Actually deer rarely feed all night under and condition.
Here are a coupe of exceprts from my book The Complete Whitetail Addict's Manual tha might help you understand daily deer activity better.
All deer species belong to the Suborder Ruminatia, which means they are ruminants, they eat their food and store it in one of their stomachs, and later regurgitate it and chew their cud to continue digestion. The result of this is that they feed heavily for a couple of hours in both the morning and evening, then generally move to either nighttime or daytime bedding areas and lie down to chew their cud.
Because deer are a prey species they have evolved to avoid predators, and they have adapted their activity to avoid predatory animals during daylight hours, when the predators can easily see deer. As a result of this deer have become what scientists refer to as crepuscular animals, meaning that they are most active at sunset and sunrise, when the predators can't see as well.
Generally speaking, deer leave their secure daytime core areas about an hour before sunset and move toward feeding areas. They often visit one or more feeding areas within the first few hours after sunset. After they are done feeding they often bed down in or near the feeding areas to chew their cud. This usually occurs within two to three hours of sunset. While they are in the nighttime feeding areas the may get up and move about to urinate and defecate at about midnight, and then feed for a few minutes before laying down again, often in the same general area.
In the morning they generally get up about an hour or two before sunrise to feed again before they move back toward their daytime core areas, where they spend the day. (These morning movment deer are the ones we often see when we hunt mornings.) They may get up periodically during the day to stretch, urinate, defecate and feed before lying down again.
I hope that helps. Think about where the deer normally are during the hours you hunt, and hunt as ner to those areas as you can. Mornings and evenings hunt laong trails leading to and from feedign areas. From about 10 - 4 you might want to hunt near deer daytime core areas, provided the deer aren't spooked too much from hunting pressure.
I can sit in my house and watch wild deer mornings and evenings, and beddng during the day. I can tell you the exact time of 100's of deer sightings back to 1994. I write it all down, analyze it graph it and find out what time of day they move during different temps, windspeeds, clouds, precipitation, barometric pressure and moon cycles.
Here is a video of our wild deer, in our backyard. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9aER...eature=channel
Last edited by trmichels; 07-10-2010 at 05:55 PM.