Deer that have been hunted heavily appear basically to disappear as the end of the season approaches across Mississippi. Here’s how to make late into great.
There was a joke at King’s Flat Hunting Club that the deer had the camp house bugged.
Should a hunter mention a stand he or she planned to hunt, the duty deer would enter that data for immediate display on the King’s Flat Deer Facebook Page. Every buck and most does would get the message and avoid that stand at all costs. Club members would often think of one stand but talk about another just to throw the bucks off. It’s suspected the deer caught on to this ploy early on and employed a witch doctor to cast a spell on the hunters by playing a drum set outside — very long and loud.
Jokes aside, it seems uncanny how bucks, especially mature, heavy antlered trophy class specimens, can avoid hunters in the days and weeks after the opening fusillades of November. They were caught in trial-camera images, their shed antlers will be found — to instill wanton disappointment — by turkey hunters marching in the spring woods.
But where do the bucks go to disappear during hunting season? They become nocturnal; that is well established, but they still have to eat and move from one bedding area to another. Just how is a hunter supposed to solve the problem of hunting pressured bucks?
The sensory system of a whitetail is highly refined. Deer can smell, hear and see movement better than any human. It may however, be a pair of conditioned responses that gives them the edge over the modern human hunter/gatherer. Deer have a talent for concealment and an equally adept ability to pattern hunters. Most hunters easily address the physical senses the deer possess, with camo, scent killers and quiet stealth. It is the learned responses the deer have that hunters are lacking.
Slow down, look around
“Deer are in their element 24/7/365.” said Dr. Steve Damaris of the Mississippi State University’s Deer Lab. “They know the land as well as most of us knows the floorplan of our bedroom. They know where the mast trees are; they know where the water is; they have the ability to see changes and adapt their memory and movement patterns based on those changes. When a human enters the picture, for whatever reason, they will fall back on life experiences to determine how to deal with that intrusion.”
One of those responses might be to do nothing. If a deer is bedded or feels confident it is undetected, it will allow hunters to pass at very close range. After all, since the time the deer entered the world, remaining motionless has been a defense. Not every encounter a deer has is a fight or flight scenario.
Melvin Tingle of Decatur, a member of the Mississippi Outdoors Hall of Fame, often shared stories about deer holding their ground, unseen and undisturbed for long periods of time. Here are a couple, and how hunters may have succeeded in getting a successful shot on a trophy buck.
“We were filming a rabbit hunt in Claiborne County the first week of February,” Tingle said. “It was a private camp with a reputation for big deer and plenty of bunnies. We had as good a pack of beagles as could be found anywhere, and they were all over the place. After several hours of hunting and filming, we paused under a powerline to have some water and rest our legs.
“A good number of trees had been cut and felled away from the powerline, and three of us chose to use one of the logs as a seat. We chatted among ourselves, and a beagle kept busy snuffling around our feet. One of the other men walked perhaps 50 feet to where the top of the felled oak still held a good number of dead leaves, to relieve himself. He shouted, and we all turned to see a wide-racked 8-point, maybe a 10-point, bolt from the tree top with a great rustle of leaves and brush. The buck had been bedded there and had felt no reason to run until it had been almost peed on.”
“In the 1960s, we hunted quail because there were so few deer and the season was very short,” said hunter Mark Golden of Taylorsville. “I can’t tell you how many times we jumped deer while walking behind the dogs. Sometimes, we were looking for well-known covey, and the dogs were all around the deer before they jumped. All the time, we were talking to each other and calling to the dogs, and the deer held tight. Now we have lots of deer and fewer quail, but I believe they still stay put unless they are threatened.”
Late in the season, preferred deer food starts to run low, and acorns and other mast begin to sour. Deer still need to eat, and they look to green patches and early green-up tree buds for much needed nutrition. But don’t sit on a food plot you’ve hunted all season and expect a trophy buck to come waltzing into the wide open. Trail-camera fans can attest to the fact that late-season bucks are late-night diners on food plots, or at least visit just at dusk and dawn.
Hunt time-tested trails
Instead of hunting directly over a food plot, hunt trails leading to the plot, especially where several trails cross or converge. The thicker the cover, the better your chances of getting a shot at a good buck. If you regularly hunt a trail and see deer, continue to hunt that trail even after the rut has ended. First, there can always be a few straggler does who are just entering estrus and may have a buck in tow. Second, deer are creatures of habit. A well-used trail is likely to be used by generations of deer on an annual basis.
Randall Pugh of Neshoba County knows just such a trail and has erected a permanent stand where it goes under a powerline. There is a small green patch under the powerline, but bucks seldom use it.
“The deer have a trail just up from the edge of the patch,” Pugh said. “Bucks will come out into the open and stop to look toward the line at the grass patch, like they are just checking it out, then they walk on or sometimes turn around and go back the way they came. Over the years we have killed some good bucks there. It’s sort of a go-to stand when the season is short and deer have been hunted hard.”
Search out funnels
Pressured deer will avoid wide-open spaces as the season starts to wind toward a close. The travel corridors they choose are often natural funnels that affect normal movement patterns. The narrow places in these funnels are called pinch points, and finding one will allow a
hunter to “tag out” well before Super Bowl Sunday.
A map of an area being hunted will go a long way toward locating natural funnels, but not all maps are up to date. Grabbing a Google Earth photo may not include all the information a hunter needs to make an informed decision. Hopefully, the hunter has a good, working knowledge of the area being hunted, and using wind and hunting history of the area, puts together a working plan.
Much of Mississippi was hit hard by an infestation of pine beetles over the past two years; more than 20,000 acres of pine forest was harvested or cut and left to decay as part of a management plan. The up side of this is deer will have a tremendous increase in great fawning habitat, and deer numbers over the next decade should respond positively. Also, pressured deer will avoid these dead tracts and stick to the edges, where less effort is required to move about unseen.
All that is to say if you are hunting in a National Forest such as Bienville in central Mississippi, on one of the WMAs in Scott, Smith or Jasper County, chances are good the deer have altered their movements in areas now littered with down and dead trees. Keep in mind that food sources are getting scarce, and a deer will only want to expend minimal energy. Finding a funnel with a ditch or stream running through it and a huge, fresh cutover beside it, and you’ve found the perfect pinch point. There may be some acorns under the leaves and few oaks may still be dropping.
It ain’t over ‘til it’s over
The last days of January are reserved for primitive-weapons hunters. There are fewer hunters in the woods, and dog season has closed. With primitive being a relative term for weapon definition in Mississippi, there is no reason not to spend some time doing spot-and-stalk. A great way to look at new territory, slipping through the woods can be rewarding in many ways. As a hunter, you may need another doe for the freezer or happen onto the trophy of a lifetime.
Setting up informal man drives is another option; several people can cover a lot of ground that might harbor deer during daylight hours. Just be sure everyone in on the same page about safety and wears the required hunter orange and is sure of the target before pulling the trigger.
With enough people, some tree stands manned with hunters and a few walking the terrain may just pop a deer out of its day bed and into a hunter’s sights. Several deer camps have done this late in the season. There are some rules about man drives and how they are conducted. Check with the MDWFP or a Conservation Officer before trying such a drive for the first time.
There is quality deer hunting during the last month of the season for those willing to change a few old habits. Don’t quit hunting until the end has come. Good luck and be safe.
