Welcome to gun season. Invasion of morons.

It always happens when the gun hunters show up every year. Two days before the opener, they are running around the woods on thier 4x4s or quads, stinking up the woods, smoking cigarettes, talking loundly, setting up thier pop-ups, blinds 100 yards on each side of your obvious setup, and hacking/chain sawing on tree limbs. Hell, they were even shooting the night before opener during prime time in the middle of the square mile I hunt, probably poaching. So on opening day of gun season, a mass exodus of people enter the woods, stink it up, make to much noise and shoot to many times because they are lousy shots. By day 2, your seeing very few deer because most have encountered human scent, visuals or have been shot at to many times by lousy hunters, and they go find somewhere to hide and come out at night until the woods stink no more or someone just about steps on them.

I saw something very similar this year, and very noticable on opening morning, when i saw a doe and yearling. What happened to the 25 deer i was used to seeing? Weeks one and two of bow season, I was seeing 20-25 deer a night including multiple bucks. On the second Sunday, I saw 10 different bucks in 1 hunt including 2 bruisers. As the season went on, and the deer got pressured just a little bit from the bow hunters, I started seeing fewer and fewer deer. I was still seeing a resonable amount of deer on the weekend before gun season started, and even passed up on 3 bucks including one medium sized 8 pointer last weekend. Here it is on day 3 of gun season, and I saw 1 doe all day in a spot where i usually see bucks and does all the times at all times of day.

I can't wait for muzzleloading, when most of the bad hunters won't be in the woods.