How long do you give a deer stand a rest ?

[bigbore442001]

I was wondering how long does it take for deer to come back to a stand area after having shot one? Dad and I were chatting and we seem to have noticed a pattern. If we shoot a deer out of one of our stands, it seems that deer don't come by the area for two to three weeks. Has anyone else noticed the same pattern of behavior? Is it something we may be doing or just the nature of deer under pressure? Maybe it is just New England deer that do this sort of thing.

 

[jtmattison]

Maybe it's something you are doing. I've seen fresh deer tracks right next to a fresh gut pile the day after a kill.
Even after a kill you should stay as stealthy as possible to not disturb the area. Leave as quietly as possible after finishing your field duties.
I've even seen animals walk up and sniff older gut piles. One time I dropped a javelina and his buddies came back out and nudged him with their noses, smelled the bullet hole, even pushed him aside a bit to eat the corn on the ground.

HD

 

[rabjr]

I think it depends on where the stand is located.

I've shot a deer in the morning and then again in the evening from the same stand before. I've also gone several days without seeing anything but never a couple of weeks.

Hell on Prudence it was nothing to have a hunter shoot a deer then another an hour later from the same spot.

 

[Vaino]

Wisc. deer season was last week and on opening AM I shot a doe and in the afternoon shot an eight pointer.Early next AM my son shot a six pointer so 3 deer were shot in little over a day off the same tree stand. !50 yds away my grandson shot a doe opening day and a fork early the next AM off the same tree stand. I think the deer traffic past a stand depends a lot on the number of hunters walking around and also having the stand in or near a deer traffic pattern. Recent kills don't seem to bother deer where I hunt because this year was similar to last year and many past hunts. Talked to 2 game wardens this year and they said the deer population in Wisc. before the hunt was around 1.8 million and they were predicting a kill of 500,000 which they said wasn't enough to prevent a large winter kill if the weather turns bad. Having such a large deer population doesn't hurt either......Fred

 

[PitchyPine]

Only thing i notice is if something is different they`ll see that right off. We shot three from the same stand but then i pushed some slabs up into a pile and moved a old car and the haven`t been around that area. Give them a couple weeks and they`ll be back though.
My problem is over the years i`ve shot all the dumb deer and now all the rest are the smart ones. :haha:

 

[shootemup]

Yep, I agree with everybody above.

It really does depend on what you're doing - I've killed two from the same stand on the same day, but was careful to remove the deer immediately. I have always heard that you shouldn't gut your deer in the woods, but I think that what the other guys said about a deer sniffing around an old gut pile is valid, just have to give them a day or two to get used to it.

That might be the main thing. They will get used to something new within a few days as long as it don't make no trouble. That said you can see the wisdom in the statement "it depends on what you do there."

If you're in an area where you know there won't be other disturbance, and you remove the carcass before field dressing, you might be able to go back the same or next day if there is a real good reason for deer to be there.

Otherwise you might need to give it a few days. As long as you don't bugger it up too bad, 3-4 should be more than adequate.

Good luck -

Spot

 

[No Deer]

My friend and I were sitting in the same blind 2 weeks ago. About 7:30 a.m. I shot a 7 point buck. It went about 50 yards and piled up. We went out and field dressed it, and I drove my truck out to it to pick it up and then parked the truck back in the upper field. We then went back to the blind. Two hours later two does came out in the same spot, he shot one of them. It also went about 50 yards and ended up about 25 feet from where mine had piled up. Guess all the comotion of shooting, dressing and picking up mine did not scare the deer off too far.

 

[bob1961]

in N.J. back in the 80's i shot my 9 pointer from a wooden built tree stand and still hunted out of it for the next 8 days seeing deer everyday till the end of the esaon................bob

....

 

[roundball]

I think it's mainly the amount of disturbance and the effects of the rut cycle during the rut.

I hunt alone, I don't talk in the woods (easy when you're alone), I don't touch anything with bare hands, I don't pee around my stands, I wear rubber boots that never get worn around gas stations, etc...don't know if any of that helps but I'm afraid to change the approach.

I sat on one of my stands outside a clearcut during the 2005 rut and shot a buck at 7:00am...dragged it to my stand, cleaned & reloaded the Flintlock, had hardly gotten settled back down and shot a second buck coming through at 7:30.

Conversely I've sat the same stands and not seen a shooter for days...have to remember that during the fall, Does & Bucks visibility ebb and flow based on which days they're back in the thickets breeding...then there are the days they're back in the woods cruising for does, etc...so it's not always the stand location itself, but the availability of cruising deer on any given day too

 

[Stumpkiller]

I've shot deer at first light, gutted it, dragged it behind me and taken a second deer within the hour on two seperate occasions. Depends on the location and wind. I've also taken deer on consecutive days from the same location (these were at the same ground blind).

Once I was gutting a deer my wife had shot and she said "there's a buck" and I grabbed my pump shotgun from where it was leaning, bloody hands and all, and took him from where I was kneeling as he turned to kick in the afterburners.

