We received permission to hunt a small parcel of land about 13 acres, roughly 1 month before the opening of bow season in NY.
We walked the property several times. Found countless trails throught the property, but only a few had deer droppings on them. We hung a set of stands just below a rock ledge in a not so thick brush area that has about three/four different trails that are in range of the stands. Since its my fiance's first year hunting, we are in the same tree. She has the better vantage point to see any deer movement.
Sat our stands the first weekend of bow and apparently didn't sit long enough because when we were getting out of the tree, saw a doe and possibly a second deer walk down one of the trails, but they busted us and ran. After that, we sat in our ground blind, which was tucked into the bottom of rock ledge as well. With multiple trails within range. We saw one doe walking down the dirt road that runs through this property. Which we thought would have little to no traffic. We found out after sitting a couple times that it has about 4-6 cars/trucks a day.
Went midday to scout and found a few rubs and probably 1-2 scrapes. So we dicided to move the ground blind within range of the rubbed tree's and one of the scrapes. Haven't seen one deer in that set up yet...Hunted it maybe 3-4 times since about 2 weeks ago.
We don't have much knowledge of bedding area's or food source. Map of area only shows two fields nearby, across major car/truck travel road.
There is a hunting club on one side of us and posted property surrounding "our" property.
So we are unsure about what to do at this point in the game. We are seeing absolutely no deer movement at this time. And would like some suggestions on what we might do to improve our odds.
We treat our clothes with scent elimination products each time we hunt, use cover scents, and attractants and still no deer?
We try to minimize our scent and presence as much as possible. Maybe we are overhunting the area? It's our only place we have permission so, we hunt no matter what the wind due to all the scent elimination crap we use...
HELP !!
Questions about the property we hunt...
