyes closed
CrossVolle
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- Dec 30, 2017
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I tend to wonder whether maybe ebbs and flows of long term weather patterns may have some sort of effect.
Winchester
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I wish I knew as I too have mixed results hunting woods deer here in East Tn, where ag and fields are at a minimum. That said, some of the Farms I have leased over the years all over the Country (Mid Tenn, West KY, Ohio, Ill, etc) I found Evenings were often better, when pressure was still low and older bucks were still utilizing fields and food plots during daylight hours. This was mainly due to the fact you could only get in to stand sites for Eve hunts and would blow them out in the mornings.
BSK
Well-Known Member
I don't see any link morning versus evening for EHD years. Those EHD years were down years overall, but not the worst. Trends in our annual November older buck sighting rates are clearly linked to habitat improvements, most notably cover habitat. The three peaks that can be seen in November older buck sighting rates (around 2006, 2015, and this year) are the periods where we had the most high-quality cover habitat on the property.
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Location of the stand/camera, whichever the sighting was recoded from seems to be the deciding factor on places I hunt. I see a correlation between feeding area vs terrain feature with the obvious trend of early and late on feeding areas (usually late) and 10:00-14:00 on movement thru terrain features. I place my cameras on food plots (I don't hunt them except one blind that I take my daughter to) and stands in terrain features usually hung on the same trees every year. I may point the camera at a scrape along the edge of the plot but still most deer that visit the scrape feed some in the videos too. Another interesting observation is that since I stopped hunting the food plots regularly sightings and harvest of mature bucks has increased greatly.
arkwaterfowler
Well-Known Member
Me and my kids hunt a big ag farm in Montgomery county and hunt chiefly in the afternoon due to ability to approach stands without spooking deer. As a result I am biased. Seems ag areas are much more likely to have deer activity around afternoon feeding prior to night bedding. The deer I see on morning hunts are traveling for the most part. Of the nine 3.5 + bucks killed in 13 years, eight of them were killed in the afternoon.
JCDEERMAN
Well-Known Member
No doubt about it! We see the exact same thing through our timber harvests / timber management. Create the right cover habitat and not only will they come, they will show you a lot more daylight activity...morning and evening!
BSK
Well-Known Member
It's sort of funny, for years I didn't advertise some of my data because it would have been too depressing to those who didn't own their hunting land and couldn't alter the habitat. But we spent 6 years managing under Traditional Management, followed by 5 years of QDM, then continued the QDM harvests but also implemented some significant habitat management. The results of switching from Traditional to Quality Management produced results, but NOTHING like implementing major habitat improvements. THAT is when the "good new days" started. In a hardwood environment, habitat improvements are the true key to better hunting.
DoubleRidge
Well-Known Member
No doubt....in the last two or three years... since we implimented several hardwood habitat improvements...we've noticed a difference in the number of mature buck sightings...but it's been difficult to correlate these changes to morning vs evening sightings......throw in neighboring property's crop rotation and it gets really interesting to try and understand.
I'd think maybe it's hunter related. If you're hunting a stand just because it's a good spot or you've had luck there before, but not considering if the conditions are right, then your chances of seeing a buck are random at best. At worst you're being your own worst enemy.
Case in point, you have a stand hung below the south side of a known doe bedding & travel area. If you hunt it with any wind besides due north, your chances of seeing a buck might be near zero. Your chances of ruining that stand are pretty high. If it's a travel corridor connecting afternoon feeding sources then hunting it in the morning will not produce many sightings. Point is, there's a lot to consider when choosing where to sit. How many hunters actually consider the details? Before I began trying to understand if it's deer related, I'd first look at the hunters.
Case in point, you have a stand hung below the south side of a known doe bedding & travel area. If you hunt it with any wind besides due north, your chances of seeing a buck might be near zero. Your chances of ruining that stand are pretty high. If it's a travel corridor connecting afternoon feeding sources then hunting it in the morning will not produce many sightings. Point is, there's a lot to consider when choosing where to sit. How many hunters actually consider the details? Before I began trying to understand if it's deer related, I'd first look at the hunters.