Thinks happen fast and furious on some public or open private lands in NY. Once the regular season starts they are acting more like refugees than deer.

 

I gut my deer as soon as I can get to it and get that meat cooling fast. Buddy shot a doe on opening day at 0930, I shot a button buck same stand just before sunset. Gut pile around here lasts about one night.

B

 

[Headhunter]

It does not matter what you do or how you do it. A Boone & Crocket buck can walk right by your stand 100 yards behind a High School Marching Band. You are either going to get one, or you aren't.

I have shot deer smelling the guts of the deer shot the day before. I have had bucks try to breed does that were shot two hours prior laying there dead.

What you are experiencing is the Deer have patterened the hunter. Does in particular will avoid areas that they know contain hunters.

Bucks, are cruising looking for does and the buck you see today might have been at a farm 5 miles away the day before. The best thing to do is not hunt a stand (area) every day. Hunt it only when the conditions are correct. Sneak in, and sneak out.

If the does avoid the area, bucks will have no reason to go there.

Headhunter

 

[roundball]

"...It does not matter what you do or how you do it..."

"...The best thing to do is not hunt a stand (area) every day. Hunt it only when the conditions are correct. Sneak in, and sneak out..."

:grin:

 

Reminds me a qoute from a great USMC Scout Sniper in Vietnam, sneaky slowly catchie monkey. I keep it in my head when doing a stalk through the woods. Hang out with the does, sooner or later a buck will show up!

Praying for some snow, man let the games begin if we get some on the ground!

Billy

 

[jimmy82]

I've seen deer killed just a few hours apart in the same area. Even as soon as just a half hour. Then I've sat near "deer highways" for days on end and not seen a thing (i think the wind wasn't working with me).

The one time I ran into some poachers was the same time I saw deer circle around a hill and try to find their buddy that the poachers had killed only a few moments before (or thought they had, but that's a long drawn out story with a lot of suffering on the animals part). I was so upset at what I had witnessed that I quickly dispatched one of the other deer even though it was quite small, my season was over as I saw it and I wanted to get out of that county. Never been back there since.

I have noticed that the deer that wind up getting it after another kill earlier in the same area tend to be younger ones, 1 or 2 years old.

 

[roundball]

I have noticed that the deer that wind up getting it after another kill earlier in the same area tend to be younger ones, 1 or 2 years old.

I'd assume their offspring...

 

[rabjr]

Just when you think you have them all figured out, they tend to show you that you don't. :haha:

I believe the two biggest things to worry about is heavy human activity/scent in an area and changing the area, cutting shooting lanes, limbing or cutting trees. Most of the time...

A few years back I got set and drove out to my stand on my catv an hour before sun up, jumped up into my hunting seat and settled in for my mornings stand. The owner of the property decides that will be wood cutting day and drives by me on his tractor at 7:00 am and proceeds to go up the trail a couple hundred yards in the direction I figure the deer should be coming and starts clanging chains/chainsaws. Hauling out logs all morning, passing not 50 yards from where I was sitting and he'd wave each time he passed.

Well I figure I picked the wrong day to do this and by 10:00am I had enough and went home. After fretting for a while I figured I'll never see anything in here so might as well go out and sit and see nothing lol.After all he's gotta take a break soon anyway. So I head back out to the same spot and settle in. He continued to cut and haul wood out until 3:00pm and I had just gotten used to the silence when at 3:30 I heard voices behind me and soon saw another neighbor with two of her grand children out and about looking for that years Christmas tree. They get about 20 yards from me and it's "Oh! what are you doing out here??" Seeing me dressed in orange with a gun in my lap, she thinks it best to leave me a lone and they go back home. The winds swirling a bit and I remember smelling perfume.

I remember sitting there shaking my head saying another hour and this day is over! Well, the next thing I know I see movement at 4:30 out ahead of me at about 70 yards and in the next 5 or so minutes I watch as a fat little 3 point walks right up to me and I put him to sleep at 25 yards. So you just never know about them sometimes...

 

[cptleo1]

With my bow, several times I have shot a deer with a dead one within sight.

Like the others have said, I have seen deer sniffing gut ples in the woods.

We don't gut our deer, so the gut pile thing is not an issue.

I would offer:

Gut piles attract coyotes which spook deer.

When you knock one down and start the blood trail process you walk through the kill zone.

When you drag one out, many times you will have someone help(Twice as much stink).

When gutting a deer most folks
a. Lay their rifle,pack,coat down while they work.
b. Usually get on their knees to work.
c. Get a little careless about the 'scent free thing'.

Good advice offered here is bascially "Keep in hunting mode till you get back to the Truck.

Good Luck

 

[roundball]

Exactly...just quietly drag them out and dress them somewhere else

 

[bigbore442001]

I talked to a friend yesterday and asked him the same question. He responded that he shot a deer about two weeks ago and has not seen a deer at his stand area since. Maybe it is just New England deer?

I believe the rut will be winding down now so the bucks will go into more of a survival mode.

We do drag out deer to another location but there may be another reason for it. The areas I hunt in are used by other people. I know that they push the deer around quite a bit.