How are deer effected by the moon
 

I hear a lot of stuff about how the moon effects deer, so how does it? :confused0024:

Some people believe that deer feed more at night, during a full moon, and will bed down more during the day, hence less daytime movement during full moons. I personally think this logic is flawed. I think deer always feed mostly at night, regardless of the moon, but Im sure someone will post some scientific study done by the QDMA supporting it.

I always thought full moons shine up the woods more and it makes them more spooky for predators to see them.

i figured i would get different opinions and it's possible some of it is true, but i'm not going to stop hunting one day because of the moon the night before so i'm not going to pay much attention to it. Happy hunting. :barmy: :fighting0007:

There is an article about it here http://www.huntingnet.com/staticpage...il.aspx?id=144

I'd look at a lunar calender, they seem to help. I have noticed that deer seem to move more around mid-day with a full moon, and of course they seem to also be more nocturnal during a full moon. That being said, I still find it difficult to hunt during mid-day, even if it is a full moon, because it just seems odd I guess. I do try to stay out later and get to my stand earlier with a full moon though.

Year's ago a buddy of mine used the moon dial/wheel called the Deer Hunter's Moon Guide. He always talked about "over head" and "underfoot" as his base to know when and where to hunt.

After a while he really started to depend on it.

Also, don't forget we have a tendency to see what we want to see, regardless if it's there or not. LOL!

With that in mind... he was seeing deer at times he normally didn't hunt, like late mornings or early evenings. Well, I just laughed because I told him deer are out there 24 hours a day and if you're in the woods, you're bound to see them regardless of a "wheel" or not. LOL!

What more could I say? He believed in it, but I saw if differently. I suspect it had to do more with just being in the woods, period. If you're putting in the time, eventually you have to see deer beyond the traditional morning and evening hunts. He didn't see it. The "wheel" put him out there in the woods when otherwise, he wouldn't have been out there to begin with. LOL!

iSnipe

In 45+ years of hunting white tails, and making a 3 seasons long record in an attempt to associate moon phase to deer movement I have decided it is not worth one iota of my time considering. The 3 years' of data that my best buddy J.B. and I collected (some 350 +/- man days of hunting), the only moon phase correlation we saw was that if the sky was clear and the moon more or less full, the deer moved later in the a.m. and not much early in the afternoon. The number one "strong" movement maker was weather. Dropping temperature and front moving in from NW was the best time to hunt. This data was collected in SE Alabama near Union Springs during the late 1980's time frame.

After reading several research pepers on it, and doing 10 years of research on it myself, I can say this, it is a very complicted subject.

But, good news is, it is the thing you should worry about lest, because almost anythng else that goes on in a whitetails world, will completely override any affects the moon have on deer, because it has such little effect. Other than food, weather is the number one dictator of when and where deer will be each day. Here is my axiom, " If it is too hot, too cold, too windy, too wet or there is too much light, they probably wont' do what they would normally do." That just makes sense.

The rut affects daily deer movement, hunting pressure, predators, any human behavior in their area - so why would they worry about the moon?

If you still need to know I'll post a long article on the subject.

God bless,

T.R.

No need for that long article i agree with you 100%. Thanks

U R so welcome. It took me about 3 yeaers ot get it al right. But, as I said, it is so inconsequential it reallly does not matter.

The real keys to being on top of deer on a regular basis are bieng in the righ spot at the right time. It sounds easy, but if you do not understand what makes a deer tick, meanding really understanding their biology and behavior, you will not be as good at laocting deer at the right time, as you could be.

Then, once you understand their biology and behavior (understanding where they will be adn waht they will be doing - based on the meteorological condtions that day, along with how they react during the rut, with hunting pressure, and any other influences like predatory behavior and human related activity [hiking, farming etc.]) you will be fairly good at predicting when and where on most days.

While some older, addicted hunters have ben at it long enough to understand deer, many har core hunter, and certainly newbies, have not spend enough time in the woods, really observing deer and paying attention to when and where, that they really understand deer.

Unless you want to wait years, or spend numerous hours several days a week, just observing deer, it wlll take you a long time before you can understand deer.

A good book on the biology and behavior of deer can really help. If you e-mail me I will recommend some good ones.

God bless,

T.R.

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.

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 ..

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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