The deer are finally coming back to the area around our camp. We used to hunt bear and deer up there but the deer hunting got so bad that we didn't even bother. 5 or 6 guys hunting bear the entire season and we would be lucky to see a handful of deer. We actually saw more bear than deer!

That's when you know it's bad!
-Jake

The northcentral part of the state got bad because decades of too many deer demolished the habitat.Without good habitat,fawn recruitment drops off the chart and we're stuck with low deer densities.This area is so vast and rugged that there's no way hunters can impact the deer herd,especially today.I see vehicles parked in the easiest to access spots but they're areas I wouldn't even consider hunting.We saw 2 hunters actually in the woods all season long and that's been the norm for the past 10-15 years.There's years I hunt some pretty remote areas in Elk state forest and never cut another boot print,even though there's been snow cover since bear season.

That's not really a big surprise.I'm not familiar with all of Clinton county but the areas that I've seen in the sproul state forest have much better bear habitat than deer habitat.They have over 1k doe tagged in the Sproul SF for a doe mortality study.Less than 8% are being killed by hunters.That's nowhere near enough to impact the deer herd.The Sproul state forest is some vast rugged country.I can tell you for a fact that I wouldn't be willing to haul a doe out of some of those areas.

I know what you mean about the ruggedness of the Sproul. From our cabin in any direction but west is uphill. About 30 years ago they did a selective clear cut on the top of two of the mtns. from our camp. For the next 3-5 years the deer hunting was excellent. You would kick them out of the brush piles like rabbits. We got a few legitimate 200+ lb buck during that hayday. But now, the under story and laurel is so thick you cant' even get through it let alone hunt there. When you even try it you hear the deer blowing at you but you can't see more than 10-15 yards.

Bronko, I'm running a race in April called the Hyner Challenge. I remember from previous talks with you that your camp is on Hyner run road or something similar to that. Is your camp close to where this race is??
-Jake

Those areas are very tough to hunt by yourself.There's no way not to bump them and they can lay in there all day and never have to leave,especially if there's a decent mast crop.You have to move them out which is hard to do if you only have a couple guys.If they're big enough,you'll never even get them out because they just keep circling back around.I'll put one or two guys downwind just inside the clearcut where they can see for a little bit and I go in the upwind side.The vast majority of times you never even know there was deer in there until you hear a shot.