Most Disappointing Opening Day in Years

[sleepyone]

This morning my nephew, his friend and I each sat in our own stands for several hours and saw not one deer. This was the first time we had been totally shut out in years. We have a lot of deer. Not any monster bucks but a ton of deer. I am not totally surprised as my trail camera had been showing very little activity since the first of October, which is about when the acorns started falling. Before that, my camera had 200-300 photos every couple of weeks of many does, bucks and fawns. My trail cam only had four pics from last week. One small buck and a couple of does. Prior to that in August and September, I literally had pictures of the deer looking up at the feeder waiting for it to thrown corn. I had to pick up over three bags of corn today that had been collecting from the past month. I had to turn the timer down to 2 seconds for am and pm.

Of course acorns fall every year but never in this quantity that I can recall.
We have two hundred acres covered mostly in oaks except for about 30 acres of hay fields. There must be millions of acorns. We need a good rain and some warm days to rot the acorns and a good cold spell soon or this could be a bad November. On the positive side, the deer will be nice and fat when they do decide to make an appearance. The only deer I saw today was a doe that I spooked on the way back to my trailer after the morning hunt. The temp was in the 30s this morning but had warmed up to the upper 60s by afternoon. To warm for me for hunting.

I'm in North Texas near Jacksboro. How are others faring around Texas and the country?

 

[Captcurt]

Never give up.

That is why they call it hunting, my friend. If we got one everytime out it would be called killing.

I have had the same thing here. I had 244 pix in a week before the acorns fell. I must confess that most of the activity was after dark. I have a 10 pt, an 8, (2) 7's and a 5 on camera. I killed a 6pt. muzzelloading that I didn't have a picture of and then took a doe with my bow yesterday. Both near water.

Right now they can walk 50 yards from their bed and eat all the acorns that they want but we haven't had much rain in 2 months so I am hunting the water. Things are changing fast now that the rut is close. You may have a dozen run over you on your next trip.

 

[ritepath]

Same problem here in Virginia....can't walk without about falling on acorns this year. The most I've ever seen in 30 years of hunting. Deer just haven't had to move any for the past few months.

We walked over to the neighbors cooler today to see what was hanging. There were 7 bucks and 2 coyotes. One buck was being skinned and on had already been skinned by the Taxidermist. Looks like muzzleloader season has been better to the rest of the guys than me and my son so far. LOL

 

[tasco 74]

Come to iowa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i live in the north central part of the state (webster co.) and we had to go to the middle eastern part of the state last week (iowa city).... there were at least a dozen deer along the interstates 35-80 that had been whacked by cars or simi trackor trailers along the side of the road..... they need to be culled out i hear so COME TO IOWA!!

 

[murdoc rose]

didn't see anything or even hear a shot today

 

[shaggy430]

Seeing tons of deer here in TN. Very good season so far.

 

[duck911]

Hunted a really good unit in CO for deer Sat/Sun and never even saw a buck. Back at it Thur-Sun though, and with cooler weather moving in I am hoping the rut takes off.

 

[FLAvalanche]

How are others faring around Texas and the country?

I've run into the same problems as you. The acorn crop seems to be much better than last year. I haven't had any animals on my feeder or in my orange grove in the past month.

 

[gordy]

Pay to much to hunt Iowa

I hunted last year in Iowa, Lots of deer, big deer. Trophy deer.
The price to hunt there is unbelievable. 550$ for a buck tag, 350$ for a doe tag.
I would have to say come to Minnesota, travel a bit farther and save some money.

 

[Yarddog]

Ive had a GOOD season so far, a Cow horn spike 10-31 & a nice little Six this morning
In same zip code I live in ; ) PS I'll post pics of six when I Know HOW
Y/D

 

[mcdonl]

Sounds like Maine hunting. You have to put your time in here.

 

[sleepyone]

Thanks for the enouraging words and feedback from around our great country. Like I said in my original post, when the deer do start moving and coming to the feeders, they will be FAT! I don't blame them for choosing acorns over corn. I wish our property had wide open spaces. We are covered in trees and brush. Glassing and stalking is not possible. If we were not allowed to bait our deer, I don't know if we would ever shoot one. I have tried walking our property in hopes of catching one unaware, but they smell, hear or see me well before I do them. I can't even get my scope on them before they are gone.

 

[336A]

Hang in there sleepyone I'm sure you will fill your tag soon. I know all too often we get ourselves wrapped up in putting a deer in the freezer. Lets not forget though that hunting in itself is more than just getting our game as well. I've had the pleausre of being entertained with animals quirky antics quite often while hunting in general. I'm sure that I'm not the only hunter here that has been entertained by mother nature while out hunting. I'm very delighted when I get to see and experience those little things that most others never will.

Being able to get away from the rut of our modern everyday lives and enjoying yourself often times is worth a lot more than the actual act of getting a deer.

 

[seal]

they cleaned out the corn i have been throwing but ignored other piles of it in other places even with peanut butter mixed in. Saw three does running down I45 the day before opening but the day of it was cold and silent

 

[Joel Lehman]

No deer seen southeast of San Antonio near Three Rivers. I did get a nice boar hog that field dress 123 lbs.

