Where me and my amateur hunting team lives/hunts is a very agricultural region with a river winding through most of it and enough woods to make our MN county an intense harvest area. We work our tails off scouting and managing the herd as best as possible year round, but this year has been a stumper. Enough rain and good sun makes for a bumper crop this year which makes it difficult to pattern this year because food is EVERYWHERE. The small river along with spotted ponds also makes it hard to narrow down where they drink from. Other than a few does we can tell apart and recognize, the only deer we have patterned is a small 6pt. Any ideas on how to figure them out a little better in the next few weeks before bow opener would be Greatly Appreciated!
We have had trail cams out all season, thats how we can identify the does. We have pictures of bucks from the cams, but no more than a handful of pics on any single buck. seems like they come by once, then disappear until rut. Very Frustrating!!!!
Need a little more info. Welcome to the forum. What crops? do you have an airial photo? I'm sure you will get plenty of answers.
Lots of round up will cure everything. I'd look for the most used bedding areas and start around there.
Here are some aerials. I labeled the fields as to what crops are there, the one has messed up field lines since the photos were from this spring, so I circled the field 2 fields that are together. I also cropped the photos to the property lines, so it all is huntable ground. I hope it helps!
thanks for that wise insight GregH haha. and although that is a no brainer, it got me thinking. Last year bowhunting i saw a beautiful 2.5 yr old 120-130 class buck get up from being bedded up last year, and i found a big single bed in the same spot as his was last year. Any possibility its the same buck?
Yes, it most likely is the same buck. I killed a buck the year after I found his bed by hanging out there on opening weekend.
In the first picture I would try in that finger of timber between the CRP and the soy beans. Work my way back to the creek and find a crossing.
I would be setting up near those crp fields! Ive rattled more bucks out of crp fields than woods or fields combined!
I would follow the line of trees back between the crp and bean field. There looks to be an area thats also leads back to the creek from that end point on that tree line.
If I were to start hunting that property this year for the first time the first thing I would do is drive out a few evenings and glass from my truck. This time of year I would start with the soybeans. The deer are coming to those fields at night this will tell you were they are coming out at and what food source they are eating. then I would get back inn the woods a ways from were they are coming out at and use a cam to try an find out were they are bedding. Also could be using the corn now to bed in and may not be using the woulds much. Hope this helps good luck
thanks everyone for the help! i came back from college this weekend and using some of the tips you guys threw my way i was able to put out 4 stands that i have some faith in. i still got 2 stands to set out but its a long way from where i was at a couple weeks ago. hopefully i'll have a picture of a buck to post in a couple weeks!