ORIGINAL: shed33

Its a little different ball game in mountain/foresthabitat. No crops or reminants of crops to speak of. The predominate and preferred feed is Red Stemmed Ceanothus. It grows wild and it grows everywhere. It stands about 6-10 feet tall and thrives as "the" major underbrush in Doug fir, Hemlock, Ponderosa Pine and Cedar stands here in N. Idaho. There is no centralized food source, instead it is everywhere and thick, serving both as feed and bedding cover.

Old bucks here do not need to move more than100 ft in a day to browse..bed and browse in the same spot. Sure they will move a bit more if they choose too or have a stimuli to force them too, ie predators, hunters or snow levels exceeding 18 inches or more. Water is everywhere this time of year.

So how do you hunt an old mature buck in late season here in the mountians. You have to know him and his core bedding areas.

you can play the late rut wild card too, hoping for a young doe to come into heat before the close of the season. Dec 23rd. I keep an eye on the local doe family groups in my area in Dec, looking for the fawns that come into estrus late, if I see a young doe being pursued by a buck then I hunt those does, but outside of that, I hunt bedding areas. The same bedding areas I find hvy concentrations of sheds in and or where I have found "a" bucks previous sheds.

One last thing I do... During my Dec 2 to Dec 9break in the seasons here... (no whitetail hunting for those days) I hike and scout the snow as much as I can to locate big buck tracks in and around big thickets of Ceanothus. Usually these areas make up 50-100 acres or more. Bucks core areas in the winter here seem to be about 150-300 acres. If I find a big track, I will backtrack, never track it, I dont want to bump him off his normal late season post rut routine. These tracks often read like a book and give great insight to his Dec millings and movements. Yup I chance bumping them but I can't kill them if I am not set up very close. Its a tricky time of the year. I've arrowed a couple really nice bucks past Dec 10th. One was checkingon a hot young doe, the other living and feeding in his bedding area.

Temps here are usually between 5 to 30 degrees in late season, the snow is usually about a foot deep ...give or take a few and its really crunchy... getting in and out of any spot without every critter ona mountain hearing youis a chore, windy days or fresh snowfallhelp this time of year.