• Help Support TNDeer:

Bedding Habits

the bedding habits around here are that the deer bed down whenever and whereever they feel like it. no traditional "bedding" areas.
 
I pretty much agree that around here, deer bed where they are when they lay down.

I don't think that bedding areas exist in my county. I've never found one. I have found deer beds, maybe two or more together, but they may just as likely be in an open woods as cutover.

I find it amusing to watch hunting shows where people talk about deer moving from bedding to feeding areas. Well, around here, that distance may be no more than a few yards.

I've watched deer bed down in corn fields, bean fields and on pond banks, so I would put too much time and effort in to trying to locate a bedding area.

Also, if food is plentiful, abandon that thought as well, and concentrate on the lay of the land and try to figure out how and why deer move across your land..it will most likely be true year in and year out, unlike food sources.

good luck
 
I agree with all the above ...deer just lay down when they want to.

But when the shooting starts the wise old Bucks as well as Doe's go for the thickest mess you can think of and stay there until dark.I think they stay in this pattern until the scent of humans and the sound of Gunfire is over.That is my opinion ,I am not an expert on the subject.But I have hunted for them for 37 years or so.
 
Bottom Hunter said:
I pretty much agree that around here, deer bed where they are when they lay down.

I don't think that bedding areas exist in my county. I've never found one. I have found deer beds, maybe two or more together, but they may just as likely be in an open woods as cutover.

I find it amusing to watch hunting shows where people talk about deer moving from bedding to feeding areas. Well, around here, that distance may be no more than a few yards.

I've watched deer bed down in corn fields, bean fields and on pond banks, so I would put too much time and effort in to trying to locate a bedding area.

Also, if food is plentiful, abandon that thought as well, and concentrate on the lay of the land and try to figure out how and why deer move across your land..it will most likely be true year in and year out, unlike food sources.

good luck
Click to expand...

You make several good points here imo...

You mentioned never finding bedding areas, mostly or two. When you find a bedding area with several beds, thats more than likely doe bedding anyway. The single buck beds are what you hope to find. Beds with buck tracks in it, rubs around it, preferrably rubs fresh and a couple years old.

Most of the time when you locate a bed with a few yards of food source, thats most likely due to the fact that food source is prefeered at the time and wind conditions allow him to safely bed near that food. The bucks are not going to travel no farther than they have to.

Bedding down in corn fields, bean fields, pond edges etc, are all common. Ive seen them bed in barn lots, beside an old smoke houses etc..however regardless where they bed, you can bet its to their benefit to be able to smell and hear surroundings. They dont just bed randomly becasue theyre tired of standing.

Your last paragraph is something I firmly believe in... deer doesnt just wander randomly around the woods. The move according to the lay of the land. This is because they use their number one sense...their nose. IMO, you figure out how and why deer travels your land and you can get on deer year after year.

We as hunters can alter their movements with minerals, bait for cameras, and food plots....but the amount deer use each of these sites are based on how safe a deer feels in these areas.

When the bucks loose their velvet, and testosterone increases, watch how the camera sites, and food plots loose bucks attention. Especially during daylight hours. The bucks know exactly where they smell and hear hunter pressure. The bucks will travel the "lay of the land"

These are just my observations and what I have noted over the last several years.
 
I've hunted a small 100 acre farm in Loudon for 15 years now. It's got a 5 acre thicket that is a traditional doe bedding area. I've got alot of memories of watching the does slowly meander across the pasture into it in the mornings, along with the bucks that have travelled to and from checking it out around rut time. My usual stand is about 150 yards from the thicket in the edge of the woods. Often the better bucks will past right in front of me on the edge of the pasture/woods, scent checking the thicket that's 150 yards away. Quite often that's a bad mistake on their part. So, there are some bedding areas in Tennessee, at least in Loudon County.....
 
if you hunt open ground, farmland with small thickets, then you may indeed see certain thickets that hold deer during the day.

If you hunt large wooded acreage, like many hundreds of acres, even thousand acres, this practice will not be the case.

Small acerage wood lots hold deer for more than one reason, imo.

