Hunting 2023

[Drunk_Dynasty]

Dandy!

Not gonna go sit on bow opener?

I’ve honestly never sat on bow opener. That stand is tucked pretty far back so I’m a little worried about pressuring the deer early in the season. What the hell do I know about deer hunting tho.

There’s a small creek that seems to be the only place the deer wanna cross. I’m thinking late October it could be a good spot for an all day sit to catch a rutty buck moving thru.


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[Fish Felon]

Don't overthink it.....spend time in the stand if you want to up your odds. If you fukc it up? If he figures you out all season...so what....he'll be bigger next year.

You're banking on him fukcing up....so don't plan around you fukcing it up.

A buck like that will most likely go noncturnal anyways....no legal hunter will get a crack at him....besides a poacher wise to his ways. If a buck learns to work the rules his way via operating only outside legal shooting hours?

Break your clock to bag that buck, Fred....Oh Fred Bear....you turned a whole generation of men into Bow-Ner Boys....oh, Fred Bear....Oh Fred Bear....you are the subject of the worst rock song in history....Oh Fred Bear!!

[Nershi]

I am not a deer hunter. Got several buddies who are and the only time they hunt bow opener is when they have a nice one on camera on its feet during the day. They say it’s the best shot at a big one other than rut. Once they figure out it’s hunting season they go nocturnal. If you keep getting pics of him during the day get after it.

Sounds like a cool spot to hunt.

[maplelakeduckslayer]

I've caught crap from other guys about hunting my small piece of property almost daily in the past.

I don't buy into it unless you give them a reason to know you are there. If you are careful with your scent and entering/exiting the property (eg not moving like a human) I personally don't believe you hurt your odds at all.

I've hunted daily and still had mature bucks make the rounds like clockwork

You can hunt a spot one time and blow a deer outta an area if not careful no matter the time of year.

Just been my experience

I'm not gonna buy a piece of property for hunting then not hunt it was my rationale. Just made sure to offset it with being extra careful.

[Fish Felon]

I don't think you'll ever blow a deer out of their area. They're always there.....they just go nocturnal, and the only way you're ever going to see them is by stepping on them. I bet the amount of guys who end up hunting a specific buck walk within fifty yards of it every day they hunt.

I should've prefaced that by saying, "in the forest region," since yeah.....if you're hunting a couple acre grove in Southern MN.....yeah, definitely possible to push him out but even then.....I bet most times you're not pushing them out so much as you're pushing them out whenever you're going in.

My brother always would show us these trail cam pics of a buck walking out two minutes before he'd walk in....and he'd go,

"Every stinking time! If I'd just been two minutes earlier I would've got 'em!"

Then he'd go earlier next time....and next time....and next time....deer always just happened to get up two minutes before him by coincidence.....

....took an unusual amount of convincing from several of us before he got it,

"You're not two minutes late.....he knows you're coming and will always be two minutes ahead. The variable isn't the time of the day the deer is moving.....the variable is you."

My brother-in-law is a bow hunter and a pretty good one. He spends a shitload of time in a stand.....like.....a fukcing shitload. Dude will sit in a stand....portable hanging metal stand shit.....not very comfortable in my opinion.......it's nothing for him to go from sunrise to sunset even early in the season when that means twelve or fourteen hours or whatever it is. He enjoys late season cause then it's only like nine hours to hunt all day.

Look at duck hunting.....how do they cut harvest? Cutting limits is a minor tweak that produces very minor results. The USFWS learned a century ago that cutting the limit in half reduces the harvest by less than a percent in most cases....maybe it's one or a couple points, I forget.....it's not much.

If you're looking to cut harvest? You cut the number of days guys can hunt.

It's that simple.

The direct correlating factor to harvest isn't banning robo ducks, isn't cutting limits, isn't any of the other over-thought bullshit regulations that in the end is worthless besides making it a pain in the ass for guys to go hunting.....

....the direct correlating factor to harvest is time afield.

If you want to be successful in harvesting anything.....the more time afield you spend the better your odds are. It doesn't matter what it is....duck hunting, fishing, ramp and ginseng gathering, and yes.....even deer hunting....especially deer hunting.

Don't ever overthink it to where you trick yourself into believing your best odds of killing something is by not going hunting.

Hunting and fishing shows are for the most part....like 98%....totally fukcing gay, and you shouldn't ever try to take any of the bullshit they pitch to you as "next level elite hunter planning strategy" on level with Patton's ground war game. All the guys on TV or YouTube telling you about their strategy for not hunting a buck at certain times because they want to wait and up their odds of catching him off guard when the rut gets going......these fukcs are hunting some outfitter's nature preserve and big buck park. They're not good hunters....they're tools marketing a product, which outfitters give them free hunts as a way to market their product. There's nothing an outfitter loves more than some big name jerk-off holding a nice buck that might as well be a cow for the manner it was raised.....actually cows get less attention and care while putting enough weight on the hoof to get what they want for it at slaughter than the deer most outfitters raise.....

