So- I had fantastic day time photos of likely 14 different bucks.. things were great.. now the season is open... they gone.! By using maps etc, how do you guys locate fall habitat or buck bedding areas
Well this is tricky if you don't already have an idea of herd movements and food/water sources in your area. If that is the case, make this the sacrificial season of scouting! This may bump some deer and mess up some hunting for you this season, but it will set you up for success in the future. Its one of those things that inevitably needs to be done at some point, so might as well get to it sooner rather than later (like paying taxes). First, get your map and identify any hardwoods and creek/river bottomland. I would search for sign in these areas. Deer that are frequenting food plots all summer are usually migrating elsewhere due to the draw of hard mast at this time of year. They're starting to store fat and calories for both the rut and winter weather. This is the time of year where if you see fresh sign in the form of tracks and half-shelled acorns while scouting the hardwoods, set up a stand nearby (if you have something portable). Unlike other locations and other times of year, this is when you need to strike when the iron is hot. If an oak is dropping acorns and the deer are hammering them, they won't stop until the majority are gone. Be wise about your entrance and exit strategies for this. I would advise doing the scouting after 10am. Also, wait until an evening hunt so that you don't bump deer in the mornings bc they will certainly already be there well before you are. This doesn't go for all hunting, just specifically if you're encroaching into bottomland and hardwoods in the early season. In my experience, the deer begin to filter into the hardwoods in the late afternoons and then begin to mosey their way back out into the dense cover in the early mornings. If you're walking to your stand at this time, you're likely to bump deer and they will just wait until the cover of darkness to return to gorge on those acorns. Sometimes this window of deer crowding around certain trees is just a few short days. I've learned this the hard way when finding fresh sign under oak trees and thinking "I'll just come back next weekend, I have a different spot in mind" only to discover by trail camera that I would have had numerous shot opportunities had I struck while the iron was hot. By the time the next weekend rolled around, the activity had ceased and I was left to watch a squirrel parade. If you find a hot food source like this and it is also near water, you've got yourself a great spot! Set up something and hunt as soon as you can. As for locating buck beds, this is a very risky time of year to do that. I would wait until the season closes to do your scouting for that. Simply find the trails leading to and from the food sources you find, and then back-track them until you find bedding areas. This will usually lead you to the doe bedding areas first, which will be most obvious when you see it. The buck bedding areas will be a little harder to spot for the untrained eye. The trails leading to and from the buck dens are usually less beaten down compared to the ones leading to the family group bedding areas. I would suggest tracing these trails up and down as much as you want to AFTER the season ends. All of the vegetation will still be gone and thus the woods are easy to see in and navigate at this time of year. Also, the sign from the previous rut will still be fresh and easy to read. Trying to walk into their bedrooms in September/October can be very harmful to your chances at success this season. Choose wisely! Good luck to you and all hunters this season. May we all have the opportunity to strum some strings this year!
I think every herd is different, regional preferences. This time of year one thing is a constant for them all food and doe. Watch the hunting public ,they travel all over and their main thing is finding buck bedding in the areas they hunt I love seeing all the buck pics guys show in summer then feel bad for some. If it's a smaller area 100 acres or less I know they are losing most of them by the end of Sept.. Not that they won't have buck come through or some even stay. If they have doe they'll have buck come in especially during the rut. I mention it being the year if the spike . All sumner I've had nothing but spike to small 6 pts. Though I know that the bigger boy's don't hang with these little guys during the summer here. So come mid Oct I should be catching bigger bucks trickling in especially as their farm crops get cut. Good luck
I’ve noticed up north here in North Dakota deer switch their home areas based on food sources changing. Beans all summer then once wheat is cut and beans are dried up they will hit the fresh regrowth from cut wheat then move on to corn sunflowers and beets... I really don’t think deer change they’re home base because of does. If there are bucks around there are does around. They may leave during the rut but I don’t think they leave they just have a further travel route before heading home... simply from my observations..
It sounds overly simply, but if you want to find bedding areas you have walk the property you intend to hunt. The easiest way I do this is to simply find a trail and start to follow it. If it intersects with another trail mark that on your phone if you're using a hunting app like onx or whatever and then follow that trail. Eventually you will find bedding. This time of year 9 times out of ten those trails will lead from bedding to food. During the rut it's more important to find doe bedding that bucks will scent check one bedding area to the next literally all day and night. These are just my 2 cents and I'm not a great hunter so maybe don't listen to me.
The field I hunt doesn't have any bedding areas on it... it is the corner of a alfalfa field, and I do not have access to the surrounding land in which I believe they are bedding.. I think there was some canola swathed approx 3 kms south of where I am, but usually a lush green alfalfa field should suck them right in,
It's usually a 3 tier thing food / doe,fawn / buck When the farm field next door was a hay field we would come home late and our head lights would sweep the field as we turned into the drive. Being on a hill side and it being above us the view was perfect. Usually it looked like a bunch of bushes grew up with glowing eyes. All bedded buck in a wide open field next to an active house with dogs
