Some GOOD Advice!
 

Another Hunting Season is upon us, and I have learned something that I know Many of you dont do, are too tired to do or just dont believe it. HUNT from 11 am untill 1 pm. You will see More Deer during this time then anyother.
The DEER know you better than you think, they know when you go to your Stand in the Morning, when you leave around 10 Oclock to go home for Lunch and then go back for your Evining Hunt around 2-3 in the Afternoon. While your gone there MOVING and your NOT THERE!
Then when you go back in the afternoon you sit there and if your lucky you see them just comming out at Dusk to feed or see nothing, you continue your pattern and so do the Deer, they know you! You get Frustrated, they get Fat and Old.
So do youself a favor and try Hunting from 11 to 1 and see for yourself what you have been missing, and Yes that's also when them Big Old Boys are out. I Guarantee it and You Will Thank Me:party0005:
Best of Luck to you and Try it, it really does work!
(BP)

You've got that right Breechplug. One of my favorite tatics is to hunt one of my box stands on a food plot in the morning. Then about ten o'clock I creep to a ladder in the woods about 100 yards away from the field. I stay there until about three, then move back to the box stand for the late evening.

That makes for a long day though and if I know one of the guys in the club shot a deer in the morning I get itching to head back to camp and join in the fun. So I only manage the all day thing a half dozen times during the season.

No doubt 11 to 1 can be a good time to be in the woods. But I think it is more a function of hunters than natural deer movement. Alot of hunters head out of the woods between 1o and noon. This movement of hunters has a lot to do with jumping up the deer and moving them around. Normally the heavier an area is hunted the better it is to stay all day.

I always liked to be sitting still when other hunters are moving around in the woods. Even if they are just going in or coming out from their stand. Tom.

I was gonna say basically the same thing. So, BP, do you think the 11-1 thing applies to land with lower hunting pressure?

The deer will pattern you and the trail that you use in 2 trips to your stand. Change your routine, enter your stand area from different directions using the wind, and change the timeframe that you hunt.

When my Dad was showing me the ropes of deer hunting, he would hand me a sack lunch (which never made it later then 10:00 am) and tell me to sit tight for the afternoon. (thank goodness I always packed a lunch too.) He claimed that when other hunters walked out to eat lunch at their cars or camp, the deer moved. He swears he saw deer follow one hunter out of the woods to an edge of the field. Like it was trailing him. So we always sat out the late morning and afternoons as well.

It made for some long cold days, sitting in a tree or in my early years when tree stands were not allowed, on stumps in the snow with a little brush piled around you to cut the wind. But that afternoon hunting used to pay off. I shot a lot of small bucks around 12:30 in the afternoon.

How many of you have walked back to camp or your car, sat down for a lunch of sandwiches and hot coffee, and then saw deer suddenly cross the field? Something or someone was moving them deer. That is why you never leave for lunch. Let lunch come to you.

YES it does.....I Hunt Strictly Privated Land, LOW Hunter Pressure and many times it's just me say Hunting a 150 Acre Pice of Land. So it's not the other Hunters getting up and leaving that are moving the Deer as there are none, just me. And Yes Im not alarming the Deer to let them know my presence, I hunt the Wind and only the stands that allow me to not let the Deer wind me.
Some of the Farms I hunt are just Hunted by me and sometimes I only Hunt them a couple of times a week. So the Deer are not Pressured. I've been doing the 11-1 thing for about 15 years, and on a bunch of different Propertys. All I know is I've seen way more Deer during this time than anyother and also More Big Bucks then, especially during the RUT, them Big Boys are Mid Day Movers, there looking for them Hot Bedded Does.
And twords the end of the Season when the Deer are so Spooky that there afraid of there own Shadows and you think there all dead, there moving from this time. I know I get them every year while some of My Buddies are Home Napping for the evening Hunt or just plain givin up as there just not seeing any Deer.
Just try is for a few Days and see, you'll be Amazed at what walks by you!
Also My Favorite time to be in Stand during this time is the RUT, and in Late Season when the Temps are COLD and the Deer are going into there Survival Mood, they have to Eat.
(BP)

Good deal. I'm definitely going to take your advice and put it to the test this season. Last season, I only hunted public land and only during general firearms season since I didn't have an ML yet (our seasons are, in order, bow, ML (2 weeks) and general firearms). Unless I could only hunt in the morning or evening, I hunted all day. I only saw deer in the morning or late afternoon except once, while the rut was still in. But this season I have the opportunity to hunt private land, so I'll be able to test this out without much influence from other hunters.

Find the deer, and it doesn't matter when you're out there.

A few years ago I sat all day in a climbing stand overlooking a 20 acre clearcut that had brushy growth about two feet high. The land sloped down from my position for about 100 yards to a small bottom, then upwards past the bottom for another 100 yards or so.

I didn't see anything until about an hour after first light when a doe stood up just on the far side of the bottom. When she stood up she stretched her back legs, pooped, then began browsing for about a half hour. Didn't cover more that a fifty-foot circle. Then she laid down again out of sight. An hour or so later she stood up and did the same thing. That continued throughout the day - a hour laying down out of sight and a half hour of browsing, never moving very far. She was bedded down when I left the stand at dark and was darn lucky I was hunting bucks only that day.