Dog Hunting impact on deer movement
 

I'm part of a club that runs dogs after Thanksgiving through the end of the year. We have two parcels, both about 500 acres, so we run each parcel every other weekend.

My question is, with dogs being run on the property once every other Saturday, will I have any luck still hunting during the week? Anyone have any first hand experience with this?

All I can add is that 500 acres is not enough to run dogs on. Even every other week is too much pressure.

If you are a stand/still hunter only? I would suggest that you find another lease.

OR??? you make the dogs work for you. Get to your stand early and let the dogs and handlers move the deer for you.

Dog hunting deer can be tremendously exciting. The first few deer I killed, I killed in frontof some great dogs in the swamps of LA. Unfortunately, dogs cannot read a posted sign. And yes, they play hell with stand hunting when they are not running. However, the way you describe it, I disagree.

Deer run by dogs do not leave the country. They only run far enouogh to avoid the dogs. Then, given a day or so, they often return to the area they were jumped in.

The problem is, they tend to avoid the permanent stands and seek new travel patterns. This means you had better be one heck of scouter with a climbing stand and know how to read sign.

:deer:

You'll be perfectly fine to still hunt. My club runs 4000 acres total and we kill a crapload of deer still hunting as well as dog hunting.

They don't run dogs for deer here in Wisconsin, but whenever a coon hunter and his dogs come thru my buck bedding areas They get screwed up for as much as a month, especially with mature bucks. It seems the dog hunters always want to tell you there is no impact, but as a hunter I have seen the impact. I believe mature bucks will relocate to somewhere where dogs don't bother them.

I say it does make a difference. I joined a still hunt club last year that up until last year ran dogs. I barely saw a deer on the 560 acres. I joined the club across the street that never ran dogs and I've seen probably 60 deer this year.