Have always wondered! What's the best for hunting over a plot, mornings or evenings? What I don't understand is would you not bust Deer off it in the mornings, and would you not bust Deer off it in the evenings, if there out in it and you eventually have to get down? Personally I like the old school hunting (yes I'm old) hunting terrain features, bedding, thick areas and such! Just curious!
We have our 'food plots' in staging areas basically. The deer seem to stroll through them on the way out to the big fields in the evening and back through them in the morning while headed to bed. Shot my buck in one of our food plots in the morning last year and in the evening the year before so I'm not real sure which is better. Actually, now that I think about it, my wife, son and I all three shot our bucks in the morning last year in our plots. And the buck the year before was only concerned about a doe that was in the plot and not the plot itself.
As for the small food plots, I rarely like to hunt over them, prefer routes the deer take to them if possible and always an exit through the woods never through the plot.
My place is a night club and I often get stuck in the stand I do get lucky and move out slow without a snort from time to time.
We are the same way. Most of our plots are in areas where we can hunt trails to and from the plots. Not so much right on the plot. It is a strategic play to get the wind and all right.
Most of our food plots are "kill plot" size, 1 acre or less....they aren't destination food sources. Deer will spend time out in them eating, but they're positioned between bedding and major food sources so the deer are typically moving through. I have had to wait sometimes until after dark to climb out when hunting over a kill plot, but I've had to do the same when I'm in timber and acorns are raining around me.
I hardly ever actually hunt over a food plot, I prefer staging areas. I consider our food plots just part of our management program for deer nutrition and not actually a hunting device. We have enough crop and fields to provide worlds of staging areas and they are easier to hone in on IMO. I'm often within sight of a food plot, just not hunting directly over it.
I have two stands outside my house. One is in a bottle neck, where the deer are forced to go through if they want to go to and from their beds and my food plot. I hunt that in the mornings and evenings. I also have a stand in our foodplot. It's about 2 acres, and last year it was all I had so I hunted it mornings and evenings. I won't hunt my foodplot stand in the mornings, cause I will blow everything out... But this year, I put in a blind on the edge of the corn, so I can walk outside of the foodplot in the grass, and access the blind right from there without blowing everything out in the foodplot. We put in 6 Rows of corn around everything, and beans in the middle, with 2 roads full of throw and grow in the middle. My stands are about 100 yards from each other, and the deer bed 60 yards away from both stands in the woods by the lake. So I alternate, now that I have options
I'd certainly hope they are or you're probably doing something desperately wrong. What do you mean???
