How would you play this one?

[GF.]

OK, so I went up on Saturday and had a quick look around my new spot. Pics attached so you can see what it looks like….

Topo shot: About 45 acres, south-facing on a pretty steep-sided ridge. Dotted lines are approximate, but I’m more confident of the solid ones… Blue-green road is a paved ‘lane & a half’; purple road is a 2-lane highway,and the red dot is my host’s house. Roughly, anyway ;)

There is public land (light green) on the back-side of the ridge; access to it is pretty poor and only from the far end, so that is definitely in my favor. The first half of our statewide shotgun/rifle opens on Weds.; public land hunter density in the general area is pretty low by local standards, at 1 gun/about 30 acres; no data on private land hunter density, though.

Below the road is about 5 acres with a few old apple trees scattered around. A neighbor has a climber installed down there, which he’s rifle hunting. He gave the OK for me to use it whenever I want. Said he hasn’t seen much from it though, probably because we’re having a bumper crop on the acorn front this year.

Google Earth shot shows the place in full foliage; there’s kind of a bench above the house which was selectively logged about 20 years ago. The red line there is an electric fence. Western property line is drawn past where it really ends...

Third shot is a birds-eye view off of Bing… Later in the season, so you can see where the pines are – looks like on the flatter areas of the hillside…

Seasons & Tools: I’ve got my own climber, a hang-on, and a handful of vacation days to work with. :D

Archery has been open since 9/15, but closes for public land on Tues for the Weds. shotgun opener. I can bowhunt the private land any time ‘til New Year’s, though.

Private land firearms also starts Weds and runs through 12/8, then ML is on for the rest of the month.

On Public land, the first half of firearms ends on 27th, and pressure should be much lower at that point (‘til the 8th). Success rates run 15% for first half, and maybe 5% in the second half (for either-sex tags!) ML is probably my only option for the back side of the ridge. Success rates for that season run 2-4%, but I might do better back there in that hole… Tough drag back up & out, though :eek:

I’ve got a plan in mind for hunting this spot, but am curious as to what the rest of you guys would do here… I figure my first day there will include a couple hours of stand placement effort at some point in the day, but haven't completely decided where they oughtta go just yet. One last consideration is that it takes nearly 2 hours to get there, so I may have trouble getting on-stand much before legal hours ( :o ), but I'll be staying all day, rather than just getting out for the evening sits.

[Herne]

Wind direction? Food supply? Shelter?High ground from which you can see most, which isn't necessarily the highest point?

[Bushman]

Fed, bed or bred. That's all deer do. They just don't take walks for the exercise. Your rut should be just about on right now and it doesn't read like your area will be high pressure that would put the deer down into the security cover right away. I don't like the close proximity of the bow season close and the gun opener, but if the deer have been pressured would depend on if you have a dedicated bunch of bow hunters in there that have pushed the deer around late in the season. During the rut, hunt the best food sources because that is where the does will be. Post rut and bad weather the security cover. Cold weather the southern or sun exposed warmer hillsides. If it's like it is here, all it takes is one flatfooted still hunter like me in my youth to get every deer in the area up and moving. Don't be that guy or you will get a lot of deer for other people.

[GF.]

Winds are likely to be N/NW, mostly. I was actually figuring that one is a given, since the steep hillside soaks up so much sun... Thermals would be pretty near guaranteed , I'd think....

Food supply is everywhere right now. Oaks are dropping acorns by the truckload. Once those are gone, the entire area is encircled by farm country, and there is a small green patch of old pasture,most likely, to the east by that pond. (More pics!)

The classic heavy cover here in CT is mountain laurel, and based on the late-season photo, I don't think we have much of that around up there. Hmmm...

The woods are relatively open up there. Not a tremendous amount of brush that I noticed, so scoped-rifle shooting is likely to provide a distinct advantage in terms of reach, except that there are (as always) enough houses in the general area that I'd be reluctant to use the 7-08 except shooting either down-hill or down from a tree stand. There are a few safe angles to be had up there, of course, but in the main, I wouldn't expect to be shooting much beyond 75-100.... And right now, there are still enough leaves on the trees that visibility should be improving fairly soon...

At any rate, I'd think the best visibility would be on the steeper hillside above that knoll at 1200'. Unless it's too thick... Based on what the landowner's wife said about the deer's travel routes through the property, I think they may well bed on that knoll, then contour across to the west on their way to water...

I did see one scrape in a clearing across the road from that little thumb that extends down towards the brook, so that may be a corridor of sorts there... Just have to find the line and see which way they're moving.

[GF.]

