camo12

I have a question for yall that hunt river bottoms. When the river floods driving the deer sometimes miles away, Do the deer come back. I mean, do they remember where they have been for months. Are they in the same bedding areas and feeding in the same spots. Just wondering, the Mississippi raised 32 feet last few weeks, now it is down again.

RiverBottomBowHunter

When the river gets out as in your case the deer do remember that area. Flooding is a fact of life for them. Will they be back? Eventually. Depends on the available food. Being it is winter, the food was probably less abundant before the flood, What was left, was probably washed away. If so the deer will stay where the food is until the food comes back into there home area.

JMO
good luck!

rangerstud620

camo12, I was in the same situation about 7 years ago. Most of the river bottom I was hunting flooded out, pushing nearly all of the deer out. We are now in a 5 year drought so the river bottom has been dried up for 5-6 years. The deer numbers are currently very high (partly due to much more cover such as grass and weeds from the flood), though it took a couple years after the flood to completely rebound. I would guess the deer numbers will get back to normal within a year or two for your area also.

The flood was actually a blessing in disguise for us. When the deer were pushed out of the river bottom for a couple years, it allowed breeding with deer from outside the river bottom (those with better genetics). So we now have much nicer bucks running around in the river bottom. Since this is public land, our local Game and Fish dept. has been planting corn and clover since the water went down so that has helped bring the deer back.

johnch

Here where I live the river bottoms flood every year , 2 or 3 times some years. Mostly it's in the spring ,sometimes in the fall or winter.
If it floods in the late fall or winter the deer use it a lot less for a few weeks at least. But they come back.