Is it even possible?

[Iglow]

So, the goal is hunting deer without them knowing you're hunting them. From scent from clothes/ hands touching limbs, steps etc. , to boots leaving scent where you've walked to just general scent/sounds, being seen is it possible for long to hunt them unaware? Is it a deal of one and done for each stand site you hunt?

 

[themanpcl]

So, the goal is hunting deer without them knowing you're hunting them. From scent from clothes/ hands touching limbs, steps etc. , to boots leaving scent where you've walked to just general scent/sounds, being seen is it possible for long to hunt them unaware? Is it a deal of one and done for each stand site you hunt?

IMHO, deer have to be aware of everything around them all the time to stay alive but like us they have a risk assessment instinct. does the threat seem eminent or is it something they have seen, smelled, heard before? For your stand, if deer have been by it, they have seen/smelled it but until it is occupied, won;t be much of a threat. The mature deer may have a different trigger than younger ones. Put a stand out somewhere you know has deer traffic in the summertime and put a cam on it. You will see them verify what it is and each time they come by with no one in the stand, they get "used" to it. like tractors in a field. now, if they bust you in the stand, that registers. We won't ever be able to hunt them w/o the deer "knowing", we just have to minimize the exposure.

 

[Snake]

I don't think so but I'd think the property has alot to do with that . The property we had in Giles Co. there was this one stand that I could kill multiple deer from it . Of course we had alot of deer that frequented the place . Actually alot of the stands could fit that bill .

 

[knightrider]

I dont hunt any particular area more than twice a week and never back to back, some whole farms i only hit once every 2 to 3 weeks because of limited access routes

 

[peytoncreekhunter]

I just have to believe when at the opening of deer season, I drive in on the farm before daylight the deer have to say to themselves....."oh crap it's happening again"......

 

[Lost Lake]

When new bucks are shifting in from seemingly out of nowhere, I think I can get away with quite a bit. They are roamers and won't be around more than a few days most likely.

Other times, I don't think it's possible to hunt a stand more than a couple of times before they're onto me. Their noses and intuition are just that good.

Double that if it's a doe group. They are hard wired to be the nosiest creature in the woods.

 

[Iglow]

When new bucks are shifting in from seemingly out of nowhere, I think I can get away with quite a bit. They are roamers and won't be around more than a few days most likely.

Other times, I don't think it's possible to hunt a stand more than a couple of times before they're onto me. Their noses and intuition are just that good.

Double that if it's a doe group. They are hard wired to be the nosiest creature in the woods.

So, the right place, even if small, say a couple of acres but it's the right couple of acres can work as well or better that larger acreage if you are moving around that larger acreage and leaving more sign that you've been there over a wider area for them to come in contact with?

 

[Lost Lake]

So, the right place, even if small, say a couple of acres but it's the right couple of acres can work as well or better that larger acreage if you are moving around that larger acreage and leaving more sign that you've been there over a wider area for them to come in contact with?

I've got a buddy with 19 acres in Montgomery county. It's the right 19 acres.

During the first two weeks of November, that place is a sight to behold. I'd rather be there than any place I've ever hunted, any size, during that time. He could play a tuba from his stand and see bucks.

The rest of the season, heck no, I wouldn't want to hunt it. The doe groups bust him before he closes his truck door.

Don't know if that answers your question, but YMMV.

 

[DoubleRidge]

Agree in that its very property and location dependent...back when I bowhunted I had buddy that had a tree he had wore the bark off of climbing. Tree was on a hardwood ridge that tapered off into a big thick bottom. He nicknamed the tree the "killin tree" because over the years there is no telling how many deer were killed from that one tree....But then there are other trees where a big mama doe will bust you and the next time she is in the area and senses anything is wrong she'll start looking at that tree...I just think in certain scenarios we can get away with more than others....However, I do believe the data shows the first couple times you hunt a stand location your more likely to be successful.
But add in shooting houses and blinds, where your scent is better contained, and it changes the whole conversation.

 

[1 good shot]

I think of it like this. When I go into an area, I am going into their living room. I know at home when something is different in my living room, I usually notice it. I may not be aware of exactly what it is, but it still catches my attention

 

[useyourbow]

There have been studies that have shown that whitetails will avoid an area visited by a human for several days. Especially remote areas that seldom get visited. Some studies show that predictable visits/encounters ie; farmers, horseback riders, etc. have far less impact. Predictable being daytime, noise, repeatable. I have witnessed deer on trail cameras come unglued when hitting where I have stepped, and others stare and sniff the camera. Just like everything in that has to do with whitetails they are all different. I always side with less is more. Right wind, right time, or don't hunt the spot. Others will go repeatedly to the same stand, eat twinkies, fart, pee, and kill more deer than I see.

