Moon Phases

[chrisstorm]

what type of effect does the moon play on movement....thanks

[iSnipe]

In the early to mid '90s a company came out with the Hunter's wheel or something similar. It has detailed info about the position of the moon and I believe sun because these are suppose to be the factors that influence deer movement. I use to be into it quite a bit, then caught myself determining whether I'd hunt or not based on some wheel. I told myself "Heck with that" and didn't use the wheel anymore and hunted when I wanted to!

I can't recall how this works, but ever notice how sometimes the moon seems much larger? The earth goes around the sun in an oblong pattern, not a perfect circle orbit. I think the moon is the same and sometimes the moon gets closer to the earth on a certain orbit than another. When the moon is full and is closest to the earth, this is when it is suppose to have the greatest effect on deer movement... and by that I mean feeding.

If you can get this full moon phase around sunrise or sunset, when the deer move the most anyway, this is suppose to add even more to your success possibility.

Hope that sheds some moon light on the subject. LOL! (If I'm wrong, you get what you pay for!)

iSnipe

[HuntingKS]

I've heard that a full moon will have the deer moving more at night. They won't come out during the day as much. I don't know if this is true or not, and certainly don't have enough evidence to test it myself, but I've heard it mentioned by several other hunters.

[Horacio]

Deer moving under a full moon makes common sense...they can see what they are doing, heh.

I got a subscription to a hunting mag for Christmas and in the back it has a calendar similar to that 'wheel' thing, for Nov/Dec 09. Anecdotally, Sat night was supposed to be 'poor' and we didn't see a single animal all evening. /shrug.

If I were really enterprising, I'd match up the time stamps on trail cam pics with the chart but that sounds too much like work....