Good talk boys, I must say that I agree with Duke 100%, but i did not wan't to post right from the beggining for fear of appering to be an elitist because I do hunt urban areas 90% of the time. I enjoy my jaunts to Alabama and East GA so much more than my local lease. There I can listen to the woods and actually hear deer or turkeys etc. I listen to planes landing all night tonight. I had a run in with a doe tonight, she came between me and the playground (about 100 yards away). She is 80 yards from me and 20 yards from some guys playing basketball...wind shifts, she looks in my direction, nose goes up and she turns and walks away. I have the whole scent control thing going on as well, but you can't always win. Jeff, I am going to get you a picture of this set-up, I could not help but laugh everytime I saw your old avatar...I am that close to a playground. I posted because I have seen alot of comments lately on urban deer being more tolerable of people...I have found it to be QUITE the opposite. Rob, if you read this please post the 3 years worth of pics from the "trailcam" buck. Gentleman, I had this deer inside 20 yards last year and as I turned left to right my safety harness stopped me. I almost threw up. We have exactly 1 nights worth of pictures each of the last 3 years. I passed him as a 2.5 yr old 10pt with no mass and no tines, but a very high rack. We keep in touch with all the guys who hunt the entire road, and no ones seen him, and no one else has any pics of him. That is about 4 miles worth of 70 to 100 acre lots bordered by a river and those guys have 50 or more cameras between them. My sighting is the only known sighting period...of course someone has probably seen him just not our hunting group. This guy haunts me, and he is living on less than 35 acres.
Justin, man you made a post for me there. I have a few on the wall, but most of them are not from my local areas. The deer are there, very big deer at that. Only because it is bow only...I laugh when guys lease around us or spend a ton of money to buy land expecting the location to give them the deer. They are hardcore for a year or 2, then resort back to shooting most any buck because it just ain't as easy as our GON makes it appear to be. Nothing like having a 140" 9pt at 17 yards, and about the time you start to touch the release he bolts...what the heck, why is that guy running...HEY YOU WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING??? oh I see, almost dropped a deauce in your pants and now you are going right there by the big round spot of dirt (scrape)...funny as heck now, NOT SO MUCH AT THE TIME. If ya'll got time, I got alot of them.
Do you guys realize it's the Pressure? Any area, urban, big woods or rural are hard to hunt because of pressure. I bet Jeff's hunting lands he has been hunting the past three years are a bit tougher than when he first went out. Hell I was the first person EVER to bowhunt our farm, the first few years were cake. It's all about pressure, the less pressure the easier it is for many reason. Less Pressure = more deer Less Pressure = more deer movement. ETC, so it's not about differnet type eviorments, it's about pressure. Gregh's spot he lost was great because the deer around him had less pressure. That is what I call be a good hunter, finding deer with least amount of pressure. My buddy leases a boy scount camp, no pressure and he shoots big bucks. Areas that are bow only have bigger bucks, why less pressure. As clinton would say "It's pressure stupid"(not directed to anyone).
I have pretty much been hunting a good mix of Urban and Rural areas. Here in Lake county, we have Huge numbers of deer, BUT! they are SO savy to whats going on around them! I have killed very few deer with my bow, becuase i have hunted urban areas, and the deer just know a little better. Great success with shotgun, all at bow ranges, all in very rural environments. they just are not as skiddish.
Pressure just makes it harder Now let me state if there was 180'' buck roaming behind the local Walmart, and the gay ass cheer they do brought him in to a certain location at a certain time, I'd hunt it
Dude! I have watched 6 or 7 150+ class deer behind the local gander mountain! Its about a 300 acre block of field and woods smack dab in the industrial Park! Been tryin to get permission for years! lol
Hell you could buy a mount kit after you shot one:D Drive out with that BIG SOB mounted to your truck. Before my wife lost her job and got it back I looked a 4 pieces property in Ohio, All of them I chose not to buy based on how the neighbors hunted their land. Size does not matter diddle to me, I'll take the right 9 acers over 300 pressured like hell acres.
