Thanks to everyone who has helped me learn white tail hunting this season. It's been great. Converting from hog stalking on public land to white tail tree hunting on private land lease has been a blast with a large learning curve. I have been saving my last tag for a trophy buck and have one more hunt left in me this season.
Tuesday is predicted to have NNE winds of 5-9 mph with temps 34-52 degrees and rising pressure until about 10am. That's about perfect.
My question to you is, "Which spot do I hunt?"
In the attached image, the green circle is a two acre grove of old large water oaks that is clear of underbrush, with a potential stand location as the green star. I just found this grove two weeks ago and set up a feeder on a deer/hog path to this grove. The feeder is the yellow circle. I placed a 15' tall ladder stand NE of the feeder seven days ago which is marked as the yellow star. A week is not enough time to establish a corn feeding site, so this is not yet a seasoned site. The blue line is a creek with vertical 15' tall walls on either side that deer cannot cross. The red dashes represent a high density of old and fresh, large buck scrapes about 20 feet from the creek edge. I've never seen a density of scrapes like this. There are large scrapes about every 15 feet or so. Some big boy is aggressively marking his territory. My guess is this is his path between bedding and the food supply of the oak grove. With a NNE wind, a potential tree stand location is marked with a red star. Neither the green star or red star are stands yet. I can grab some climbing sticks at the camp and a hang on stand to setup in either location.
So with one hunt left, and knowing the temps have recently been down to 10 degrees for multiple days (reducing natural browse), do I set up to hunt the old grove of water oaks (there are some old acorns on the ground), or do I set up to hunt the feeder (set to disperse 10 seconds of corn in the AM and 10 seconds in the PM), or should I hunt the high density of scrapes?
Another option is to bring a relatively quiet set of tree branch cutters and, as quietly as possible, try and cut a shooting lane from the yellow star tree stand to the red dashes of the buck scrapes, so I can hunt the new feeder and the scrapes. That will make a little noise as the sun is coming up.
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Tuesday is predicted to have NNE winds of 5-9 mph with temps 34-52 degrees and rising pressure until about 10am. That's about perfect.
My question to you is, "Which spot do I hunt?"
In the attached image, the green circle is a two acre grove of old large water oaks that is clear of underbrush, with a potential stand location as the green star. I just found this grove two weeks ago and set up a feeder on a deer/hog path to this grove. The feeder is the yellow circle. I placed a 15' tall ladder stand NE of the feeder seven days ago which is marked as the yellow star. A week is not enough time to establish a corn feeding site, so this is not yet a seasoned site. The blue line is a creek with vertical 15' tall walls on either side that deer cannot cross. The red dashes represent a high density of old and fresh, large buck scrapes about 20 feet from the creek edge. I've never seen a density of scrapes like this. There are large scrapes about every 15 feet or so. Some big boy is aggressively marking his territory. My guess is this is his path between bedding and the food supply of the oak grove. With a NNE wind, a potential tree stand location is marked with a red star. Neither the green star or red star are stands yet. I can grab some climbing sticks at the camp and a hang on stand to setup in either location.
So with one hunt left, and knowing the temps have recently been down to 10 degrees for multiple days (reducing natural browse), do I set up to hunt the old grove of water oaks (there are some old acorns on the ground), or do I set up to hunt the feeder (set to disperse 10 seconds of corn in the AM and 10 seconds in the PM), or should I hunt the high density of scrapes?
Another option is to bring a relatively quiet set of tree branch cutters and, as quietly as possible, try and cut a shooting lane from the yellow star tree stand to the red dashes of the buck scrapes, so I can hunt the new feeder and the scrapes. That will make a little noise as the sun is coming up.
So many details to check twice when the you hunt with a bow!
