patterning deer
 

what are the basics for patterning deer. what should i look for when setting up a hunting location.

Eat, sleep, reproduce. Depending on the time of year, they want to do all three. Survival (escape route) too. One great pattern is to find a designated bedding area, if it exists on your property, then hunt between it and the current food source. Bucks looking for receptive does will bounce between the various areas to scent check..

Lots of articles and books with various opinions an information. Read as many as possible especially the ones that suit your habitat and hunting style. Many knowledgeable authors including.....
Dr. Leonard Lee Rue III
Charles J. Alsheimer
Craig Boddington
Gordon Whittington and
Bobby Worthington
I have a book written by B Worthington and like it.

Radio-collared deer studies by the Quality Deer Management Association and others provide factual information regarding travel patterns.

No better way to learn than by doing.

One thing that I've found is that, during the course of the year, the current food source changes. Farm crops, acorns, wild fruits, browse, all have their seasons. As various local favorites become available, the deer patterns change. Learn the food availability sequence, it's a big indicator of deer patterns.

It is not rocket science! All you have to do is learn the land, where do the deer bed, where do they feed, learn their travel trails and look for pinch points and places where several trails come together and put a stand in that place, do not hunt in bedding areas and never stop learning what the deer are doing.

personally I think many deer are very hard to pattern, pending where your at.
some large tracts of forested land, deer, will travel almost daily to stay on top of new food, making them very hard to pattern if at all possible
BUT like stated above, deer are not magical creatures, they have to eat every day or almost

so, the best plan of attack IMO< is finding and learning there food options, and come hunting season, plan to be in the prime places, or just before them
after that is learning the lay out of the land, and knowing what and WHY deer like to be in different types of terrain,
' thicker area's tend to work as bedding area's
the way winds tend to blow, and so on

NOT all deer move the same way every day again making some extremely hard to pattern
BUT they all do seem to end up in again, prime foods at one time or another!

The best thing any hunter (new or experienced) can do for themselves is spend time in the woods. Watch deer. Learn what they're doing. Learn where they're going. Why they're going there.

You can do this all year long. You'll start to see things and notice things as you gain more experience.

Woodsmanship is a skill that has to be practiced and honed. One of the things I think allot of new hunters today miss out on. Many people only hunt deer now. And allot of them only hunt deer out of their one tree stand or blind set up over their one food plot. And they kill deer this way-even big ones- every year and there's no problem with that.

But allot of them wouldn't know what to do if you sat them down in the middle of the "big woods" somewhere. Just the nature of hunting has changed. But it's skills you can work on and hone all year long. You'll learn as you go. You can read and get tips like people are giving you here. But you really can't shortcut the process.
​​​​​​
Time in the woods.

-Jake

Pretty good advice here. We hunt the bedding areas but its off the sides of them on the access trails to them. Finding them heading in or coming out. Don't go into them or let your scent blow into them.

New spots are new and require butt in a stand or portable turkey chair to see what they do. You go look at it and you think you know and the deer sneak up behind you and you find your stand is facing the wrong way. "butt in the seat" teaches way more than 10 game cameras can.

well its a learned skill, but modern technology makes it much easier,
there are no free lunches, but if your willing to invest the time ,
and do the research and use the tools that are available,
you can sure greatly increase your odds of consistently being successful!
deer need to feel fairly safe and have access to food, they don,t want to be constantly disturbed, but they learn very quickly that most hunters (preditors)
in the case of humans tend to be rather noisy and tend to travel on trails, they learn to move into cover and areas humans avoid like wet areas,
areas bordered by deep creeks and thick brush or bramble thickets, etc.
If you want to get to be effective at hunting youll need too spent a good deal of time out in the field observing,
each area has its quirks and less productive areas, and you need to identify feed, bedding and travel corridors
use an ACCURATE GPS it is you best friend, get a book on what plants local deer prefer,
call and talk to game wardens and the local biologists,
buy a good topo map of the area, buy a decent cheap digital camera and if available fairly recently taken aerial photos of the area
go home and locate a lets say 3 mile square area and divide the area into a grid of lets say 1/8th mile sections,
and label each grid square, lets say with letters a-z vertically and 1-27 horizontally
now get a note book and your GPS and any time you see anything of interest,
use the note book n and make notes like,
location grid g7 tree stand saw several does pass on nov 12 at 7am
location grid h8 several white oaks heavily browsed of acorns nov 12 at 9 am
lets say deer, a tree stand, a scrape, road access a heavily used game trail, use the note book,
use that grid and GPS to pinpoint both its location and where it is on the grid and the time of day and date!
over a few months or ideally, years you'll build a very accurate map detailing where deer were seen,
where and when they travel,and what they feed on,you'll learn the best stand locations, bedding areas and game trails, and escape routes

My father just sets up a trail camera on forested land that he owns to figure out when the deer passes through.

Cameras may be nice to see what your deer look like, how big the buck are or a specific deer but you don't need a camera to find what areas the deer are using, they will tell you by the sign they leave behind, all you have to do is scout the land and find the sign. Heavily used trails jump out at you.