Deer Hunting

[maros91]

How was the deer hunting along the north shore from Two Harbors to Grand Marais and past? Just seeing if people had some success or not with the low numbers and being bucks only.

[monstermoose78]

My hunting group got 1 deer for 11 guys. 3 bucks were seen for the whole season. My dad did get a nice one a 221 pound 19 inch spread 8 pointer. I did not go up this year seeing I was to busy with school. My dad said where we normally hunt there was no sign at all. Which is weird because for the 20 years we have always seen deer there. The deer seen were all within 200 yards of the cabin. From the local guys we know it sounded like they did not do much better than our group. Lots of wolve sign around. My brother ended up going fishing for walleyes on a little lake because the deer hunting as so bad. My brother and his friend caught 10 keeper walleyes in 5 feet of water.

[matt_w]

The buck harvest was down about a third from 2013 levels. I did hear of a lot of does being seen, but guys had to put in the time for the horns. Hopefully a milder winter prevails to give them a chance to bounce back.

[amoebus]

I hunt off of the Echo trail to the west of where you describe.

The hunting was better this year than last, but it was down from the peak years. I spotted 13 deer in 5 days which is almost 2x deer/day as my 20 year average (usually see more bucks). I spotted one mature buck during muzzleloader but he got the jump on me and was in the thick stuff before a shot. I ended up with a 2.5 year old 7pt buck. Quite a few does with fawns. I also spotted deer in the food areas and agreed with mm78 that the marginal areas from past years didn't have a lot of sign this year.

The winter up there has been great so far this year (for deer anyway - I think the deep snow is better for the moose). If it keeps up, the deer will be back in short order.

[Mistermojo]

We are just south of TH and of 8 or 9 camps around us only 1 6pt shot. We saw a few tracks after the first weekend snow, but nothing came of it, not even a doe. No wolf sign either, which I guess is indicative of the deer population getting even worse than last year. Lots of wolves last year.