deer questions...
 

I got some questions that some of ya' ll might know the answers to b/c they' re pretty basic, but nobody' s really taught me a lot about deer, except from what i' ve read on here, hunter safety classes, and my dad told me a little...but there' s so much more out there that i wanna know - i want to get to know the basics of understanding deer...so if ya' ll could bear with me as i ask some of these questions, and maybe even help me out with ' em i' d appreciate it.

What keeps deer from traveling place to place? Is it that they were born in an area, so they stay in that area? or what is it?

why is it that you can spook a deer, but it comes back to the same area after seeing you or smelling you or whatever you did to let it know you were there?

are deer really as smart as they seem to be? when i' m out hunting, i feel like i' m hunting an animal that' s smarter than any human being...like i' m hunting an animal with the IQ of Socrates...

why is it that when i was hunting before i got my first deer, i was such a stickler for everything like gettin out an hour before sunrise, making sure that i was practically invisible in a deer stand (box stand, no noise at all that i could help), but when i went to a deer camp, we got out to the stands at about 7, right after sunrise, and my stand pretty much wasn' t anything but a lean to with plywood on the sides, open front, and the boards came up about to mid-stomach. we did a lot of moving, and i thought i made a lot of mistakes according to the aforementioned self applied guidelines, but i saw more deer that day than i have when i was going by those guidelines?

again, any help with any of this is greatly appreciated. I' m tryin to get back to the basics to dig up something i might' ve missed

RE: deer questions...
 

I' ll throw something at the one question where you talked about hunting in a stand or box or whatnot. I have NEVER hunted in a blind, tree stand, or box, board, or whatever stand in my life, NEVER. I have seen thousands of deer and killed many, I sometimes sit right in the middle of a path or trail, or I' ll sit in a briar patch or against a tree.

As for the deer coming back, I don' t know, I spook deer walking to my stand all the time, almost everyday that I hunt, it just seems like they like to travel the same path as me. I think they are curious and come back sometimes to see what I am, how do they know we plan on shooting them and frying them on our stoves.

RE: deer questions...
 

I dont think anything keeps a deer from moving. Button bucks are chased from the home land my their mothers.

Deer are Deer %100 of the time. How much time do you spend in the woods hunting them?

Read as much as you can about deer. That is where I have gotten most of my knowledge of them. That and first hand experience.

RE: deer questions...
 

maybe the reason that when you went by your guidlines that you didnt see many deer is because there might not be that big of a deer population as there was in the area you hunted and wernt quite as quiet.

RE: deer questions...
 

Food and safe cover are the only things I' ve found that will keep deer in an area for an extended period of time.

RE: deer questions...
 

tabby - i hunt whenever i can, tho not all in the same place. i want to hunt ground blinds, but i can' t sit still or be quiet enough to, so i go for the stands.

i' m hunting this big deer now, we originally thought he was an 8 point, but now we don' t know, we just know he' s all horns. my neighbor saw him at 9:09 yesterday morning and she says he' s making a circle around our little area, but to do so he must cross a road 2x. he moves about 8-9 in the mornings and right at dark. should i hunt him differently than another deer or the same?

RE: deer questions...
 

For the most part deer are homebodies and never stray out of a one square mile range their whole lives. An area with little food will make them move. During the rut, bucks will sometimes abandon their home range if there are breeding does nearby.

Very excessive human pressure will make them move, but studies have been dome showing that most mature bucks just get into the heaviest cover they can find and stay put.

Deer are not smater than us, they just have better instincts and senses. A deer' s nose is roughly 10,000 times more sensitive than a human' s, and most hunters don' t take the best of scent precautions.

Good Luck this Season!
Mark
http://www.buckhuntersecrets.com

RE: deer questions...
 

The adult doe is the matriach of the family and as she goes, so do the others. Young bucks are tossed out like yesterday' s salad and the adult buck is a solitary creature. These deer were taught everything about their territory... the food source, the cover areas which areas off the highest level of security. Because they know every branch, rock, stream etc, they are very reluctant to move. Even with high hunting pressure, deer will head for the cover and will leave the area only as a last resort. That' s also why deer will come back to the same general area after being spooked by hunters. Once they feel the danger no longer exists, they will return because they want to stay on their home turf. They would be reluctant to go to another unfamilar area.

I don' t look at deer as smart, but I look at them as being " deer" . We cannot compete on their level when in their back yard and they are deer 100% of the time. It seems they never let their guard down (exl the rut). There is nothing mystical about the whitetail deer except sometimes we may give them unnecessary advantages while we hunt and this really tips the scale in their favor.

How smart are they?...A buck can outsmart many hunters during any one given hunting season. I believe in the expression......." A wise old smart buck didn' t get that way by being stupid" . Yet this same deer will step out onto a road at the height of traffic. Doesn' t soung too smart to me....yet this is exactly what makes a deer a deer.

Trying to keep the odds in my favor while understanding the world of the whitetail is something I try to do each and every time I go into the deer woods. Hunting from dark to dark, always being mindful of the wind, putting my scouting into my strategy etc...I try to learn all the time and sometimes I win but most of the time I' m out of my league. If deer could talk, I think I know what they might be saying about me. Yet, to me, that' s what makes this hunting. Occassionally I' ll win, but it really doesn' t matter because I' m doing what I love more than anything. Learn as you go and enjoy it, that' s what it' s all about.

RE: deer questions...
 

Deer aren' t smart at all. Their brains are very tiny. They probably have less " IQ" than dogs (just mho), and dogs aren' t smart at all. Anyway, dogs, deer and other animals act not by thought or intelligence, but by instinctual hard wiring and/or conditioned response. Let' s say wariness: Deer are naturally wary because they evolved among preditors. they are hard wired to be generally wary of certain inputs in their natural environment (sight, sound smell, etc) because those that weren' t didn' t propigate as much as those that were. They also can learn to be wary of specific inputs that aren' t part of their evolutional past because they encountered these things at some point and became conditioned to avoid them.

Why do some seem " smart" or wise and grow to be older and bigger? The old big ones either were born with more natural wariness or were lucky and became conditioned to avoid human sign (sight, smell, sound) because of non-fatal experiences with human sign that caused them to avoid it. It is all pure chance. If you take 100 deer, there are certainly going to be a certain percentage who are lucky enough to get this conditioning without being killed and thus turn in to the " Old, wise" 8 year olds. Again, this isn' t smarts or IQ, it is just conditioned response and they were the ones lucky enough not to be killed by the first few encounters that would result in conditioning.

It is easy to understand and predict what deer do as habits or in response to stimuli such as human sight, sound or smell. The hard part is to put yourself in the right place (including wind direction) at the right time and be still, quiet and scent free. All of that stuff has to do with your own intelligence and skill, not the deer' s -zeke

RE: deer questions...
 

OSC,

I will give you a tip that will help you find the deer and know exactly what they are doing, but you can' t tell anyone. You ready? Here goes....

The deer will be exactly where you find them, doing exactly what they are doing when you find them.


Hope that helps.....shhhhhhhh!