Seems i do this every year.....

I was reading over the Who would shoot a doe thread, and looking at the picture of all those buck beneath a streetlight and had to think....good grief there isn't that many buck on the whole mt behind the house here!

Im tucked right up against mile after mile of state forest here.

I can literally walk out my back door, and go and go and go, the mts pretty much run in a line here, its called the ridge and valley section of PA.

The mt here behind the house stretches for literally around 40 miles...thats just the front mt, behind it are a couple more in a row, and they also go for a long way. I can walk out my back door and hike for roughly 6 miles as the crow flies, across the mts to the town of Lewistown PA and never leave the state forest. If you flatten it out its probably triple that? and you can literally walk 20 couple miles going the length of it from end to end.....all forested...no residential, or houses and all state forest roads.

But you will rarely if ever see a sight like those bucks under that streetlight.

I hiked for probably close to 6 miles yesterday scouting in a remote area, acorns everywhere, i didnt see a deer, saw sign, but no deer. Thats fairly common.

There are places close to agriculture that certainly have more deer. i occasionally put out trail cams in areas like that, and the amount of pics of deer is far far more, actually way more.

But dummy me, true to form, our opener here in this part of the state will find me somewhere in the mts, where i have to get up at an ungodly time of the morning....hike a long way, only to quite possibly.....see nothing, including other hunters.

i enjoy that....but boy i sure have to spend a lot of time and bootleather to fill a tag sometimes.

hardheaded?....maybe.....

Fewer edges in the big woods.

A lot of us hunt what we have to hunt and it is not always an easy hunt. A lot of the US Forest Service Land here can be pretty tough to hunt, sign hard to find. That was why I stomped the woods so hard years ago to find a hot tree that was dropping. Most of those people on TV don't know how to really hunt just to see a deer period. There is no wait and give it another year here, few make it another year. It can seem frustrating at times for sure. Our mountains where I live are mainly pine these days, less hardwoods means less acorns to support a lot of critters. But the deer are there. Food source is everything. Good luck

Best book I EVER read on finding not just deer, but bucks, is: "Mapping Trophy Whitetails," by Brad Herndon. It covers your situation PERFECTLY. Once I started using the techniques I started seeing way more bucks in deep woods situations.

I hunt the big woods. Hiking all day without seeing a deer or bear is not a bad day. :)

Steve's area is lots of miles and miles of woods, followed by miles and miles of woods, and you need to put in the time, as well as have a knowledge of how the big woods works. I've hunted places like that, but never had the time, nor the 'want-to' to really apply myself to it. Hat's off to guys and gals that hunt those big woods successfully. We are very fortunate here in Pennsylvania to have such large tracts of free roaming.

Yep, I walk out my back door and run into a wood fence at @25 yards!!! I miss PA!!!

Bootleather is to find a good spot to ambush hunt.

I am my own worst enemy too.

Normally I’m happy to shoot any decent animal with my recurve. I just got back from New Mexico where I had a monster bull elk come in to my blind 24 yards but he was in a spot where I could not get a shot.

Two days later the same herd with the big bull comes into water. The cows come running in….. then a dink 3 x 4 bull comes in posing give me a good broadside shot….while that giant bull was out at 80yds inching his way in… did I shoot the bird in the hand….nope.

All of the elk left without the big bull ever coming to water….ARRRG!

If that dink would have been the only bull, I would have shot him and been happy as a clam…but with the big onedangling out there…I couldn’t do it.

.

Its in the blood i guess...i just prefer that type of hunting, even though i know there are better places to hunt that have more deer per sq mile.

i always seem to fill my buck tag as well as a few doe....but i have a lot of sits that i see nothing.

much of the forest here looks like this....

clearcut 2 mts over behind the house....about a 2 hr hike.

saw a dandy buck back there about a week ago, getting within bow range of him is quite a different matter, he could literally be anywhere

top of the mt behind the house...and looking beyond, takes about an hr to get up there

Nice pictures Shade, are the gypsy moths working on the oaks in those mountains, father north the trees looked like winter in the middle of summer

snuck up on these guys the other afternoon,bedded on the side of a mt up in the rocks....got to within bow range, then backed out. wind shifted and she sat up and was moving her head side to side smelling. i knew she got a whiff of me, caught glimpses of them going up over. sow and two cubs..sorry about the blurry pic.

i found a wallow about a 2 1/2 hr hike from home, put a trail cam there....had bear on it every day, multiple bear on hot days

and the views help keep me hooked, but finding deer takes bootleather.

