First year ever hunting, will he come back??
 

My dad, myself and brother are really love the outdoors. Fishing, canoeing and camping out on river banks etc, this year we decided to learn/start hunting game.

We started a small corn eating area on a small 5 acre tract of land in the country surrounded by more acreage of woods about 3 months ago. Put 2 cams up after about a week a few doe starting coming through and we were going crazy. After about another month our first spike came through, it has since hung around for the past couple of weeks every few days just before daylight.

Then yesterday, this guy walks through, I was pretty sure our neighbors were going to call the cops when they heard me let out a yell that we finally had a shooter on our land.

That "scrape" looking area under him is actually an old rotted out stump hole, its about 2 foot in diameter to use as a reference of how big he is.



Thing is, its the first time he has came through, and it took nearly 2 months for the spike to come through.

Will he come back?

Only other thing is, the area our land is in, is surrounded by land that lots of other hunters hunt also. Ive seen some of their "trophies" they shoot anything larger than a button buck.

There is holes in your post.

The first thing is that in order to be able to understand what you are talking about - we would have to know the state and the area that you are talking about.

The second problem is - 5 acres is not enough land for 3 people to hunt on. Even if one person went on each corner and you left one corner open - the cross fire would be very dangerous.

The next problem is that because you do not have enough acreage to control what comes and goes, the deer you are seeing today might be a mile from your location tomorrow. Deer roams around like horny teenagers. Especially during the rut.

So to give you my honest opinion, my opinion is - that the piece of land that you planted corn on - always had some deer activity, and might even be a good place to hunt one time - due to the fact that unless one of your neighbors hunted there previously, it might be a place where no one has hunted before. Probably not - but I am trying to look on the bright side of things.

Your problem is going to be that the deer is either going to go there for a bite to eat at night and will not return during the daytime, or that if you do see deer traveling across your land during hunting season that they might be running to get through it as fast as possible.

Again, I don't know who you are or where you live or where your piece of ground is located.

Your best bet is to find a large piece of land that allows public hunting and use it for hunting. Plus your best bet - for learning how to hunt, will be to find a mentor, someone that can teach you how to be a good / successful hunter.

Hunting is not as easy as it looks.
Its not just buying the right clothes and a rifle or a bow and sitting in the woods and shooting something. It takes years to learn how to be a hunter. Most kids never makes it past their 5th year because it is too boring for them and after a couple of years of not getting anything or seeing anything - they try a different sport and abandon hunting.

Well we are only going one at a time down there, either for a 4-5 hour morning hunt then an evening hunt maybe once a week, all alternating. We have one ladder stand at the moment so the setup is actually only there to get our feet wet. Ive seen one doe while hunting this piece of land and used the opportunity to see how much I could move, how much noise I could make etc.

The fact that we have only seen does and 1 spike then this guy walked up just kinda put a little twist in our original plans. If he were to be able to be taken, it would be a nice little victory for one of us.

Im the type person if I am going to do something, I do it all the way. Ive read the forums, Ive studied and watched and learned from others. Ive watched wildlife on many occasions from a first hand view. Just didnt know this early in the year(pre-rut for my area) if he would start to frequent the area like the spike has started to do since we have a decent flow of 6-8 doe coming through on a regular basis.

I know its a picture, but any rough estimate of his size giving the 2 foot diameter hole he is over?

and its in north west south carolina.

Unlocked, don't listen to Mr. A$$ Hole (as I like to call him) he does nothing but shoot people and their ideas down. As for the buck, he might come back, he may not. The only way to find out is to keep checking the camera and start scouting. I don't know if you have already, but walk your property. Look for trails, their natural feeding grounds, scrapes, rubs, droppings, things like that. But don't over do it. Pick a day and just do that day, don't consistantly go in and interupt them. They don't like that haha. And with a mature buck like that make sure to use some scent control. He's gotten that big by being a smart deer, as you said your neighbors will shoot just about anything haha. But yeah, start figuring out where the deer are and where they like to be...he's been there once, my bet is he'll be back. Good luck!

Sounds good, the kind of info I was looking for! Im scared enough of pushing them out just by checking my cams once a week, didnt want to go stomping through their bedding areas and really push them out of the area. Will deff do some scouting now and try to track their movements better. Thanks a ton hunter :)

First, don't listen to Mr. Deerhunter. For the life of me, I'm not sure how the guy has every managed to kill a deer if he follows his own advice.

It's early October. The bucks have not started traveling yet. You can bet that he is staying close by. 3 more weeks and that theory goes out the door. I've killed deer on 2 acres of land. Acres don't mean jack squat. There is a guy down home that has killed 6 P&Y's out of a 3-4 acre block of woods that sits in the middle of a 180 acre agriculture field. Hunt it smart and keep checking your cams.

Your batteries should last 3 or so weeks. I would not go into the area unless there is a need to go back out there. Bigger bucks will go into a nocturnal mode with little pressure and won't be out in the daylight unless the rut is on.

I think pressure is our number one problem. I went to my dads computer and looked through all the dates he has copied pictures over. He's been going down there every 2-3 days. When we first put the plots and cams up, we had doe coming at 10 am and 5 pm, very much in the daylight. Now they come at 8 pm and 4-5 am which is an hour after dark and an hour-2 before daylight.

We had just assumed it was since it a new moon they moved more at night, but a couple weeks after the new moon now and they are still on the same schedule.

Ill try to talk him into staying out of there for a week or so.

As far as batteries, i counted the pictures he has on the pc from when we put the 2 truth cams we have up. They are at 60% battery life on the first set and have taken on average 160 pics a week each, to bad they are mostly raccoons :( The cams have been up since august 25th