 

[Nico Testosteros]

This is only my 2nd year of hunting and so far it is totally different from my experience last year. Last year the hogs, of all sizes and ages, were plentiful. I shot 3 in one evening, 2 at one feeder. I didn't get my first deer, a doe, until the last night of the supplemental season for does and spikes.
This year I saw 6 does as soon as it got light on the first Saturday. I watched them move around for a while and then a 8 point comes trotting over to the feeder. He moves around some, behind fence posts, behind the feeder legs, behind some pecan trees. He moves into a spot where I can take a nice broadside shot before he crosses the fence line off the property. I take it and have my first buck in the first hour of the season. It kinda threw me off; it seemed too easy.

 

[sleepyone]

336A, you are right about enjoying God's creation. I always enjoy the multitude of songbirds, turkey, coyotes, bobcat and other critters out and about. we don't have hogs however.

 

[sleepyone]

congratulations, Nico! it won't always be that easy.

 

[Peakbagger46]

Leave the $#%& feeder, get out and hunt them on the ground. Take a hour to move 100 yards. Go on your hands and knees (or belly if you have to). HUNT them.

 

[sleepyone]

that would be way too much work, but I hear what you are saying. I have never been good at sneaking up on deer. I make too much noise, sticks, leaves etc...

 

[Yarddog]

Leave the $#%& feeder, get out and hunt them on the ground. Take a hour to move 100 yards. Go on your hands and knees (or belly if you have to). HUNT them.

No thanks I've put alot of time in the woods I'd rather sit on my
BUTT in a tree climber & let them come to me ; )PS Hang in there Sleepyone
Y/D

 

[tinygnat219]

Baiting deer with a feeder isn't hunting. It's lazy. Get off your a$$ and stalk. If you make noise, move slower. Slow is quiet, quiet gets you deer.

 

[JoeMal]

I had half a dozen deer walk onto the range last night when I was shooting my rifle, all does. I'm sure they are just as abundant in the woods here in IL

 

[2ndAmFan]

Sorry to read that deer in your area aren't much in evidence. We had a very good acorn crop here this year too. I'm not seeing many whitetails this year because the area where I live in the Texas hill country is starting to get overrun with sika deer which escaped from an exotic game ranch several years ago. They're literally starting to supplant the whitetails so we're working hard on thinning them out some. I did see one trophy whitetail buck on Saturday 11/13, but he saw me too and I never got a shot before he took off into the brush. I went looking but never did find him. My hunting buddy and I have had a good season so far. We've taken three sika since the season opened, two of them yesterday within about ten seconds. We aren't even sure who got the second one. We didn't realize we were both shooting at the same deer, but it only had one wound which severed it's spine just behind the head, and that's where we were both aiming. There was a third one about 100 yards away and I took a shot at it but it was a clean miss. It ran and jumped a neighbor's fence so maybe another time. I really shouldn't have taken that shot at all since it was getting dark and I was shooting iron sight with the original Tula sights on an SKS. Couldn't see my front sight very well. I'm glad I missed rather than wounding it and watching it run off though, and I'll either use a scoped rifle or avoid longer shots from now on with an iron sight when it's getting dark. Still, there are sika all over the place; I counted 40+ of them in a pasture just down the street from my place the other day and we'll take as many as our freezers can hold, and if we're lucky we'll get a whitetail or two. Oh, and we weren't baiting. We drove off a ways from the house and parked the car, then went hiking around the land for a couple of hours, saw nothing but a blur as one whitetail ran into a thicket and since it was getting dark we we're driving back toward my house when we saw the Sikas. They just stood there and looked at us so we piled out of the car and commenced to getting some dinner. Having a haunch roast tonight.

 

[Daniel Boone]

I guess the terminology for what you tried to do is called Nuged a deer.

Im from the central part of Pennsylvania and we had late frosts in the spring and no rain all summer - about 3 inches of rain in 7 months. While other places had double that amount in the same time frame - just 30 miles north or south.

So in my neck of the woods, there is no acorns.
I went for a walk Saturday on 5400 acres of ground and only saw one deer track. Not good for the area that I hunt in.

It is a known fact that deer likes white oaks and the acorns that they produce.
Red oaks are more acidic and at times a deer will walk right over a red oak acorn patch to get to a white acorn patch of trees.

In order for a feeder to work, you have to set the timer for a period of time when you want to see the deer and you have to train the deer to come when they hear the feeder go off.
A article about this was published a while back in the PA Game News and about how baiting does not work - if there is piles of corn on the ground.

Since it is illegal to bait in Pennsylvania, it is looked upon as cheating.

Plus if you lived in Pennsylvania and you told your fellow hunters that we went out this morning and got skunked - and left, they would laugh at you - because all day hunting is the only way to be successful.
Those dudes on television that shoots those deer in a pen, can afford to come and go as they please and go back to camp for lunch and a snooze before going back out into the pen and shooting some tame deer.
But in the real world, deer only travels the first couple of hours in the morning and a couple of hours in the evening and in some phases of the moon and some periods of the rut - you might not see anything for days at a time.

That is when you put your hiking shoes on and do a little leg work and put on drives and make your own success.
Hunting over bait - would be like fishing in a bucket.
Not much of a challenge in my book.