"9. Hunt where the deer actually are, not where you'd imagine them to be." --- Fred Bear 10 Commandments

"9. Hunt where the deer actually are, not where you'd imagine them to be." --- Fred Bear 10 Commandments

wayne...no we got lucky here, no gypsy moths, lots of acorns in spots.

Longshot....they are there, bootleather, patience, and when you finally get your chance....ya best make it count.

Last year's buck.

Bear....

Doe from last year...shot her in the pouring rain, shot her almost straight down, hard angle. pretty far from home, drug her for a little, but ended up, skinning, deboning, and packing her out.

Buck from year before, I had watched him chasing a for while spotlighting the day before, went back in there the next day and got him.

Nice shot Shade, right behind the shoulder hump. Did the arrow exit below?

Stupid tablet chooses my words for me....that is supposed to read....watched him "chasing" A DOE the day before while stillhunting...NOT spotlighting...good grief...lol

It did exit yes

I use to hunt those kind of places then got smart. I hunt where the most deer are. I use to hunt areas to hunt instead of where the deer are. Sometimes you have to hunt under the light pole lol

I use to hunt those kind of places then got smart. I hunt where the most deer are. I use to hunt areas to hunt instead of where the deer are. Sometimes you have to hunt under the light pole lol

Smart, or Lazy?

LOL

It just depends on what it is that you’re actually Hunting for.

My brother and our nephew hunted a new unit for Elk this year, muzzleloader. Hiked in the wilderness on Friday afternoon and hunted hard all weekend. When he got home, his Fitbit said 54 miles, but I don’t know if that’s from the GPS or if it’s just counting how many steps and assuming that each pace is X number of inches.

When hunting Elk, there are times to move stealthily and times to haul ass, but it’s pretty unusual to sneak up on anything interesting at a marching pace. Lord knows my stride has always been a bit shorter above 10,000 feet…. ;)

How about it...babysaph!....man that would be a sight!

truthfully though? to each his own, but i just cant get into it...

i suppose i just like hunting the mts...even if there is less deer.

but every year, i go through this.....hunt around the fields?....or head back in.?

i had permission to hunt a farm, had my wife drop me off there and i was going to hunt while she went to town.

i had found some good trails and plenty of sign...she dropped me off, and an hr later i was sitting there with a doe tag filled out..never been back.

years ago we got permission to hunt deer in a suburban area. mixed woodlots, farm fields , housing developments...i had scouted it some, you couldn't walk very far before you ran into a road, houses etc...doubt any patch of woods was over a hundred acres...but man talk about deer and deer sign.!! I had to meet an electrician at a jobsight, so i dropped my oldest son off to let him hunt and was going to return....I went up the road turned around and drove back past where i dropped him off, i looked down the lane and my son was crouched on the lane. i thought wow he must see something already.....sure enough, he shot a doe right after i drove past...never even got off the lane!!...never been back.

Shade, that is arguably the toughest type of country to hunt with a bow. Nothing to concentrate or funnel them.

Actually that’s not true, the funnels are there but subtle, as you know.

It seems to me like you’re having some pretty good success in that very difficult country…. congrats!

Usually.....this is about as urban as I get. Front side, looking back down towards the house, I hunt it some, but you can hear cars on the road, chainsaws, and general people sounds...once you get over the top and beyond that all disappears.

None hunting people and dogs, road car and big trucks sounds, and you can’t escape the low flying planes sounds, drives me crazy when trying to hunt, wish I was surrounded by state forest,

i do hunt around agriculture in MD though, ive enjoyed hunting around the prettyboy reservoir.

Why would I hunt where the deer numbers are low just to say I did it? Ok. Call me lazy. Lol

Why would I hunt where the deer numbers are low just to say I did it? Ok. Call me lazy. Lol

Sorry for the double post. I hear ya Shade. Everyone is different.

I have hunted the Prettyboy Reservoir

i enjoy hunting there babysaph, nice mix of woods that border crop fields, gets hunted pretty hard at least when i was there.

mabye ill get down there this year, haven't hunted it in a while.

i always seem to see plenty of deer where i hunt in MD...shot my only buck that was still in velvet down there on the opening day one year, but hot!...was around 90 that day.

and the eastern shore has no shortage of skeeters in the early season.

here is a pic of that bear wallow i found, i was going through some thick laurel on the back side of a mt and saw what looked like muddy water on the laurel. i snooped around a bit and found more, and figured there was a wallow close by...further investigation and i found it, just a swampy spring, tucked in the laurel...took a trail cam back. only left it there a week but lots of bear on it.

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