Bush -

I'm seriously considering how much I can count on those guys to help me on the opener (Weds.) and the first Saturday of the season :D

But I have no idea how many other guys will be in the general area; the only thing I do know is that the public-land hunters in the back-side of the ridge aren't likely to get too close to the top unless they're pretty dedicated, and those guys tend to have a pretty good notion what they're up to...

So they might push a few deer over the top and down into my lap, or they could (more likely) be a non-issue.

[GF.]

Damn! Forgot to attach...

[Herne]

Well that got you thinking. Now you know where the axis of deer movement is likely to be, since htye are most likely ot head inot wind goign away from cover (if they can)and you now know which side of the property you have to stand on, and you know your direction of approach, which narrows the options before you start.

You always got to give yourself an edge - you cannot comprtomise the wind - and you were I guess in danger of hunting the land and not the deer.

:)

[GF.]

Not really - but for Day One on the ground there, I figure I may as well start off with a plan that fits the topography.....

At this point, I'm thinking I might just take the neighbor up on the offer to use his climber, because I can find it in the dark. Then, once the thermals start working, I can scout my way up the hill and (hopefully) find a heavily-used trail that would make a good spot for the evening.

Days are getting so short, though, that I almost feel as if there is no good time to be fiddling around with putting up stands, but fortunately, the owner wanders about the whole property on a semi-regular basis, so one human making a racket in the woods won't likely ruin the place for the rest of the season....

I'm leaning more and more towards ignoring the rifle option, though, unless perhaps I grab the ML next month as a last resort....:D

[ncboman]

I'd like to begin the day atop the highest elevation just beyond that blue dotted line. Warm days the deer will likely bed on the north side. Cold days, the south side. I'd look for areas of shade on that south side and check for beds. Think shade/dark and you should find beds. Something like this you just about have to go in when it's dark as the deer have different perceptions after daylight. ... iow, you can get away with a lot as long as it's dark.

I know a hunter that does very well just walking until he kicks up a buck like he wants. He then goes up a nearby tree and waits. His walls are full of bucks that came back within an hour or two.

[GF.]

You know..... that makes perfect sense.:confused:


I mean really.... After all we read, hear and talk about getting busted and screwing up an area for the rest of the year and all of that, you might never believe it, but especially when the animals get bumped from time to time anyway.... And by people who aren't out to kill them.

And fer Pete's sake - out here, if the animals were to abandon a good bedding or feeding area every time they got bumped, they'd all have left for Manitoba and died of starvation on the way.

I think I may have to focus on finding the acorns right now, though...

Getting to the top of the ridge makes a lot of sense if I can do it without raising too much of a ruckus, but I don't see that happening my first day in there. Another consideration is that technically, I can't cross onto the public land until ML season, and then only if I buy the public land tag. But maybe if I can get a stand way up high there overlooking the flat spot at the top of the ridge.....

[dave-t.]

If you are going in "blind" so to speak with the rifle season already in progress, I would find the thickest security cover on the place, and set up on the down wind side of it, near whatever trails you can find in short order. Depending on visibility and how much time you have, you may be able to set up where you can glass a couple of areas in hopes of moving in on the hotter spot. If it comes to a hail mary, get right in the bedding/security cover, get the wind right, and sit all day.

Edges of the pine and hardwoods would be another option to check out. If they are bedding in the pines, bucks will be trolling the edges, and then heading to the next batch of pines. Setting up in the hardwoods between pine stands might let you catch some of the movement heading from one stand of pines to the next.

Look for the escape routes out of the public land if that area is open to rifle season too. Probably lowest part of the ridge is where most of the travel is going over the top, and you can still catch deer traveling along the ridge. Look into the easiest travel up and down the slope if deer movement is normal and they seem unpressured, look into the thickest cover and steepest portion of the south slope if pressure is hot.

[Herne]

And don't cross the wind.

[GF.]

So now I'm debating.... 'Borrow' that stand in the morning, or just start easing my way towards the ridge as soon as it gets light enough to see what I'm doing...

That climb ought to keep me a lot warmer than parking my sorry carcass in a tree stand....

Hmmmmm..................

I guess it'll depend on whether I can figure out what the wind is doing; I'm expecting the thermals to predominate, but don't (yet) know what time that switch gets thrown....

[Herne]

Don't cross the wind .... :D

[GF.]

That's what I like about thermals - they matter a lot more than a lot of people think :D

What about this, though - on a bench, do you hang your stand on the up-hill side, or the down-hill?

Apart from being sky-lined, all of the advantages that come to mind seem to favor the down-hill side of things...

[DaveHawk]

GF I see where the creek comes close to the road. Check to see if there is a traveling area where the deer cross at that point. Depending on the time of day tracks will tell you when they are crossing. If they cross in the morning and return in the evening of vise versa.