They feel safer feeding and bedding in the timber, they can get in out of the weather, they can get out of sight quicker than in open fields and may times they have plenty of browse during midday hours.

I have sat up in woods many times and sit there all day and watch deer move through randomly. They usually follow the same patterns, but their schedule is not fixed. A doe group may come through at first light, hang around maybe bed down for a bit then get up and move on out of sight. Another group or even single deer may come through later on and do the same thing....I have watched deer bed down in one place for a bit then get up, graze on anything green in the woods, while moving 100 yards and bed down again....

It will depend on where you hunt......if you hunt farmland that has very little cover, then of course, deer will bed down there. if you hunt woods with very little cropland/open land, then bedding areas are not as specific and not worth the effort to try and find, imo.
 
From what I have seen from GPS-collar studies in different geographic regions, different habitat, and different levels of hunting pressure, I would have to say deer bedding habits are highly variable and are dependent on habitat and hunting pressure. Where thick cover is more limited and hunting pressure is high, deer are far more predictable in their bedding habits (sticking to those patches of very thick cover habitat for bedding purposes). In lower hunting pressure areas, and/or areas with very homogenous habitat, deer bed anywhere and everywhere, and bedding behavior/location is highly unpredictable.
 
BSK said:
.....I would have to say deer bedding habits are highly variable and are dependent on habitat and hunting pressure. Where thick cover is more limited and hunting pressure is high, deer are far more predictable in their bedding habits (sticking to those patches of very thick cover habitat for bedding purposes). In lower hunting pressure areas, and/or areas with very homogenous habitat, deer bed anywhere and everywhere, and bedding behavior/location is highly unpredictable.
Click to expand...
x2. Exactly what I have witnessed over the last two decades while deer hunting in TN and IL.
 
ever seen any kinda study bsk like the deer on the ohio river bottoms or mississippi river bottoms that when they massively flood and destroy a deers homerange. this deer is pushed out of think he will return? if anybody has ever seen some of this bottom land in major floods knows it can be miles and miles that the deer would have to travel to get to higher ground? just kinda wondering if the deer would return or just adapt to different area bc at times it could be weeks before that water ever goes back out of those bottoms.
 
waynecountybooner said:
ever seen any kinda study bsk like the deer on the ohio river bottoms or mississippi river bottoms that when they massively flood and destroy a deers homerange. this deer is pushed out of think he will return? if anybody has ever seen some of this bottom land in major floods knows it can be miles and miles that the deer would have to travel to get to higher ground? just kinda wondering if the deer would return or just adapt to different area bc at times it could be weeks before that water ever goes back out of those bottoms.
Click to expand...
There was a GPS collared study published last fall in Quality Whitetails that tracked X (say 34-40) number of deer before, during and after the historic 2011 flood. The study (if my mind serves me right) took place down in Mississippi, possibly Arkansas or Louisiana as well, and it documented how the deer reacted and responded to the historic flood of record. I was amazed at how many remained in their home range on an island and died as a result of their choices. Several were 3.5+ year old bucks. I was also amazed at how far a few of the deer traveled and how quickly some of them returned to their home range. I am not sure if the article is available online, but if it is, it would be well worth your time to read it. I thoroughly enjoyed it as it was very eye opening to say the least.
 
Deer in boreal forests or large timbered tracts bed anywhere they want to and it is almost impossible to determine a specific bedding area.

This is somewhat altered in true swamp land as water may to some degree dictate where deer bed. However, if that swampland contains large areas of dry ground with standing timber, again, they bed wherever they want.

With over five decades of hunting and guiding on farmlands, prairies, swamps and boreal forest, I have found no need to determine where a bedding area is. For many years, I have had no need to know where a deer beds other than to stay out of it.

I have only tried to determine 91) What they are eating at a specific time. (2) Where they are doing it. (3)When they are doing it. (4) How they get to and from that area.

Since deer bed four or more times a day, often in different places, I want to find trails, not beds.
 
waynecountybooner said:
ever seen any kinda study bsk like the deer on the ohio river bottoms or mississippi river bottoms that when they massively flood and destroy a deers homerange.
Click to expand...

