Hey there, Logan from Wisconsin here. With the temps starting to drop and it ghave etting closer to the rut I have noticed more and more deer moving in the night hours according to our trail cameras. Anyone else having this happen yet?
im pretty sure its the pressure from hunters that push the deer to run at night. this happens every year here in pa where there is alot of hunting pressure.
I've hunted southwestern WI my entire life. There are a few things that happen this time of the year to affect deer movement. You're deer's summer feeding pattern has changed the last two weeks. The deer you were seeing in alfalfa and beans are now eating the bountiful food in the woods. Acorns apples and more recently corn. Deer in corn don't have to leave the corn for anything but water. After corn gets head high in the summer til it is picked it is a bedding area. Secondly does do not like to be chased by over eager bucks. Therefor they are not going to wander around as much as they did 2 weeks ago when the bucks weren't being agressive.
Most of my good bucks have been nocturnal for awhile now. Honestly as they start scraping activity most of that occurs at night as well. You just have to scout and find their travel patterns and catch them leaving a bedding area or staging in the early evening. As the season continues you will start to see more day light movement but for the first few weeks of October its a lot of nocturnal activity.
Most of my mature buck movement is still at night, but even the doe group I'm monitoring on my plot have switched to mid afternoon and mid night movement the last few days that I'm attributing (at least a little) to the moon and rising temps. We have a little front on its way out here this evening that's going to leave temps back into the mid/upper 50s during the day with lows in the upper 30s/low 40s. That should get things moving a bit more. My cams had goo daytime buck movement all last week and through this past weekend with the cold snap we had.