Lokk for the rub line in the pines 1st, they stand out better, this will save you some time, deer rub in the direction they are walking. Then you can follow into the hard woods to see if you can fins food source or bedding areas. Bedding areas will be up wind from the rubs.

[Herne]

Bear in mind we are talking 45 acres - yes.

With a rifle, that can possibly be covered from something like 3 positions - depending on visibility of course, taking out useless ground.

Personally i always preferred to be halfway up a hill. As a crude generalisation, deer prefer to use the lower ground, so you are less likely to meet them nose to nose. The height gives you a backstop, and you are not so high that you will be skylined which is fatal. But thats not fixed - just a preference if its available.

sit down, back against a tree, halfway up a hillock, wind on your face, scent and a cigarette are no problem, covering a gap in hte trees. You can see him coming through trees, and hit him 100 - 200 yards out and he never had a clue you were there to spook. Optimal. :)

[GF.]

Got up and spent Friday & Saturday really scouting the place….

Predominant winds are from North to West, depending on the weather. Thermals run South to North, but the top of the ridge is pretty flat and runs from about 50 to -80 yards wide. There are acorns absolutely everywhere. Big as the end of your thumb. Parts of the property look as if someone has run a mulcher through there. Deer? Turkeys?. The steeper the hillside, the more signs of traffic, especially where there are big white pines overhead. It has been warm thus far, so maybe the deer have been feeding in the shade?

Up top of the ridge, there are some good looking trails –and it seems as if the acorns up there are a still-untapped food source. Not much in the way of rubs or scrapes, though… Found one shed - good mass, but looked like relatively few points and not great length.

Coming down the ridge in the late afternoon (walking when I should have been sitting and glassing :rolleyes: ), I heard the snort-wheeze… repeated 5-6 times, a bit longer and much louder than I’ve ever heard it. I saw a deer up ahead– really blocky-looking body on it – moving fast up-wind, but no flag. More like bouncing on all four at once, and I want to say that it was landing extra hard, and with its weight a bit back.

I didn’t get a sense that it had bolted out of the area, so I backed into some cover and glassed. That’s when I heard the snort again; again, it was 5 or 6 long, loud ones, and I saw the deer moving in the same way, but it seemed to go around in a small circle before it bailed off the back-side of the ridge.

Given the wind, I don’t think there is any possible way that I got scented, though there might have been some foot scent from an hour or more earlier. And there may have been some other (non-hunting) people in the woods up-wind of the deer.

So the questions are… Did I get busted visually? And by a buck or a doe? (Honestly, the body seemed too massive to be a doe – not that I saw any antlers…)

But if it wasn’t a doe telling the fawns to run for it, why all the snorting? If a doe, then why no flag? And why didn’t it appear to be running for cover?

I’ve been wondering if I never even got seen (though that seems kind of unlikely). But maybe it was a dominant buck chasing off a younger one? Or a coyote?

At this point, I’ve got a real good idea right where the deer was, and since it was at a low spot on the ridge line, I’m thinking that’s where they pass through from the steeper, shadier side to the one with all the acorns on it…

If I go up there on Friday, I could stake out that saddle and have a real nice afternoon hunt, but that will leave my scent blowing all over a very sizable portion of the top of that ridge, since the saddle is towards the western end..

So what to do? Haul the climber up there and get high enough to really dilute my scent? (If there’s a storm coming in, that’s gonna get cold!)

And should I start off by putting up the stand at the down-wind end of the ridge and hunt a little farther up-wind on each visit, or stake out the ‘known’ crossing and hope for the best?

[DaveHawk]

Ya you got Busted GF I find they blow louder when when you walk up on them after they stop running. so ya he of she saw ya. You know how long they were watching you, ? Deer will stand and decided if your a treat of not, some will blow then bolt some will bolt stop and blow, some will blow and run at the same time.

[GF.]

That was what I was thinking. Since I had the wind totally in my favor, I figure the first round was maybe just to get me to act like a threat and confirm the suspicions.....

So assuming that you're right, do you think there's any profit in setting up to watch that spot while the turkey dinner settles?

What the topo map doesn't show at the scale that I posted, is the fact that the back-side of the ridge is virtually a cliff. As a matter of fact, along one stretch it is a cliff. Hell of a nice place to watch the public land on the back side, because there's about a 1-acre bench up there with nothing but steep and nasty all around it. God help ye, though, if you were to shoot one and have it run the wrong way :eek: Probably be easier to drive around to the other side of the mountain.....:rolleyes:

So I figure that I've worked out one of a very few places where they can cross the top of the ridge...

