As many of you know I am hunting new grounds this season. And this is a different type of woods than what I am used to hunting. The new spot is full of steep hollows and ravines and lots of steep finger ridges. I am also hunting food plots in the big woods for the first time. It's been a while since I had to scout out a new hunting spot and find new stand locations as I hunted my old place for a few years. So when scouting last winter and summer I used the traditional thoughts, deer are lazy and use the easy paths around steep hills and ridges. They walk around the ends of ditches, set up on the trails leading to food plots. Well from my many, many hours on stand this year, I have observed exactly the opposite in most cases. Most of the deer I am seeing are walking right up the steepest of hillsides with no problems what so ever. They also walk right thru the ditches instead of going around them. They go over the middle of ridges instead of thru the saddles. They rarely use the same paths to enter a food plot. And most of time enter the food plots from upwind, trusting their eyesight to detect any danger in the fields. And relying on their noses to detect anything that might be following them. So all of that info we give the new guys about where to set up stands might not be true in a lot of cases. Maybe we have all heard those stories so often that we just repeat it out of habit. Now I am not saying I don't see any deer use the traditional lines of thinking. But I see more deer including bucks breaking the rules than following them. Might be time to go to some new tactics for the rest of the year.
There is a spot here in NY that is public land........when the year is right and the farmers put corn in the good fields the deer will come up out of a deep gorge to feed and chase does......if the year is wrong there is not a deer within sight. Very weird spot......but it has the highest number of large bucks taken from one spot that I am aware of........my best shotgun buck included. People dying in this gorge is not uncommon........yet the deer come out of it no problem.
Yup. Couldn't agree more. I've seen deer go straight up and down some of the nastiest hills the Missouri Ozarks has, and it just doesn't phase them at all. I've come to realize that I really only know ONE thing about deer. They are unpredictable, and I don't know a damn thing about deer. Ok, I guess that was 2.
I here ya John, you got to admit its kinda of fun when you finally figure out something new on them :d lessons learned just make us better in the deer woods I have the old strip ground with thick nasty hills in some areas,, it dosent bother them at all to climb some of them.
mee too, I see the deer are in areas that i thought they would avoid. Like the very, very thick stuff, in the steep ravines, and side hills that are nearly cliffs. HMM got me thinkin of moving a few setups next year.
