Thought I would post this here to see the input I got on this area......... This will be my second year on this property, last year I was able to uncover a bit of sign on it. I've had limited time to get in there this past spring and this summer due to work travel and home projects, so I'm trying to hunt this as smart as possible based on what I know from last year, and what I can come up with on this map. Season starts for me 10/1, and I'll get 2 weekends to bowhunt it alone until the rifle guys show up. With that said, there is a low deer population here (around 5 deer per square mile), but a good balance of buck/doe ratio, and the age class of bucks is very well balanced too. The camp I've joined hunts and drives this hard during rifle season, but it's just too big and too thick to really consistently kill the deer in here even with 10 guys driving. They average 1-2 bucks a year, but consistently kill a slammer (125-140" buck) every 5 years or so, and have encounters with them almost every year. I know at least one slammer buck survived in here last year, I took a pic of his track last year (included below), this was taken just southwest of the rubs you see on the map as he crossed that logging road from east to west. I assume he was headed to bed on that S/E facing sidehill when he left that track. They bumped him the weekend after I took this pic and weren't able to put him down, after a very mild winter I assume he's got to still be in there. The outside corner where the rubs are marked is definitely a spot I plan to hunt evenings if we have our primary W/NW wind, but I'm looking for a handful of other places I can setup stands and plan to hunt especially if we get some weird winds, I don't want to be pinned to one location. Hopefully not any further than 1.5 miles or so from the camp, because this is all hiking to any stand locations in there, no wheelers allowed.......:D. Also their have consistently been some bucks killed on that east Beech hardwood ridge. This has also been logged hard a couple of years ago so now there is green briar and honeysuckle starting to pop up in there, I suspect there are some bucks bedding on that ridge, and probably also feeding in there, not sure how to hunt this knowing my entrance route and primary wind directions. Maybe a morning hunt over there? Again, any help would be appreciated! ~Matt
Get in the swamp bottom where their heading out to that beech ridge towards the top up there where theres a little funnel coming down. Find a trail and set up. Im not great with reading those maps like the second one but looking at the first thats what i would probably do if it was myself.
haha, I was wondering the same thing ... The area I like is 1/2 mile west and 1/4 mile north of "camp". Looks like a natural funnel to me.
That smaller circled are is actually another camps property and off limits, the larger area with an orange line is actually a main logging road that circles the area. I can hunt pretty much anything in this pic except th small area marked as off limits.
Matt, I'll spend a little more time later on, but the one spot that jumps out at me... is the area between the beech ridge and the logging road where it juts North. Where the swamp is at it's narrowest point... Any experience here? Also, due East of the "M" in 'swamp' on the topo shows a little bit of a ravine/draw on that drop off... I like that as well.
I circled the spot I'd check out first, if you can get to it. There probably won't be many that'll try, and that's why I like it.
If I only had 4 days to hunt the spot over the course of two weeks, which just happen to lie during the first two weeks of October I would have this mindset....the buck(s) are not going to be moving a ton due to the time of the year. If you do not know where they are specifically bedding then you are hunting a needle in a haystack. Given those factors I would get hyper aggressive and I would set up around the best potential buck bedding spots all four days. If I blew one spot I would simply move onto another one later that day or the next day. Here are some spots I like based on the winds, and the potential entrances in green. I am not an expert, nor even average at this stuff, but I have stayed in a holiday inn recently.
According to how busy "camp" is. I'd look at the ridge plan E of it. It would be hard to get up there for a PM hunt. But, an AM hunt (later in the year) is what I'd look at, there. Grain of salt. My targets are small-ish. That spot screams 100"-er, to me.
The majority of this land is paper company timber that is open to the public, there is a couple dozen square miles of solid timber in this tract with no roads except one to the south. Our camp owns 50 acres and a two mile right of way into this place, and the area circled is a neighboring camp that also has a piece of land and right of way from the main road that is south of the map. I can't hunt that camps private property which is what's circled, but anything outside of that I can get into. Other than the right of way "driveway" from the main road that you can see in orange from the southwest corner, there are no vehicles allowed in this area past the camp guys.........it's 2.5 miles in from the main road (logging road is bad enough that it's 4WD Low the whole way in, 30+ minutes) so this place doesn't get any pressure before rifle season. I'd prefer to focus on places less than 1.5 miles from the camp, or the road leading up to it. Anything beyond that is just too much of a hike with gear and a climber on your back.
