Contributors to this thread:
I've heard multiple people talk about after hunting season when the cold weather moves in, the deer will "winter" in a different location. I'm guessing this is because the availability of food and possibly easier to bed or travel. Has anyone scouted a spot that looked great in late winter or spring and come hunting season didn't see a thing? I've also noticed while scouting in winter/ early spring where I saw lots of deer in fall there are barely any tracks in the snow. Sometimes makes a guy feel like he's doing things backwards. Looking forward to the responses.
There are few spots that hold deer all year long when you are talking about public land. You have to be able to determine when it's being used. Is it early season, rut, or late season?
Also in the winter most deer vacate their fall grounds for better food and thermal cover. I find a lot of deer during the winter in cedar swamps and pine thickets. You'll find a lot of deer on south facing slopes/ridges. All these areas are great for shed hunting. Guys that have the thermal cover hold the deer in the winter.
I know there are guys that can comment. Notice when it's deer hunting related the topic turns cold. We need something negative!!
Calling on trapper.... he finds a lot of sheds and I know he has a great wintering ground. Maybe he can weigh in on something different.
I have an area where I was hunting a big mature buck for Four years, the only time the buck would show himself in my area (private property) was immediately after the rifle season.
I guess I should have added some important parts. There were other deer, that did the same thing....why? a food source, within that private property is a scattered 30 acre old apple orchard. The last couple of years has not been good, apple crop has been little to none and last year we had a pack of wolves move in for a few days, in one night they killed 4 does. The rest of the deer moved out for awhile. Wish I could have found out where and how far that big buck traveled to get to his wintering ground.
Listening to more rain right now. The areas that we shed hunt around here are just gumbo. Haven't been able to get out once this year. I'm pulling for you guys.
Where my inlaws live(Fairchild) The deer migrate. They move onto the farms in droves once spring green up starts to occur. July-sep it's not uncommon to see 20 deer in every bean field each night. Starting around bean harvest time they slowly make their way to the bluff country a few miles away. Sure, there are still good numbers of deer on the land through November but sightings continue to diminish until about dec when they drop to almost nothing. There are a few lowly stragglers that stay around all year but it's amazing how many move a couple miles away into the bluffs. Nocturnal is 100% correct that in my case, the deer are moving in search of better thermal cover. Food is not an issue where I hunt. It's everywhere so my only logical explanation is they move for warmth.
A few miles away on the farms around the bluffs it's a different story, they have good numbers of deer year round but in July you can expect to see between 10-20 deer in each field. In Jan,feb you can expect to see 50 deer in those same fields. This is just a small sampling of what I see in an area with lots of private land and abundant food. Predation is minimal but gun hunting pressure is major.
Interesting thread and I look forward to hearing what others see in their corners of the state. When posting your observations/knowledge, please state public or private.
I was just reading a great article about the need for thermal cover and how to create it.
One thing these guys did (which I could never afford) was to scout the land at night during the winter with those night vision infrared goggles so they could see which areas trapped heat.
No surprise that it was in areas if natural growing pines. The soak up energy all day and hold that energy during the evening.
I've heard the deer in the Moquah Barrens migrate out of that area in the winter. I don't know if that's true, but I'm sure MF could shed some light on that.
Yes they do, the barrens area is very flat, don't know if that has anything to do with it or not and its mostly scrub oak and jack pine, they seem to head closer to the Lake Superior areas, which has better food sources and is where most of the deer yards are.
In the far north especially around Lake Superior the deer tend to migrate towards the lake during winter and I believe some of those deer travel fairly long distances. Those areas close to the lake may be the best places to find sheds after a bad winter but they're not necessarily the best spots to hunt come fall.
I try not to be fooled by deer sign left during the winter and I focus my scouting mainly on finding rut sign like rubs and scrapes because that is an indicator of where bucks live and travel during hunting season.
I hunt public land in central Wisconsin. I mark a lot of deer trails on my GPS in the winter. Is winter movement the "same" as fall. Nope. Is it similar. Yep. Will some of what you see winter, spring and even summer scounting be useless during the hunting season, yep. Is more info better then less when hunting, yep. My thought is, I have certain properties to hunt. Those properties don't change just because the deer movement changes. So I exploit the snow, mark the trails and then check them during the season. I do this because I expect the deer to travel a particular property on the trails. Winter scouting make deer travel extremely easy to see and gives me some fresh air and exercise.
The change of seasons don't cause deer to decide to start walking 20 yards to the north. They walk from point a to point b. The destinations change, but the trails -generally- don't. So if during the hunting season, I can make very educated guesses. If I believe the deer are bedding in an area, watering in another and feeding in a third, I have info on how they likely travel between those. Kind of like if I new someone worked in Green Bay and lived in Fond du lac. I would expect they travel highway 41 between the two.
Nocturnal, For the people that didn't follow my Trappers Camp post earlier I will clarify. I have 120 acres that I control, predominately open hardwoods with 48 Oak trees total. It is surrounded by about 500 acres of Cedar swamps. I would say September hunting is fair at best, October is ok, November with the bucks cruising back and forth is very good. Late December I would say it is phenomenal as the 1000s upon thousands of hardwoods acres deer are driven out by the snow with out any proper bedding and thermal cover. Decembers that we have little or no snow I would say deer numbers are low and the hunting is poor. I would venture to say, out of the past 20 or so bow deer that I shot, 15 or more came in late December or early January.
Trapper, I would think having the oaks you would have the deer when the acorns are dropping early season. Is there just that many oaks in the surrounding area that what you do have really doesn't have any effect? I ask this because there is a spot near us that we call fishers woods and it's got maybe 75 oak trees. When the acorns are falling the deer seem to be in there day and night, only leaving to get the occasional drink.
