Originally Posted by
Mojotex
Still have 10 days left here in Alabama. Plan to be in woods Wed. a.m. and hunt through the end of the season.
The area I hunt has two distinct periods of doe estrus .... about Nov. 25 - Dec. 15 and again about Jan. 10 - Jan. 31. The second estrus cycle has fired up. Friend killed a 144 1/4 incher (green score obviously) Friday morning .... chasing does along with another really good buck. Another busdd who is hunting from a stand I set up a few weeks back texted me about a hour ago. Had a good 8 pt. ease though running a couple of does. Not quiet a shooter.
As far as overall this season we as a group are way down. especially on does. Our property (about 3150 acres) is about 2/3 planted pines. The age of the pines now is such that on 1500 +/- acres the under brush is pretty much limited to the edges. This has resulted in numbers of deer using the property for feeding on browse thse pst 2-3 years to be down dramatically. Added to a long stretch of abnormally warm weather up through Christmas and a heck of an acorn crop, the deer have not wanted to nor have had to move much in order to stay fat and happy.
I have 4 does in the freezer and have passed on 6 to 8 pretty good bucks. I have not seen anything in the 125" and up class. Thse are rare on this place anyway simply because most of our folks don't pass any "decent" 7-8-9-10 pointer. And folks hunting adjacent properties don't either.
Cold now and supposed to have another cold snap next week. So maybe I'll get lucky, cause Lord knows I am not good !!!
The problems we face in the north is early cold temps. Our browse starts dying mid to late OCT. What happens then is the deer quickly adapt and change what was a summer feed pattern to winter in what seems like overnight. The deer will move to privately owned land that has crop fields and QDM properties. Another problem is the deer will now bed in the pines due to temp and wind. If you're sitting on a 20 acre spot with a few stands set for wind working a summer browse pattern, well you're in trouble come DEC and JAN. Its not luck or being "good", but hard work. You have to "scout" those winter months to find out what the deer are doing in winter. Who the heck wants to do that when the temps are hittings highs of 20 - 25 degrees. What happens is a guy will keep pounding that summer browse stand in winter hoping for a lucky doe. They're their but not using the same pattern. Collect 40-50 gallons of acorns, freeze them and break em out late DEC-JAN. You'll will have traffic. Good Luck! If you need some deer population control, gimme a call, I'll hunt with ya.