 

[BSK]

As many have pointed out, it really is situational. I know of bottlenecks that don't seem to be affected by hunting pressure. On the other hand, in general, the more you hunt a stand, the lower the buck sightings get. I've posted the below graph many times, but what it shows is the hunter-collected 2 1/2+ year-old buck sighting rate for each time a stand is hunted on my place in a given year. With each hunt, the older buck sighting rate declines. That said, it never drops to zero. It just gets cut by more than half by the 4th+ time it's hunted.

 

[Coker]

Go back and read this article that BSK posted about a month ago

Post in thread 'Really good article on buck homes ranges'

Oct 17, 2024

Exactly... which would mean the largest variance would not be late rut as they listed in the article, it would be prerut/ early rut.

My thought is Pre rut/Early rut is when there is a larger population of doe coming into estrus and they are not hard to find. Late rut is when the bucks have to travel the most to find that last doe in estrus.

• Coker

"Keep This Fact: The mere act of hunting a buck, and how you hunt him, can change how he uses his home range. If he can predict you, he'll avoid you."
This is common sense but so many of us are predictable.

 

[T. J. Mercer]

Adding to that . . .
My personal experience has been that the deeper into the woods I get (or farther from civilization I go), the more sensitive they are.
If you're hunting a corn or soy field adjacent to a farm where the old feller leaves his sweat rags on the tractor, they're gonna' get used to human stink.
They'll be alert, of course, b/c they're deer, but they're still gonna' hammer that food plot.
If I'm not mistaken, I want to think BSK above mentioned leaving a rag or article of clothing on certain stands to desensitize the deer to his scent, but I might be making that up?
I've had a few spots where I was over pathing that was clearly between bedding and food plots.
No amount of hunting I did impacted the traffic, but to what degree it impacted mature buck traffic, I couldn't say.
Did I see mature bucks?
Sure, but I don't know what I would've seen with less pressure . . .

 

[BSK]

Iglow,

I know this doesn't answer your original question directly, and it's a topic I've discussed many times, but for the newer members I'll repeat myself.

I wrote an article about this for Quality Whitetails magazine, but I cannot find my digital copy. But the gist of the article was how we began to see/kill the mature bucks using our place. Because these animals are highly sensitive to hunting pressure, and because I had earlier done an analysis of our older buck sighting rates that showed they began to decline rapidly after a stand had experienced as little as 12 hours of hunting time, I started working on a plan to find the lowest pressure areas of our property. By adding up the total hours of hunting time for every stand location we hunted in the last three years, I could build a "topographic map" of the hunting pressure that had been applied to the property over that timeframe. This "hunting pressure topo map" showed high pressure areas as hills, and low pressure areas as valleys. Once we had located all the low pressure areas, we would move at least one stand into each before the season started. Often, there would be no buck sign in these areas (that's why they hadn't been hunted). But by using our knowledge of how bucks use terrain and habitat, we would place the stand to cover what we believed would be the highest odds buck travel route through the area.

At first, it was very difficult to convince ourselves to hunt these stands. There was no sign. Other parts of the property were crawling with sign. But once we started to force ourselves to hunt them from time to time it didn't take long to realize ALL of our mature buck sightings were coming from these stands. But the hunter choosing one of these stands had to be prepared for long sits seeing nothing - not a deer. The areas were devoid of sign because other deer didn't use them. But mature bucks had learned from their previous years of survival how to avoid hunters by finding and using these low hunting pressure areas in their daily travels. Someone hunting one of these stands would see almost no deer, until they saw a mature buck. Basically, ALL we saw from these stands were mature bucks. The encounters were rare, but mature buck sightings were almost exclusive to these "low pressure area" stands.

We still use this technique to locate stands. Now at least half of these stands each year will be total busts. But the other half...

 

[Coker]

Iglow,

I know this doesn't answer your original question directly, and it's a topic I've discussed many times, but for the newer members I'll repeat myself.

BSK,
You will have to repeat yourself multiple times because Iglow is old, hard of hearing, and doesn't remember shat!

 

[BSK]

BSK,
You will have to repeat yourself multiple times because Iglow is old, hard of hearing, and doesn't remember shat!

That's going to leave a mark!

 

[Coker]

That's going to leave a mark!

I can say all these things about him because we've known each other for years. Believe me when I say, I'm just paying him back for all the grief he's giving me.