Point being, if you're a regular dude who likes to hunt and aren't in the 1% of crazy fukcs who actually are next level that you and I will never ever hear their names mentioned since being one of the top five bow hunters from Little Falls, Jacobson, Jackson, Zumbrota, and all points in between will get you less fame than the dorks carving butter sculptures for the state fair get.....

If you're a regular dude and you want to up your odds of shooting a decent deer just go hunting. Log as many hours in your stand as possible. If you're competent enough to place your stand in even a marginally decent spot then the more time in it the better. Time is your friend.....rack up as much time as you can until it gets to the point where you're starting to no longer find it enjoyable.

Honestly? I think you're better off in most scenarios to push a buck off your shit anyways.....if possible. I think a buck is going to go where it wants to go....bed down where it wants to be.....goes nocturnal maybe just by knowing what time of year it is.....seriously, deer are fukcing smart....and a buck that's somehow found a way to live long enough to reach maturity is smart as fukc....it wouldn't shock me if a big buck is smarter in terms of problem solving and evasion tactics than the majority of humans. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if a buck was capable of thinking,

"Oh, this is getting close to the time of year where what the human fictional comic book character the Hulk does....literally happens to me....and this monster version of myself goes insane, adds twelve inches of pure muscle girth to his neck, fights every other buck he can come in contact with, because he's out fukcing every doe possible.......Now I remember.....when I become the monster **** version of myself.....that's when I need to go nocturnal in order to not get shot by all the human orange stink blobs in trees peppered all across the country side. Yup, now I remember....that's how I've figured out how to not die in the past....turns out it's the one fool-proof way of surviving. Glad I seem to remember every year once I peel off that itchy velvet shit and sharpen my head bones for stabbing and fighting set."

Anyways, let's say you push a buck off your property?

Good. Now you can go sit in your stand and wait for him. The strategy of hoping some other hunter who spends less time in his stand than you do pushes him off his property and back towards you seems like as good of a strategy to maybe even better than the strategy of not hunting. Choosing to not go hunting as your hunting strategy seems like not that great of a strategy since.....I'd have to imagine that any buck you'd push off going hunting in September.....is most likely get pushed off when you wait a month and go in October.....I'd bet money on the fukcer using the same exact route/trail he would've taken to get out in front of you walking in during September as the one he'll use when ditching your ass in October after utilizing the "not hunting" hunting strategy.

If you're lucky enough to have the buck you're after come in range during legal shooting hours and give you a shot?

Whatever reason you believe caused him to make such a fatal mistake isn't going to be remotely close to what the actual reason is that caused him to **** up.

Big bucks don't fukc up very often. The best way to up your chances that you'll be sitting in your stand on one of the rare occasions he fukcs up?

Spending more time sitting in your stand.

This isn't rocket science. Don't overthink it. Do you know why I'm a shitty deer hunter?

I fukcing hate sitting in a stand.....just like 95% of guys who buy a license I'll sit maybe two hours on opening morning and then I'll be back to chainsawing and burning shit.

This year I'm hoping to have a stand completed where I can tolerate sitting in it 24 hours during deer season. If you can sit in a stand 24 hours during the season you're odds of shooting a nice deer exponentially increase.

If I had deer on the trail cams like some of you guys do......fugggggg.....were in North Central bog woods wolf country. The biggest deer we have on camera is a small eight, actually a small six since I don't think it has any brow tines. The thing is a beast....couple hundred pounds easily....healthy, mature deer.....just nothing even remotely like what some of you guys have as motivation to get in a stand.

[Mallard_maniac]

well not all of what you said is true....

first if you think of deer hunting from Mid Sept-De31 deer definitely do have entirely different habits and to say that the more you sit the better is good in theory, there are still better times to shoot one than others. That's not my opinion, you can look at national harvest data and see when more deer are shot (doesn't pay to look at MN because we allow unlimited unrestricted antlered deer hunting with a gun in the heart of their most vulnerable state. I am convinced after decades of hunting deer that a) once their velvet sheds, everything mature bucks do revolves around the few weeks in nov when the photperiod tells them it's time to breed does. Not saying they are rutting every moment while they're hard horned but everything they do is in preparation or recovery for/from it. and b) mature bucks are almost an entirely different specie than young bucks or does.

I'm not convinced deer just magically go nocturnal because they think it's time to start moving more at night. In areas that don't see pressure (refuges, state parks, etc...) it's not uncommon to see resident deer on their feet long after daylight and well before sundown. I also know I have screwed up more big deer than I care to admit by over hunting/hunting incorrectly.

