Does a deer have to drink water? I mainly concerned with the early season, when temps are in the 70+ range and water isn't as abundant. I've never spent much time on watering holes as I've never had a property where it made sense. However, I now have a place that I think could be deadly in the early season. I'm interested in your experiences with water. What times of day are best.. morning, noon, afternoon.
One of my best early spots is a small pond that is on the edge of a golden rod field with the woods on one side of it and a large cornfield across on the other side. Mornings never really seemed very productive but the afternoons were great. The golden rod field was grown up and was a stagging area and the deer funneled to the pond before milling around in the golden rods and heading into the cornfield. I noticed that the movement was pretty early in the afternoon at this spot, usually around 3 hours before sunset is when the deer would start showing up. Most would pop out of the woods, get a drink and head back in to the woods. A little closer to sunset they would come out and drink up again.
Deer can and do get a lot of their needed moisture from what they are eating... But in my expierences, it seems like they still water most everyday, especially when it's hot.
Warm weather - 2 times a day minimum. Cooler weather, once minimum. I am waiting to find a monster buck that has a thirst similar to my own. I often times MUST quench my thirst!
As often as he/she is thirsty. No seriously. I don't think there's a mathematical answer to this one.. they are living creatures. They drink when they are thirsty and MUST drink to survive. In my experiences.. hunters greatly ignore water.. and I never understood why. I would say what WKPTodd wrote above is pretty accurate. At least twice a day on a warmer day.. once on a normal day. And I'm not surprised if it's more. Like I said.. it's not just a magical number. As far as hunting water sources. I believe you should use them to your advantage. Hunt them when the weather calls for hunting them. Warmer weather and running whitetails are often greater causes to hunt them. So hunt them. Morning or evening.. I think that would depend on the water source location. In my experiences.. evening is better just based on the fact whitetail are usually headed to bed earlier in the early season.. when it's warmer. By the time the whitetail running part occurs for me.. I'm hunting other features.. but always keeping water sources in the game plan or at least part of it.