Thanks everyone so far for the input, I appreciate it. Evergreens are mostly hemlock, hardwoods are mostly beech and maple. There is very little mast producing hardwood in there, absolutely no oak, and the beechs that are in there just don't seem to produce a lot. Deer will munch on the beechs when they find them but don't focus on them. Primary food sources are young growth from the recent logging, they really focus on the green briar and honeysuckle. You can see some of the logged areas in this pic east of that red circled hardwood section, there are more now though that don't appear on this map. The pic below is a much more recent 2010 aerial of the same area, this better represents what type of timber is standing where, and also what has been logged.
Here's my best ideas, and they'd have to be confirmed by boot leather..... http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=43.20586,-74.00717&z=14&t=T&marker0=43.19735%2C-74.00399%2C5.9%20km%20W%20of%20Kayaderosseras%20Range%20NY&marker1=43.21256%2C-73.99816%2C5.8%20km%20WxNW%20of%20Kayaderosseras%20Range%20NY&marker2=43.20486%2C-74.00399%2C6.0%20km%20WxNW%20of%20Kayaderosseras%20Range%20NY&marker3=43.21437%2C-74.00468%2C6.4%20km%20WxNW%20of%20Kayaderosseras%20Range%20NY&marker4=43.20367%2C-74.01712%2C7.0%20km%20W%20of%20Kayaderosseras%20Range%20NY&marker5=43.20480%2C-74.02124%2C7.4%20km%20W%20of%20Kayaderosseras%20Range%20NY&marker6=43.21181%2C-74.02339%2C7.7%20km%20WxNW%20of%20Kayaderosseras%20Range%20NY&marker7=43.20586%2C-74.00717%2C6.3%20km%20WxNW%20of%20Kayaderosseras%20Range%20NY Point F being camp.
gri22ly, Thanks for taking the time on this. Your spot on with that island, about 6 years ago one of the guys took a stud of an 8 pointer in there, he went high 120's with a small frame but had 6 different H measurements that were at or very close to 5"......tons of mass. Your likely buck travel routes and bedding are really helpful. and help me to connect the dots. OHbowhntr, That pic of the buck track I posted was taken right by your H marker as the buck crossed a logging road there headed east to west. I assume he was headed up to bed on that small finger on the southwest side of "Loon Vly". The west and southwest side of Loon Vly were trashed in rubs last year. I'll spend some time in there too this year. Thanks again everyone, this is really a very interesting piece of Adirondack big woods. There really aren't lots of deer in here, I rifle hunted this 5 days last year and didn't even see a deer............but when you do see a deer it's just as likely to be a 4 year old buck as a yearling doe. Add in the moose and bears, and it's just a cool place to hunt. Those "Vlys" (thats what they call mountain top swamps in the Adirondacks) produce a lot of green growth through the summer and early fall. I think I'm going to start my hunting in and around the fingers that run into that island, and the southwest side of Loon Vly, make sure I hunt the wind, and see what happens. The 8 or so other guys in this camp don't think I can kill a buck with a bow in here, but I'm gonna give it a shot and see what happens. I don't know if anyone has ever hunted this during the early northern zone bow season.
Thought I'd post an update for those that helped me. I went in this weekend and got to scout the south and west side of that area that gri22ly pointed out. The primary food sources in here are the briar patches you can see circled in yellow and labeled. They seem to be heading to higher ground to feed on the briars, and then bedding down in the swamp between the two. The red lines are a bunch of primary trails I found that have quite a few buck tracks in them, and a handful of rubs from last year as well. I hung a stand on the south side of that island (marked with a blue dot) that I think is going to be a killer evening stand when I can get a cold front along with NW/N/NE winds, I'll likely stay out of there till the wind is right. I still need to get in and scout the north/northeast side of this. I was in there last year but never west of the road that drops down over there........I want to get in that thick hemlock you can see and check out the inside corner where I have the other blue dot......I'm guessing I'll find another spot in there somewhere that I can hunt in the evenings with our primary S/SW/W winds. I also outlined the main logging roads on here, I'll at least be able to drive and park a wheeler on the road that goes west to east, that will save me a LOT of hiking in and out of stand.
