DaveH

Where I hunt in MD, it' s a rare day to not at least see a deer--even at a distance, but I didn' t see any on Saturday evening when I was there. I also haven' t seen any deer, or any sign behind my house since the hurricane went through--normally a nightly occurance. From talking with others in the hurricane' s path, not many deer are being sighted. I kinda figured they would be out catching up on their feeding, but now I' m starting to think they blew away! []

Anyone else experiencing this?

slicendice

I hunted Saturday morning and evening. Sightings were down from the opener (19 on Monday morning, 4 on Sat. morning), but I think there are many factors on this. #1- the wind from the hurricane blew down many trees and knocked off alot of accorns. I believe the deer don' t have to travel much to feed do to this. There is alot of accorns on the ground and the blowdowns give the deer fresh leaves to eat off the treetops. #2- In my neck of the woods on Sat., there was no power, which meant everyone on the mountain had a generator going. This was noisy as heck and I' m sure put the deer on edge. The high humidity probably had something to do with the decreased movement as well. I saw 7 in the last hour before dark on Saturday, so it appeared they were moving more at night,
probably because it was cooler. Also, because the accorns are falling, the deer have changed patterns a bit. I' ve noticed that the deer have abandoned the corn,
and other crops to clean up the accorns while they' re available. I' m probably going to go out one day this week before the weekend, so hopefully I can figure out a pattern.

6ptsika

Sat evening I had 13 does and fawns come by me on the way to a cut corn field, most went by very early, between 5 and 6. They were almost running to the corn. My brother also saw does heading to the corn. Who knows DaveH, who knows?

RonM

I havent seen as many since the storm, but I fou nd out today I messed a guy up last night riding a field edge, didnt know he was there. Dave H I hope your power got back on. Did you ever find out what that crop was you were questioning..

Natty Bumpo

Slicendice is right. There are so many downed tree branches with fresh leaves on them the deer are feeding on the leaves. But only for a few days until the leaves wilt. Some deer are coming into the beanfields in my area each evening but not as many.

Also I agree that if you have white oak acorns in your area or apples they are mostly on the ground now after all that wind we had.

Lefty26

My sightings have actually went up since the storm. I had only seen 2 deer before the storm, since the storm I have seen 20 in 2 nights of hunting and arrowed a buck and a doe. The only problem is in the mountains where I hunt the storm knocked over alot of trees, so getting deer out of the woods has been quite a chore.

slicendice

Congrats on the 2 kills, Lefty. Those deer were eating on blowdowns and accorns, weren' t they?

I' m going back out on Friday. I' ll try hunting an oak ridge in the morning and a creek crossing in a bottom in the evening. We' ll see how it all works out.

Good luck to all!!

Slice

Rickmur

There was too much activity with people running chain saws and dumping the branches and stuff at the edge of the woods to even think about hunting the afternoon (Fri) so I hunted Sat morning and saw nothing while in the stand. Got down about 9 and spoted thee deer and took pictures of them and then set my trail cam up and called it a weekend. When I viewed the pics on the computer that night I saw one was a samll spike with only one antler about 12 inches. Sightings were down and as stated accorns and trees down everywhere.

Lefty26

Slicendice, those deer I have seen were working there way through the blowdowns heading to some accorn trees. Last night saw 7 no horns though. I see your from Waynesboro, I grew up there and went to school in Waynesboro. I live in Hagerstown now. Do you hunt around Waynesboro? Where do you hunt in MD?

slicendice

Lefty, I grew up around Boonsboro, MD and moved to Waynesboro, Pa about 5 years ago. To be honest, even though I' m a PA resident now, I have yet to buy a PA hunting license and yet to hunt in PA. Since most of my family and friends still live in MD, I have access to alot more land in MD to hunt, so even though it is expensive to buy the non-resident MD hunting license, I continue to hunt there.
With the amount of land I have to hunt there and the increased bag limits in MD, it just makes sense to me to hunt MD.

I do alot of my hunting about 20 minutes south of Boonsboro near Dargan. It' s mountain land down there, with good deer numbers. It' s a 45 minute trip for me, but well worth it!!

Keep in touch and maybe sometime we can hook up and do some hunting together. Most of my hunting tracks aren' t big, but they have plenty of deer/turkeys on them.

Good luck with the hunting!

Slice