hawgdawg

I don't pay alot of attention to this. just gotta get out there. The moon may have something to do with a deers schedule but I look at it as if I am out there and something spooks a deer up off his schedule then I want to be there in case he wants to come my way. Like the Brinks truck going to Walmart at 2:30 and actually doesn't show up till 2:35.

heinz57

deer will feed most of the night on a clear full moon night ,bed down before sunrise and come out around noon again ..if shots are fired they will wait untill the sun sets and feed all night ..

trmichels

Actually deer will not generally feed all night no matter what. Because they are ruminants they feed for about 2 hours, then they often lie down and regurgiate their food to chew the cud. Same thing holds true for elk.

Research has clearly shown that during nights when there is a visible ful lmoon all night, they prefer to feed when there is the least amount of light, which is generally 1-2 hours before sunrise or after sunset. Popular thinking is they do this because they are a prey species, genetically bred to avoid a lot of light, because they can be seen by predators during bright moonlit nights. Makes sense to me ...

Consequently, research has shown that, at least in some areas, deer are more active than normal during daylight hours during the week of the full moon, possibly because they have been harrassed at night or just did not get the amount of time to feed that they need - so they feed a bit more than usual during daylight hours.

It is the data of 2 other reserchers plus my own studies, that caused me to use that knowledge tio predict peak monthry peak deer sighintings. But there are at least two other lunar cycles you can take into account. And you hve to understadn how they affect deer, during what days of the month, for how many days and how the cycles interact with each other.


As I said it is complicated, and not worth the average hunter's time.

God bless,

T.R.

trmichels

Lets talk about deer bedding. When deer bed down after feeing in the night, they often stay in or near feeding areas, I've seen them right in an alfalfa patch. But, they often bed in areas with brush or saplings, along fence lines etc, depending on the weather. Nice weather - open area beds, bad weather - beds in heavier cover or at least the downwind side of hills or woods, to get out of the wind. Around the middle of the night they might get up to feed a bit, defecate, urinate, stretch and possibly move to another bedding site. Then they lay down until early morning.

THEN - Once the sun comes up, they often filter their way back to their daytime core areas, which are in secure areas, often in the woods, sometimes feeding along the way. So - those are the deer we often see moving around on morning hunts.

Once they get back to their daytime core areas, they rest until about midday, when they may get up to stretch, grab a couple of bites, urinate, defecate, and within an hour, lay back down again until the evening when they get up to feed in more open areas.

I've watched the wild deer on our farm do this as they bedded near the edge of the grove around our house. I could sit in the downstaris bathroom window, and watch them all night long. Sit on the throne, reading a paper and doing deer resaerch. LOL

I could sit in the living room or my office and watch the deer come out to feed in the evening, and watch some of them bed during the day along the wooded creek behind the house. One deer used the same tree to bed under on several different days, and about 11:30 or so she would get up, walkaaroudn stretch, and bed again within about 30 yards of where she started. Then in the late afternoon she'd go otu into the field to feed with the other deer.

I can sit right wehre I am now, and watch a small meadow in the woods behind our house, and tell you exaclty what time of day the does and fawns arrive in the meadow in the afternoon, and when they come back through it in the very early morning. I hve videos of the deer and coyotes on You Tube. Look for Naturpro.

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God bless,

T.R.

trmichels

Actually deer rarely feed all night under and condition.

Here are a coupe of exceprts from my book The Complete Whitetail Addict's Manual tha might help you understand daily deer activity better.

Quote:

All deer species belong to the Suborder Ruminatia, which means they are ruminants, they eat their food and store it in one of their stomachs, and later regurgitate it and chew their cud to continue digestion. The result of this is that they feed heavily for a couple of hours in both the morning and evening, then generally move to either nighttime or daytime bedding areas and lie down to chew their cud.


Because deer are a prey species they have evolved to avoid predators, and they have adapted their activity to avoid predatory animals during daylight hours, when the predators can easily see deer. As a result of this deer have become what scientists refer to as crepuscular animals, meaning that they are most active at sunset and sunrise, when the predators can't see as well.

Generally speaking, deer leave their secure daytime core areas about an hour before sunset and move toward feeding areas. They often visit one or more feeding areas within the first few hours after sunset. After they are done feeding they often bed down in or near the feeding areas to chew their cud. This usually occurs within two to three hours of sunset. While they are in the nighttime feeding areas the may get up and move about to urinate and defecate at about midnight, and then feed for a few minutes before laying down again, often in the same general area.

In the morning they generally get up about an hour or two before sunrise to feed again before they move back toward their daytime core areas, where they spend the day. (These morning movment deer are the ones we often see when we hunt mornings.) They may get up periodically during the day to stretch, urinate, defecate and feed before lying down again.

I hope that helps. Think about where the deer normally are during the hours you hunt, and hunt as ner to those areas as you can. Mornings and evenings hunt laong trails leading to and from feedign areas. From about 10 - 4 you might want to hunt near deer daytime core areas, provided the deer aren't spooked too much from hunting pressure.

I can sit in my house and watch wild deer mornings and evenings, and beddng during the day. I can tell you the exact time of 100's of deer sightings back to 1994. I write it all down, analyze it graph it and find out what time of day they move during different temps, windspeeds, clouds, precipitation, barometric pressure and moon cycles.

Here is a video of our wild deer, in our backyard. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9aER...eature=channel

Gunplummer

That moonphase stuff is nonsense. I worked nights for over 20 years, and drove home through Bucks County Pa. between 2:00 and 4:00 in the morning. On moonlit nights I almost never saw deer. On the darkest rainy nights I saw every thing out moving. Deer, fox, coon, possum, anything nocturnal. As far as mid day, I shot a lot of buck between 11:00 A.M. and 1:00 P.M. and it had nothing to do with moonphase. They just move at those times. The doe are on a different time table where I hunt. Like everybody else said, there are so many variables involved in certain areas that the moon phase is irrelevant. I would not put too much stock in research results, as most of it was done with semi-tame deer. The slightest bit of pressure on a deer that has a few years experience will change research results in a hurry. Now researchers say deer can see certain colors. What took them so long to figure that out?

trmichels

You are entitled to your opinion but, until you have hundreds of sighitng and times in relation to the lunar phase cycle, the sideral lunar cycle and the perirgee/apogee lunar cycle, I'm certainly not going to take your word for it. I can name at least 4 scientific studies that show peak sightings of deer during one or more of those cycles. So, some of it is not nonsense - meaning - as to peak monthly sightings.

It is nonsense when it come to the overheaed/underfoot position of the moon, proven in some of those same studies.

It is nonsense as to peak breeding dates, and I am the first person to prove it, and then I asked Dr. Karl Miller at the U GA to follow up on my research and he did, and came to the same conclusion, peak breeding of deer is not affected by moon phase.

As I keep saying, it is not of enough consequence for the average hunter to be worried about.

God bless,

T.R.

H.L.H

I'm pretty much convinced that the moon phase is something that doesn't affect deer hunting very much, it might a little but it looks like something i'm not going to pay much attention to. Thanks guys

Tail Feathers

My personal experience backs up the lore that deer move more when the moon is visible in the sky. Full moons at night translate to not many deer seen in they daytime. Catch a day when it's cold, the moon rises at sunrise and you've got the perfect day in my book.

D Rock

As a reader of Deer and Deer Hunting it is impossible to get away from Charlie Alsheimer's view of how the moon affects the rut. He says that the start of the rut is dependent upon when the second full moon after the autumnal equinox happens. Here is the link to his own words on the subject. http://charliealsheimer.com/ca/moon.html