Just wondering....

[UdeLakeTom]

Has anybody had a member of their party scout the woods on the Thursday of the opener...and why did they do it?

One of our party members did it this year, saw 5 deer that day and we only saw 2 on the opener and nothing this weekend. The rest of the hunting party is at a loss as to why somebody would do this.

[hartner62]

You might have to make them an X member of your party if they continue to do things like that.

[UdeLakeTom]

The problem is, it's a relative and part owner of the acreage.

[picksbigwagon]

I will ask a couple follow ups: How did he scout? was he bombing around the woods all day on a 4 wheeler? was he out there the whole day? was he in a tree stand only? what time of the day was he out there.

What is the normal people activity in the woods, couple times a week, couple times a month, one time a year?

Yep it would stink to have someone out walking the land, but where I hunt in SE MN, the land owner is out in the fields working, in the woods cutting lumber and there is generally activity around the farm 7 days a week. I have never deer hunted up north in the woods so I don't know how those deer behave.

[Scott K]

I hunt in the areas of my cabin, I can be messing around there all day, and deer wont even pay attention to me. If it is in a remote area that people never go, then I would be concerned with it, otherwise, they get use to people in the area.

[UdeLakeTom]

It is fairly remote, a gravel road splits the area and has a good amount of traffic, however the nearest people are at least a 1/4 mile to the north and south with 4 miles of WMA to the east and a lake to the west. I didn't use any equipment to go thru the woods, but did his usual 10 am opening day walk thru the woods. The biggest disappointment was that we put in a food plot that has droppings every 3 to 5 feet, so the deer are there, but when somebody walks thru and under all the stands you have to wonder if the scouting drove them out.

[The Grebe]

It seems to me that if the rest of the party is of the concensus that the prescouting is something that shouldn't be done so close to the opener, surely if you are tight enough to hunt with the fella, someone in the party most certainly must be able to talk to him about it, without his jaws getting tight?

[Steve Foss]

I agree with Mr. Grebe. People who know each other and hunt together should be able to communicate politely and with sincerity. And picks is right, too. There's scouting, and then there's SCOUTING!

At any rate, someone scouting the area a couple days before opener is not going to drive the deer off their patterns, even if the scouter isn't especially quiet about it. Even in areas that are fairly remote, deer are used to some degree to people and don't get their deer underwear in a twist when a person walks around their home range.

It's understandable that, in the traditional sweet suspenseful buildup of the last few days before the season opens, a hunting party doesn't want someone screwing things up before the season even starts, but unless the guy came through revving a motor and banging trashcan lids and running with a pack of dogs, I really doubt is was an issue. Deer aren't going to abandon a rich food plot because someone walked through. There are any number of reasons why a lone guy on Thursday could see five deer when a bigger group of people two days later only saw two.

Up here on the edge of the wilderness there are still people in the woods, and deer will stop what they're doing and be quiet or run away a short distance when people get too close, but once the folks move on the deer just keep doing what they were already doing.

[DeanoB]

I agree, i am in the woods that I hunt 3-4 times a week and I see deer almost everyd time out , sometimes they are coming to bed and sometimes they are going to feed, and there are those times you see the white flag and they are running away when disturbed from their beds. They always come back tho. heck I have hung stands in the morning and shot deer from them that same evening.

[UdeLakeTom]

Hey...thanks all for the inputs, I can relay it on. We were just wondering what others might think. And we have tried the taking...the reply was that is the way I do it. Time to move on.

[Steve Foss]

Interesting problem. Deer camp standards vary widely. Some camps would toss him out on his ear for the attitude that the way he does it is more important than camp unity. Other camps would listen to what he had to say and decide whether they wanted to change the way they do things based on his opinion.

Interesting . . . .

[DonBo]

We bowhunt the same area as we gunhunt. We are constantly in the woods right up till the opener without bugging all the deer out. I think you just had a bad weekend.

[bigbucks]

Ditto to that, but the deer are definitely used to people & scent in our woods. We had to put up a portable for my brother in the dark the night before opener as we found out one of the trees of his permanent had just blown over in the last week. We got done about 11pm putting it up & he shot a deer around 11am the next day.

I forgot the little 5 pointer was about 20' from his stand & completely unaware of his presence. He's a righty, but shot it left handed do to the angle, never having attempted a shot left handed in his life.

[Bandit]

We put up 6 portable stands the day before opener every year, aways in the same spots, always shoot deer off of them, one guy walking through the woods won't hurt anything.

By daylight opening morning the deer have heard 10,000 car doors slam, talking, walking, wheelers [not ours], seen flashlights, ect,ect. With all that going on it is surprising any us harvest anything.