Coffee while or before hunting?

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Moparmike

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Oddly enough, a downwardly-plunging firey handbask
Ok, having heard tales of a deer's mythical sense of smell I find myself wondering if coffee is good or bad before hunting. I even see camo thermoses in sporting goods.

So, is it good or bad to do so? I ask because morning isnt my friend, and there is a reason for having an 'O' in front of the first 9 hours of the day...:eek:
 
drink your coffee and go hunt. in fact, take your coffee w/ you if you need it.

i've hunted a few deer, and i've found that scent alone doesn't mean a deer is gone. but scent and noise, he's gone. scent and movement, he's gone...

you would be surprised at what you can get away with. i was helping my brother fill his tag one morning after i had tagged out (a very nice whitetail buck, if i say so myself). we were sitting in a good ambush spot. after a couple of hours, he wanted to move to another spot. before we moved, though, he wanted to have a smoke. so he lit up a cigarette, and stood there, smoking. halfway through the smoke, 3 does came down the trail, walking right in front of us (not more than 10 yards out). they got downwind, and they went to full alert. we did not move, and the deer just stood there, looking for the source. after a few minutes, they slowly moved off. as soon as he finished his smoke, a fair 4-pointer (4 on the left, 4 on the right) came down the trail. my brother decided he wanted this deer, but wanted to see first what would happen when he got downwind... so, the buck gets downwind, and basically same reaction... we stood stone still, the buck was on full alert looking for the source. he couldn't see us, so he started to walk away when the 25-06 slammed him (around 30 yards)...

i think deer are more scared of movement or noise than scent. scent will certainly put them on alert, but scent alone isn't a hunt-killer... personally, i don't take any chances that might tip the odds in the deer's favor, but coffee? i drink it all the time before and during the hunt.
 
coffee, mmmmmmmmmmmmmcoffee, um, is good, mmmmmmmmmm, coffee,
um, is good for my arthritis. and it sometimes wakes me up. but seriously,
dont p*ss where you hunt.
Regards from TX
(A chilly TX, finally)
mc
 
Coffee in the morning makes me twitchy all day. About the only time I drink it is after a good meal.

But I doubt the smell is a deterrent. It's a natural smell, after all. And deer are curious when they don't associate noises or smells with danger.
 
The University of Georgia's wildlife biologists did a study on deers' reaction to urine. Some plots had various predator urine. Some had human urine. Some had no urine. Deer movement and reaction was recorded and analyzed in each plot. No significant difference was found. Yes, they alerted on predator urine and human urine. Checked out the area visually and aurally. When they didn't see or hear a predator or a human...they went about deer business.

Think about it. You're a deer. You live in farm country. You smell human urine around the fields all year long. You're used to it. But after you read in the papers that deer season is in...you immediately run like hell when you smell urine.

I hunt in a stand that I've been using for years. I urinate on a regular basis. I've killed one doe out of that stand this year. I've watched about six bucks that were under our minimum antler size walk by...two within slingshot range. Not one was spooked by the urine they smelled.

I smoke in the stand too.

That's in a thirty acre area. Season before last I took ten deer in that thirty acres. Last season I took two bucks and a doe and watched about thirty walk by.

Reckon that if I didn't smoke in the stand and urinate around it that I would have seen hundreds of deer over three years instead of a few score? :D
 
How else can you get a Star Buck...sorry couldn't resist.:D

If a deer is close enough to pick up your breath...he should be well on his way to being dead.
 
Deer smelled my deer sandwich once

When I was about 16, I decided to get down out of my stand and eat lunch more comfortably on the ground. I was fussing in my pack after eating one dried and salted venison sandwich and had just pulled out another one when I saw something to my right....

A doe with two fawns trailing behind were looking at me and sniffing wondering what I was eating. We had filled our antlerless tags, and I could only shoot bucks, so we looked at each other for a while and they ran off.

At the closest they were about 12 yards away in deep Minnesota snow on a well-used trail in front of the stand.

Deer in many areas are used to seeing humans. They just get more on edge after being shot at a few times.

For years, my dad and I hunted along a deep ravine behind the compost piles of a landscape company that also had a few acres of corn on the property. I had joked that the best way to shoot a deer was to drive a Bobcat skid loader down to the compost piles and hop out with a slug gun.
 
Coffee? I ain't scared to take a thermos on the stand.

This doe was taken about 2:30 today in the southeast corner of your great state, moparmike. (I think you're in Ar, but can't remember.)
 
I've had to put down my cup of coffee to shoot a deer on more than one occasion, so I don't think it matters much. I've also had to stub out a smoke to take a shot too. Last year while spilling some urine on the ground, I turned around while zipping up and was startled by a small, young, curious doe not 10 yards away wondering what in the heck i was, and what I was doing in that gulley. She was way too small to shoot, unless you like veal, so I said "boo" and sent her on her way.
Oh, and Moparmike, i had an instructor in the AF once tell me that there are no stupid questions, just stupid people who ask questions. Certainly applies to me.

Shoot straight y'all
 
Very interesting about the urine. I love coffee but seldom drink it before hunting because of the urine. Of course you also have to stand up and move to get rid of the coffee.
Along the same line, I was hunting whitetails a few years ago and for the first couple days of the season I was seeing between 15-20 deer within shooting distance per day from my stand including many within 10 yards. On about the third day I had to eliminate waste (not urine) so bad I couldn't stand it, so I walked about 10 yards away and dropped trou. I never saw another deer from that stand that year at any distance. May have been a coincidence, I don't know.
 
kinda surprised you weren't over-run w/ 'em while you were in that... umm.. position.

long been a theory of mine that if you are being frustrated day after day by not seeing the critter you want, then the thing to do is to make yourself as completely unready for the shot as you can... usually this involves some form of waste-removal, while either lighting a cigarette, or putting one out, while your gun is on the ground, and at least 1 yard away from you (at your most outstretched point). is also beneficial if it is sub 20 degrees at the time... seems to help things along...
 
COffe while hunting

I like to pour some coffee or hot chocolate into a camelback on a cold morning. Great stuff, warms my outsides and insides.

Stole this idea from soldier-buddy. Smart guy.
 
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