Question is, do I position myself to the south side of the flat portion of the ridgetop, where there's some chance that any deer using the ridge as an E-W corridor might not get enough of a whiff of me to put it off of using the area, or do I set up on the North side of the flat and hope that they'll come up top from the south slope.

South edge of the flat is better for afternoon sunlight, and the thermals might lift my scent up & away from the flat, whereas you'd think the northerly winds would wash scent across it.... That's probably the answer, I suppose, but if anybody can talk me out of it....

[Herne]

So which way, wRT the wind did the deer run.

If it dropped downwind and crossed the wind, you can be sure it saw you first, and then needed to confirm.

Get in range and downwind of what you know. Its too small a manor to go stumping all over it.

[ncboman]

up a tree on the downwind side of the saddle could make an interesting morning.

[GF.]

The deer was well up-wind the entire time.... So, a picture being worth a lot of typing......

It went a bit as shown..... Light ovals are 'topo' lines, green dots are pines, black lines are trails, deer and its route are in brown.

I'm the idiot in the orange standing out in the middle with no cover.

Oh, yeah - wind is the big blue arrow, and afternoon light goes roughly 8:00 to 2:00.

The ridge top is a pretty good-sized area, so might stretch farther E-W, but basically, it's a big oak flat with just a few higher spots along the north side
and a few scattered pines - the deer was hiding behind at least one throughout the whole encounter. The trees up there are all mature, with generally little or no understory except right in that saddle; that seems to come out into a bit of a bowl, and I think the extra moisture there accounts for the extra thick brush in that spot. Great place for them to hide while they check for any threats out on the flat...

I've looked at some finer-scale topo maps of the area, and this saddle is looking more & more like a prime crossing from that steep north side. There is some very thick cover on the south-facing slope, too, though - lots of 2"-4" trunks and absolutely choked overhead - so I'm a bit concerned about getting winded by any deer coming up top from down there. Winds do funny things near ridge-tops; between thermals rising from the south and the prevailing breezes from north & west, I'm having a little trouble visualizing the flows. And not real sure that the subtler aspects of the wind are really going to matter here.... I guess I really only need to have one of 'em use the trail I'm watching and save the rest for another day....:cool:

[GF.]

BTW - and especially for Bowman - I have to agree with you, but don't know the hill well enough to get into the right spot in the dark. It's also a 1:45 drive and a quarter mile uphill - as the crow flies - and gaining about 1 foot in elevation for every yard.

So, packing the climber, I don't foresee getting into position for that trail before legal light, so the question becomes what time of day to make the climb and get everything set up?

And should I make my way up there from the West so that my scent blows out ahead of me - being too obvious to be a threat to anything on the South side and hoping not to stink up the North- or should I figure out how to tackle the much steeper and brushier approach from the East, and hope not to become hopelessly sweated up?

I may be able to contour across (and through all of the really thick stuff) so that I never get up-wind of the trail I want to watch, but I won't likely get up there much before 9:00 no matter how I play it - unless I'm willing to just charge straight up the hill and 'stealth' be damned...


Hmmmm.... Maybe if I did bust some deer on the south slope, they'd cross over the top and need to use that same trail to get back later in the day or in the early evening?

[Sabre]

Is a stand really neccesary to hunt that saddle ? I have lots of good spots that are far enough back in that I won't even consider hauling a stand to them and have killed alot of deer from the ground in those places. I ALWAYS carry coats in on steep morning hikes and will change out of wet shirts when I get to my spot if neccesary.

[GF.]

Sabre - very likely not.

You might laugh at this, but honestly, a big reason I like a tree stand for any kind of extended wait is that we have such a high incidence of Lyme out here. That and the fact that I've never been worth a damn at sitting still for any period of time. At least in my climber, I can get pretty comfortable and settle in for the duration....

I do have some concerns about how much scent I leave up there, though - don't want to mess up the whole area when there's a chance that I could take several deer from that same flat.....And it seems like getting the point source a little distance up off the ground is of some benefit there.

[ncboman]

My thoughts;

If I'm gonna lug myself up there, my climber ain't that much more. Ground hunts are ok in the right circumstances but I'd rather hunt and shoot from a tree for greater vision and shot selections. Also tree hunting generally means leaving the area relatively scent free for the next day. I might leave my stand on the tree though.

If going up in the dark, I wouldn't worry about noise much. I'd just walk to my target area and go up. Deer are different animals in the dark and even those that run, don't run far.

In daylight, I'd be more quiet but I wouldn't waste much time over it. The ambush is from the tree, not on the way in.

I'd also setup so the shot is before the deer breaks the top. This should insure the deer's attention directs toward seeing out onto the ridge and not looking up in the trees.