Yes. In fact Quality Whitetails just published a huge (and exceptional) GPS-collar study of the deer along the MS River during the last big flood (in Southeastern Arkansas). Amazing stuff. And yes, most leave the flood plain during the flood and then return once the water subsides. But not all return. A small percentage stay on the higher ground they fled to during the high water.

Amazingly, a very few deer actually stayed out in the flood plain during the flood, living on floating piles of junk and tiny, tiny specks of high ground (just square yards of dry ground). And a few died during the flood.
 
If you are fortunate enough to locate a dedicated doe bedding area, hunting well downwind of it around rut time is about as good as it gets....
 
BSK:
Do you think bedding habits from a buck and doe differ?
For example Feb 1st-Sept 1st Tennessee, 1000's acres of open hardwoods, hilly terrain.

In this same habitat example, when a deer beds, do they bed with any advantage of their bedding choice (such as per wind direction or visual advantage), or do they randomally just lay down?

In this same scenario, rolling open hilly hardwoods, much like the paper companies own in Middle-West Tn...does a deer tend to bed according to terrain?

Thanks
 
backstraps said:
BSK:
Do you think bedding habits from a buck and doe differ?
Click to expand...

Yes, I believe so.


For example Feb 1st-Sept 1st Tennessee, 1000's acres of open hardwoods, hilly terrain.

In this same habitat example, when a deer beds, do they bed with any advantage of their bedding choice (such as per wind direction or visual advantage), or do they randomally just lay down?
Click to expand...

Although they probably always use some aspects of wind and visual range to their advantage when bedding, as many predators besides hunters exist, I think "human evasion" kicks into high gear once human hunter scent fills the woods in fall. I would expect to see deer begin to display "different" (more evasive) bedding habits once hunting season kicks in.

I remember a telemetry study done in the super-high hunting pressure of PA. It only took about 24-48 hours of the high-pressure gun season for all of the radio-collared deer to shift into the lowest huntinging pressure areas. In essence, they felt the pressure quickly, found the "holes" in the hunting pressure quickly, and shifted their activities to only those areas quickly.

The funniest part of that study was that hunters in the area had been claiming that increased antlerless permits had "wiped out" the doe population. Yet survival rates of radio-collared does was extremely high. Liberalized antlerless permits hadn't killed off all the does. It had just forced them to learn how to avoid hunters, and they had learned how to do this extremely well.

We humans are a proud species. It really burns us to admit that stupid animals easily outwit our powerful brains.
 
well you touched on what I was thinking. Predators chase deer year round. Especially coyotes in my region.



I think bucks bedding is completly different from does.

But one thing I was curious to hear your opionions, what ways do you think bucks and does bedding habits differ.

Do you think when a bucks beds down, he is in an advantage spot to be able to both use the wind and visual aspects of the bed, or just beds where he feels the need?
 
Here is one thing I have noticed NUMEROUS times. I have been hunting very close to a bucks bedding area. I have watched him bed down, and watched him for over an hour. He got up and walked less than 35 yards...he did this about 5 minutes after the wind had changed directions and began to blow into the North rather than the NE. I think a "mature" buck ALWAYS beds to his advantage both using the wind and his visual.
 
Here is what some freinds of mines feels like. I think he is spot on:

I don't believe there is anything random about where any deer beds. Their life depends on the choice of the bed. doe and bucks differ slightly in what factors determine where they will bed, and mature bucks are different yet. There will be a factor such as smell, sight, or hearing, as well as comfort such as shade, sun, food source etc. and/or a combination of these that all play into where a deer chooses to bed.
_______________________________________________________________
A term/word from Hal Bloods book is that Mature Bucks are "Nomads" kind of sums it up.
The dominant deer will likely have the best spots for bedding and usually away from the other deer crowd.
Grumpy old men!

So yes this is a difference in bedding except during rut where they may lose the head (literaly) for some whitetail

Also, A portion of this timeframe is during fawning and does get the best cover at that time.
________________________________________________________________

Just trying to make some interesting conversation here. Deers bedding habits are one of my most interesting topics concerning deer hunting :)
_______________________________________________________________
 

Latest posts

Back
Top