well guys, i live in baton rouge, louisiana. im here for school, but where i hunt is about 3 and a half hours north east. i hunt in eastern mississippi on family land my grandmaw grew up on. we have deer all over the place, but it is just so hard to kill them. none of our plots came up this year because we havent had rain in three months up there.. but this past week we had some. i doubt anything comes up though because the turkey sure did take to our patches. anyway, as you all know, everything has to come together to kill one. ive seen plenty of deer this year. mainly small bucks and button bucks. i had one big doe encounter but she never cleared into any shooting lanes because she was just picking around under some oaks, and of course, not the ones i was hunting. i hung a lock on in a nice spot by one of the creeks that run through the property. however, i have to take my sticks with me when i come back for school because we always have people walking our woods and stealing stuff. this is one of the reasons why i feel like these deer are so skittish. they are almost completely nocturnal. any buck over three years old is completely nocturnal. i am also thinking this is because we dont have any bedding areas on our land. we pull deer off of a tree nursery that neighbors us. anyway, this past week i went and hunted hard. from tuesday to saturday of thanksgiving week. it was a tough one. i put a lot of time into the tree and saw one little button buck two different times. since we were up there, we set cameras and most of our pictures were at night. not sure if it was the moon phase or what. these deer are so skittish and so hard to kill, i am getting quite frustrated. ive bagged many deer with a bow over the years, but the past two years have been a bust. things just havent come together.. getting frustrated and it makes it hard to get up in the morning...but i cant kill them from the couch, so ill just keep at it. going south to duck hunt this weekend and get ready for my finals, but once finals is over ill have dec 9 - jan 9 to basically live up there and put some serious time in. i get blown at a lot, even on perfect winds. im thinking they may not be blowing at me but who knows.. the button buck i saw a couple times was so skittish, squirrels even scared him off. i am just getting completely frustrated and was wondering if anyone here had any good input. money isnt tight, but i am in no position to pay to get into a lease like a lot of my buddies are. although i am happy for them, it is frustrating to see two of my friends put down 3 different deer that all score in the 130's-150's just because they have the funds to pay for a lease where all the work is done for them..definitely puts a bad taste in my mouth.
If you know the deer are bedding in the nursery, If possible, I'd try to get closer to the nursery if you can.
Don't get frustrated with our drier and warmer than usual weather I believe the best Deer hunting is just getting started. Dec 9 - Jan 9 should be good hunting. Good Luck.
