ORIGINAL: virginiashadow
Good post Magic. I have been hunting a particular spot this year and have finally started to put some of the pieces together. I am a slow learner I believe. Well I started to think while on stand this morning and freezing....all of the deer I have seen have been walking to the south and west in the morning. Hmmmm. So I got down today at 9am and told myself I was going to find out where those deer were moving even if I bumped them. I would just chalk it up as knowledge gained. So I get down at 9 and start still hunting. At 9:15 I see two doe walking southwest but they get directly downwind of me and trot off after I was about 60 yards away.
I look out into the wide open and see "nothing" that would lead me to believe deer would bed in that area. I am talking a good 400-500 yard stretch down by a creek that was completely void of any real cover. As I round one of the hills I was walking I look down and see a 40 yard x 20 yard tiny patch of mountain laurel. I said to myself, "no way". As I close the distance on that little patch of cover, a dandy of a buck jump out with a doe and they sprint off. They were bedding on the south side of some big hills with a cold north wind blowing over them. Point of the story, you are right...sometimes some little treasures exist in places you would never think.
Virginia, did you read Troy's (shed33) post on what he learned this year? Very interesting! Even in a large woods his buck seems to have found a little safe bedding area and has been using it for at least a few years.
While fox trapping a different area there was a ditch in a field that had some high grass and a few small trees and brush. severaltimes I jumped the same 6 point buck form the same spot along that ditch.