What's going on!?


Turkeygirl

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Between Andy and I, we saw no deer last night, this morning, and Andy saw nothing again tonight...

Bucks finally staying with does or something? Was seeing more deer activity and now it's dropped off again?

This rut is so weird...hope I can fill my bow buck tag...at this point I may take nay buck that comes along...

Anyone else seeing the same thing?

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Warm, Warm, Warm, its everywhere Ruth. I just read a bunch of post on AT to see what the word was from their side. Deer sightings are way down and buck sightings are even fewer. I think it's the warm weather, I wouldn't want to be running around in all that fur in the heat of the day. I thought it might have been just the area we hunted.

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same thing here ruth. im not sure where exactly you are in NY but here in the schenectady county (bow only) it has been extremely slow and even up in salem for the first weekend of the season. i have been taking every chance i can because work is really busy. the highs were 60s and lows only 40s or 50s which is screwing it all up. saw a 4 or 6 pointer last weekend but thats only the 2nd buck ive seen this year! things need to get goin real quick, im itchin to smack one

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I'm not so sure that this is all that different from other years. Most likely we are entering the tending phase where the bucks have located does that are in heat. Also, it is most likely that many of the deer have been moved out of areas that you have previously scouted and patterned. When rut starts, you can pretty much throw out all the bedding/feeding observations that you have learned up to that point. That brief first chase phase is when you see deer running all over the place and it looks like every deer in the woods is constantly on its feet, but it doesn't last that long and soon becomes just an occasional thing. That's just as well anyway for bowhunters because "chasing deer" are seldom using trails or anything you can actually set up on in decent bow range, and most of the time they are running so fast you couldn't get a shot if they were in range. So skill and pre-planning go out the window and are replaced with just plain old luck.

So if I had to guess (and that's all it really is), I would say that these radical shifts in deer activity are probably more a result of normal stages of rut than anything to do with weather or changes in the number of deer. They are still there. They're just in different areas doing different things. This is not the first year I have seen that happen. In fact, these radical shifts in movement are a predictible set of annual events.

Doc

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yea it's all this warm weather we've been having here in NY. between college and work, my bow season is over and i barely saw any deer at all this year. i've gone bow seasons without getting a deer before, but this was by far the worst season i've ever had. I just hope the temperatures drop soon for the start of regular season coming up soon, cuz let me tell ya, it's a frustrating feeling to sit out in the woods every morning and night and not see a darn thing....maybe my luck will change when i'm home on break for thanksgiving...

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