For the past couple of weeks I have been spending pretty much every evening on my property scouting deer. The fields were planted in Soybeans again this year and two years ago when we had the fields planted in soybeans for the first time ever, the deer went nuts. They were in the fields at all times throughout the day. This year, something has changed. In the past few weeks, I have seen exactly two bucks in the field, one a very solid buck. He was a main frame 10 with split tines and some stickers, very heavy mass, nice tine length, but his rack fit well inside his ears. He may be in the 14-16" wide range. The other buck I saw was with him and he appeared to be a small 6 point. The rest of the evenings I have only seen a few doe. I have seen a doe with two fawns, another doe with a single fawn, and a lone doe. I am not sure why the deer aren't hitting the fields like normal. The only reason I can think of is that about a month and a half ago, the property that borders ours had dynamite blasting for about a week straight in order to check for natural gases. Other than that, nothing has changed, nobody has been around messing with the deer, and these are all entirely secluded fields....kinda weird. On a sidenote, my best friend, my girlfriend and I went spotting at his family farm last night and saw over a dozen different bucks in the fields with atleast 4 that are close or better than P&Y. The biggest is a very high 11 point that looks like he could go in the mid to upper 130's.
Is your field surrounded by any cornfields? About this time of year, especially if the corn is starting to fill kernals deer will tend to move off of the bean field in search of milk filled kernals before dough stage/denting occurs. And still, deer will search for corn after denting has occurred as well.