Early bird gets the worm here. :cool:

[Sabre]

My thoughts;

If I'm gonna lug myself up there, my climber ain't that much more. Ground hunts are ok in the right circumstances but I'd rather hunt and shoot from a tree for greater vision and shot selections. Also tree hunting generally means leaving the area relatively scent free for the next day. I might leave my stand on the tree though.

You wouldn't feel that way about tree stands if you hunted alot in hemlock forest like I do. You get up a tree in there you CUT your visibilty by a bunch. Better off on the ground looking under the branches than up in a tree stand trying to look through them. As to scent ruining the hunt by hunting from the ground. Baloney ! You wear rubber boots on the way in and avoid contact with vegetation as much as possible and you'll be fine. Basically you'll only leave lingering scent at the spot you've been sitting. That spot should be well away from where the deer will normally be travelling anyway. I've hunted the same spot for several days running and seen the same deer daily far too many times to worry about it. Killed some darn nice bucks out of those same spots after hunting them every day for a week straight too. At this point I'm so used to hunting {and killing deer} from the ground that I didn't even bother putting up any stands this year.

[GF.]

Different woods call for different tactics, that's for sure....

On the place I'm looking at, the visibility from up a tree should be excellent, so the only down-side to it is getting the extra 20 or 25 pounds up the hill in the dark. I guess if I dress lightly enough and allow enough time that I don't have to make it into a 1/3 mile, 400 foot-high wind-sprint, I ought to be able to get up there without getting completely sweat-soaked....

Still haven't figured out a really good way to backpack the stand and carry along my stand-sitting clothes, food, water, rifle, etc., though. The sled is convenient for that, but not exactly quiet, and then I have to figure out how & where to stash it so that it doesn't become a point-source of humanstank.

I don't think I have an option on taking a shot until the deer have crossed onto the flat. Strictly speaking, they're still on the state land until they're 10-15 yards from the crest, anyway, and I sure as hell would hate to see one turn tail and dive down-hill on me....

From a safety standpoint, too, I'm really going to be best off setting up on the south side of this area and shooting down into the ground on that flat in a direction anywhere from E/NE to W/NW, so I won't have any chance to see them until they're up top. That probably means that I should spend a lot of time with the binocs glued to the lowest point on the ridge, though.... Shooting from a ground-height position, there's no back-stop but the trees, so any bullet that somehow wormed its way through would be able to carry a hell of a long ways before it came down...

So now I just have to decide if I'm willing to walk down-wind to get into position via the route that I know, or if I should take a crack at bushwhacking my way up....

[ncboman]

A deer wouldn't smell me on the way in regardless of wind direction.

believe it or not, the scentsmoker (http://www.scentsmoker.com/) really really works. ;)

It's so simple and effective, many fellas refuse to accept it, but I know and have proven it to myself without question. They simply cannot smell human odor thru the smoke odor and tend to ignore the smoke smell mostly.

I don't always go to the trouble and time (15-30min) to use it, but in your situation it would get fired up, if not that morning, surely the night before. ;)

[GF.]

I've heard you mention that one before... Gotta say, you don't do a lot of product testimonials.... Funny thing, me bein' me... I can't decide if it's an awful lot to pay for a tin can and a bag o' wood chips, or if that's a really great price on a useful piece of equipment :D

Is there handle on there somewhere?

I know some guys will just start a fire out in the yard, heap on a bunch of kinda damp leaves, and hang their gear around the smoldering heap. You could never get away with that around here....:rolleyes:

[ncboman]

I probably shouldn't do this cause I like the scentsmoker guy, butttt ...

if you do some searching of beekeeping equipt and perhaps ebay, you can easily find the same type smoker for about half price or less. :cool:

Also, I was in a grove of shagbark hickorys and in about 5 minutes, gathered enough bark to last the rest of my life. :cool:

Try it and you'll be both amazed and amused.

... and then you may ponder how and why human nature often takes the most difficult route to a simple solution. :rolleyes:

:rolleyes:

btw, ... never put a hot smoker on your bedliner to cool. No I didn't. I just seen pics on the internet. :D

[GF.]

... and then you may ponder how and why human nature often takes the most difficult route to a simple solution. :rolleyes:



Because there's no profit margin in 'simple'. :D

Glad you mentioned the beekeeping equipment... Probably saved me ten bucks!

Hmmmm... now, what kind of bark to use?

[GF.]

Funny thing.....

I think that guy may be selling 'em as cheap as anybody. Found better prices but the shipping rates were obscene.

But don't let anybody tell you that 'his' little device is anything other than a beekeeper's hive smoker :D