deer seen

[DesertBull]

The first calm day after a storm passes is THE day to be out. Doesn't have to be sunny and warm, just calm with little wind. I have a place in unit 33 that I can always see a few deer, but the day after a storm passes, it's like someone turned on the deer faucet. Last year, on just such a day, we literally glassed up 40+ deer before 9 am, all on one ridge system. The next day we saw maybe 15 deer total in the same area.

[Dodger]

On our first morning we saw five deer total, two of them were does bedded down around 11:00am. That evening we didn't see anything and the wind was pretty cold. Sunday morning we woke up to a slight drizzle that changed to sleet/snow and the wind really picked up. The snowflakes were "falling" horizontally in my field of view through my binoculars. We didn't see anything while we were hunting, but we did spot five does driving into our area from our cabin and then one crossing the road on our way out. Pretty frustrating, but I usually see more deer on the second weekend and fewer hunters. We only heard three shots the whole weekend and we saw more deer than any of the other hunters that we talked to saw.

 

Hopefully this weekend will bring better luck.

[bullwidgeon]

I seem to have more luck down South in the mornings. On the early hunt I saw close to forty deer one morning. I moved a mile that afternoon to get a different angle on the same area and saw 5 deer and glassed till dark. I know the other 35 deer were right there somewhere they just didn't come out for some reason. Maybe the wind was bad or they were full and didn't want to feed or something. When I get them completely figured out I guess I will quit hunting them but until then I will continue the struggle.

 

Bret M.

[kwp]

While scouting and hunting the early hunt (unit 33), my brother and I were seeing anywhere from 60 to 100 deer a day with 15-20 bucks and approximately 5 of those bucks being 3 points or bigger. I'm sure these numbers would drop off now with the hunting pressure. I shot my buck (a 3x4, about 90") at 8:30 opening morning and had already seen around 40 deer. I spent the rest of the day packing out my deer and my brother continued hunting. He said that he saw over a hundred deer that whole day including a couple of whoppers that were headed toward the really nasty, rugged, thick stuff and he was unable to get any shots. The next morning we tried to find one of those really big bucks and by 9:30 we had seen about 35 deer but no shooter bucks when we glassed up a nice, but not giant 3 point. He took this buck which also scores around 90. The majority of the deer that we were seeing were during the morning with a slight dropoff the rest of day, but we were still glassing a lot of deer throughout the day. The evenings were very good but not quite as good as the mornings.