Same here. Except for crop rotations mine is clear cuts on the 10,000acre state forest surrounding my place.
As for morning vs. evening, I have a really hard time figuring out the reasoning with certain stands. Some are obvious but some don't make any sense. Regardless, with most of my stands there are common themes. Some have better morning activity while others have better evening activity. Furthermore, I've noticed activity for a given stand coincides with wind direction. It's uncanny. I'll catch a buck on cam & pretty much know immediately what the wind was doing that day. I go into check historical wind data & sure enough it'll be spot on. I only have a couple spots where a buck might show up any time of day on any given wind.
One thing is sure. I enjoy the heck out of this stuff! It's fascinating.
BSK
Well-Known Member
Only problem is, it's the same hunters over that time period, and these hunters work "collectively" (share information). There are 48 stands on the property and there is a list every hunter checks before deciding where to hunt that displays which stands work best under each wind direction. There is also a list of all the stands, when they were hunted, and what was seen on each hunt to prevent overhunting particular stands. About 1/3 to 1/2 of the stands are moved to new locations each year.
Hmmm, yeah that changes things. Pretty neat program, though! I chart that stuff as well but only for myself. Would be neat to have a cooperative effort like that to study!
Another idea here: for the most part, deer hunters I know hunt LONGER in the morning (more hours on stand), say daylight until 10:30 or so, some sit until 11:30 on colder mornings. Those same guys, hunt fewer hours on stand in the evening, say the last two hours of daylight, generally speaking. So 4-5 hours in the morning versus 2 hours in the evening, on average. Are you comparing morning hunting hours that are further away from dark (9-11) to evening hours that are closer to dark (last 2 hours)? Just thinking that the last two hours of daylight and an hour or two before noon are not comparing apples to apples, when comparing deer movement, generally speaking. Make sense? Lots of variables (some obvious, some not) when dissecting the data like we like to do.
BSK
Well-Known Member
A person is not allowed to hunt our property unless they fully participate in the data collection process. Most would think that's no big deal, until they see the process! Every time a hunter climbs into a stand, they are going to need to record the date, stand, exact time they sat down, the exact time they climbed down, the exact time each deer was first seen, whether that deer was legal for harvest, whether that deer could have been harvested, even if they are not. Each deer seen must be identified as an antlered buck, an adult or fawn antlerless deer, an antlerless deer of unknown age, or a Unid (Unidentifiable). Bucks must be field-aged, antler points recorded, and identified against a list of known bucks from that year's photo census. Wind direction and speed are recorded as are cloud coverage. High and low temperature for that day are recorded. Moon illumination and phase is later attached to each hunt. For harvested deer, the weapon used, number of shots taken, and distance of killing shot recorded. All deer are live weighed (before field dressing), jawbone age checked, doe lactation recorded, and for bucks, basal circumference of antlers, beam length, inside and outside spread and gross score recorded.
BSK
Well-Known Member
You are correct that morning hunts are generally longer than evening hunts, which could involve more unproductive time, skewing the rates. However, some years, like this year, the vast majority of older buck sightings were late in the morning, from 8:00 onwards. I haven't run my "buck sightings by hour of the day" analysis yet, but this year it will be BIG for the 8 and 9 AM hours.
That's a lot of info. How many hunters on how large a property?
This year's data (2021) really jumps out to me. The majority of 2.5+ bucks were SEEN in the morning, basically doubling the 20 year trend line average for morning observation rates, and very few SEEN in the evening. It appears the bucks moved so well in the morning that they had to lay down and rest in the evening. 
BSK
Well-Known Member
Depends on the timeframe, but 5-7 hunters on 500 acres. Thankfully, all family, so we have no problem sharing information. In fact, I keep a Google Photo account open for everyone to look at that has all of the most interesting trail-camera videos up, with a description of where each camera is located, so all the hunters get a feel for where the hot activity is that year (and it does change considerably from year to year).