All of this is off the premise that you're infact targeting one individual buck or maybe a couple. If you, like some popular youtubers now, hunt the whole season, bounce from public to public in hopes to stumble across a deer worthy of shooting then I think the more time spent afield the better. If you have a target set of less than 5 deer though on 40, 80 160, etc... ac and that's your season you can certainly do more damage than good at the wrong times. The best archery deer I ever killed was a beautiful typical heavy wide mature buck was within a week of bow opener. But it was a hang and hunt, first entry that year and I caught him off gaurd within 80 yds of where he was bedded. I royally screwed the pooch on him the year before and never saw him after he knew he was being hunted. Had I not killed him that night I very much doubt I wouldve seen him again until Nov and maybe not even then. I believe hanging and leaving stands is a terrible practice, and that when you hunt a stand it's as obvious to a deer as a dead skunk is on the highway when we drive past. I never used to give deer enough credit, now maybe I give them too much. But their entire world revolves around staying alive and carving out a living in the woods. for a few weeks a year they try to reproduce and then it's back to avoiding death. I think they know when a branch is broken, a new stand is in their home, a person has sat for a couple hours broadcasting scent over everything, etc...

There was a time when I didn't think that and had genuine B&C's I was trying to kill. I still don't have a B&C deer in my living room and every one I can remember "went nocturnal" about the time I started hunting. Ironically two imparticular were in an area I couldn't hunt until early Oct. Those two deer magically didn't go nocturnal until I could hunt meanwhile all the others on other farms were nocturnal about bow opener.... can't be coincidence.

[Fish Felon]

Those two deer magically didn't go nocturnal until I could hunt meanwhile all the others on other farms were nocturnal about bow opener.... can't be coincidence.

Well, yeah......that's kind of my point. You're the variable. Just think....they might not have gone nocturnal at all had you not hunted them, but what do you think gives you a better chance?

A) going hunting whenever, turning the mature bucks nocturnal whenever you decide to start hunting, and then waiting/hoping/praying they mess up.

B) never hunting them so that way they don't go nocturnal.

[Mallard_maniac]

After several "ahh haa" moments over the last 10 yrs or so of bowhunting I think my and anyone's best course (again assuming you're chasing one or a handful of specific deer) of action is to:
a) find out EXACTLY where they are bedding. Not the area, or the swamp or a general spot but if possible finding the bed they're laying in, how they're getting there, which direction they're facing in their bed, and how they're leaving. This is 95% of the equation.

and then

b) waiting for the PERFECT conditions to move in within 100yds, hang a stand at that time (not a month before) on the trail you figure he's leaving on and hopefully kill him. You'll get 1, MAYBE 2 good chances at him but if he starts showing up at night all of a sudden he's got you and theres a good chance you don't see him until late oct or nov.

I do agree with others the very best time to kill a mature whitetail is the first two weeks of season. They're going bed-food-bed-food and not much else. If you can find exactly where they are bedding and wait for everything to be right you have a very good chance. The problem is most don't. Work and family dictate "I can only hunt "x" day this week and I'm going regardless of wind, barometer, etc..." so they go because it's the only shift they get for a few days, they'll climb up in the stand they hung a couple years ago on the edge of a beanfield and see does and small bucks. And bigger one's start coming at 9, 11, midnight, 2:00am, etc.... the cycle repeats.

Listenign and reading dan infalts stuff really helped me back then. It's certainly helped my success the last 10yrs or so.

[emptymag]

Hey! No one commented on my pics from page 1!

In all seriousness, old deer are smart. Even in high fence. When shooting deer with the tranquilizers on a deer farm for tagging and retagging, the older does and mature bucks figure it out really quick. They stay way back and watch from the brush after the first young does are tagged. The younger deer never seem to figure it out until age 2-2/12 it seems.

The rut really messes with bucks. I had a good one on camera a few days in a row 2 years ago. Then my neighbor to the north started getting pics for a few days. One day later my neighbor a mile to the south shot him.

[Nershi]

Less teal and more hunters than last year. Didn’t light up limits but did good and had a blast. Dog did awesome so I was a happy papa. Planned on scouting a bunch but the heat won that battle and we hid out in the cabin with AC, beer and whiskey. Rice is thick as hell this year. Good for the ducks but gonna make things challenging for the hunters. Birds flew way better in the afternoon when we were scouting than the morning when we were hunting. Kinda odd and expected the opposite given the heat. Morning flight was almost nonexistent. Birds just sat all morning fat and happy. Best morning flights came at 9 when the Indians came out to start harvesting rice.