I grew up in Utah the terrain, weather, and animals are different out there. Any advice hunting eastern NC especially in the early season?
Trying to find land is the hardest task, Im near fayetteville east of there is crop land makes it easier, west is crop land, the sand hills likes cotton haha. Get some food plots down if your on private land. The east side lots of people run dogs and they really screw up your hunt with packs of dogs running your deer off. I cannot wait to get out of here.
If you haven't find some land. Do some scouting and look for deer trails and deer sign. To see what is there, spread some corn out in front of a trail camera or two. Find oak trees! Unless you are going to use a mobile setup up, get your stands up as soon as you can. Deer here are up and moving by 5PM during the early season and by 3PM the late season. See if the County you are in allows dog hunting. Being a bow hunter, we don't have to worry about that in the early season and where I primarily hunt, it is not allowed. What County are you in?
Im in Onslow county, Im stationed here. I laid out some Great Value Deer Corn Apple Flavor from Wal Mart and some Rack1 Chaos Deer Attractant and this is what I got: View attachment 50884 View attachment 50885 View attachment 50886 View attachment 50887 View attachment 50888 View attachment 50889 View attachment 50890 View attachment 50891 View attachment 50892 Im just trying to figure out where the are coming from now. This is my first year bow hunting. What tactics do you guys use for the early season?
I am stationed at cherry point and found that hunting on base is ideal since they can't run dogs. Once the dogs start stuff gets all screwed up off base. Lejeune is a great base to hunt. My advice is pul a base hunting map and start in one area and find the stream or water and look for trails from there. Once on a trail look for the bedding or bottle necks. As far as tactics, play the wind and keep cover behind in the stand behind you and stay above deer eye level and remember they go up and down hills so their eye level will change. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Early season is all about the water and bedding. I mostly hunt the sandhills and have a few small creeks on my property and the deer hit those spots like clockwork... Find the water and the deer will b there.
Normally I would do a lot of stomping during the winter off season to find places I want to hunt in the fall. You can see trails and sign so much easier during these months here. Then I stay out of the woods in the spring and summer month..( it hot and buggy) starting in Aug I start putting some corn out where I decided to hunt. That gives them a month to stumble on it and start working it into there routine of travel.
I've found its best to scatter your corn and make the deer work for it.. Some pile corn.. To me that not natural and if a bear finds it or if a 3-4 deer find it they can't eat in one night. I use a over the shoulder grass seed spreader, it holds 25lbs of corn.. That's a plenty spread in a 30 -60 yard area.
Remember early season here is much hotter and wet. Remember scent control for sweet and ThermaCell for mosquitoes.