The buck in the pic is no monster but he has a couple of seasons under his belt, He is a neighborhood buck, if I turned the camera you would see the back of my dads garage near his backyard. I've been getting pics of a couple of other decent bucks around there lately as well but not one pic is during daylight(4:30 am and 8:00 pm is as close as it gets. Guns season opens Thursday in this county (backwards ass county with gun season first then bow season in Dec.) and I'd be willing to bet I get even fewer pics of these guys. Notice the does during daylight, that's the ones I'll end up taking. My theory is they live up close and tight to peoples yards, barns, garages, horse pastures, etc. One reason being hardly nobody hunts near the backs of the properties because of the gun hunting guidelines so there is less hunting pressure than other blocks of woods that are just a few hundred yards away and another reason is they know all the human patterns in the area and anything outside of that is danger. I've had similiar results as Justin, I've killed lots of does and some scrub bucks in this area,I have killed a decent 8 and 6, but I have been hunting this area for years. I am going to try and bow hunt it harder this year and slip right up in behind some of the properties I think they may be hiding, we''ll see how it goes.
I think it's the concentration and numbers (or combination of both) that seems to make the urban deer easier to pinpoint and hunt. Just setting up and "patterning" alone seems much easier. When there is only 1 or 2 sections of woods or huntable land inside a block of 20 houses, it isn't really that hard to figure out where to hunt them. Shoot and kill successfully? I'm not saying that yet. Finding and giving yourself a darn good chance at success? Much easier IMO.
I'm basically talking about pure acreage and territory to cover alone. A deer wants to get from A to B there are only a handful of places it's going to go to get there in an urban setting. A deer wants to go from A to B in a rural setting their are simply more options for them to do so. I guess what I'm saying is if you're talking about chances seems to me your chances greatly increase when you have them more concentrated and know you will see deer. If you know you're going to see a deer your chances have to increase rather than not knowing if you'll see one. I can sit in an urban setting in a stand and 110% guarantee that in 2 days time (I dare to say everyday but i won't) you will see A deer. I can take a stand in a rural setting and although a good location and good history, I may not see a deer for 4 or5 days (or more). So if someone told me kill a deer today or I'll never be able to hunt again I would choose the place where I'm 100% sure I'd at least see a deer. Knowing you'll have one in the vicinity gives me a better chance of killing one. Another scenario if you were told you could hunt a small high fence ranch or 2,000acre free roaming deer and you had to kill one what would you pick? (all ethics and mumbo jumbo aside).
I've hunted urban and rural deer all of my life and to say one or the other is easier or more difficult is kind of silly. They do act differently. For example, urban deer will sit in someone's front yard eating apples from the tree while the landowner is working on his lawnmower in the driveway. A rural deer would never be that close to people. However, just like a rural deer will blow out of a field if you enter it, an urban deer will blow out if the guy in the driveway takes a single step into the yard. Same behavior, just smaller "fields." The one common factor of the urban and rural areas I have hunted is, as Germ alluded to, pressure. They are all pressured and as a result the deer are not very tolerant of humans. Hunting the deer in either area is pretty much the same. Find the funnels and hunt those travel areas. The only difference is rurally a funnel may be a saddle on a ridge whereas the funnel in the urban area is a housing development on one side and a strip mall on the other.
Deer (wherever they are) react to percieved danger. Anything that isn't usual. In the big remote areas I hunt clinking metal together will assure you failure. But these deer have become acustomed to quad runners and snowmobiles. I arrowed a 10 pointer one evening shortly after a quad came down the trail. I was hunting only about 150 yds off that trail and the buck did'nt even pay attention to the quad. In the city the deer are used to certain human behavior and they don't react. But do something different and they will be gone! They see the little old lady in her back yard every day and don't see her as a threat. If someone else goes in that back yard I'll bet it would be a different story. Farm deer don't see the tractor as a threat. But if you get off the tractor they will most likely be gone in a flash. Deer are the same everywhere. one is not any smarter than another. Are deer easier to hunt in one place or another? I'm sure each situation has advantages and disadvantages.
OMG(osh), please do not use common sense again:D Same in my boat, I can motor right on past and they will not move, as soon as I stop, they leave
2 question for you: How do the deer react to tent people? How do they react when they see you wearing that crown?
