frontier gander

of course those heavily timbered areas hide bucks. You think a deer that are high pressured during rifle season are dumb enough to step into the open? Face it, us humans dont want to walk through all that thick stuff, we stick to the easier open areas while the bigger animals are deep in cover of that thick stuff. I'd hunt that area hard or atleast search for sign. Im not sure if this is the same for whitetail, but mule deer will strip any smaller aspen of its leaves. Ive heard of hunters cutting off aspen branchs with leaves and laying them out and hunt over that.