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Post by CoureurDeBois on Jan 6, 2019 8:43:22 GMT -5
Great day in the woods yesterday even though no shots fired. I saw 24 deer including two bucks. Everything was either too far or couldn't get them to stop. Saw something very interesting. Guys were driving a side hill that I could see pretty well from my vantage point. 4 deer busted across the hill a few hundred yards ahead of the drivers. The lead doe hopped a fairly large fallen down tree and immediately laid down on the other side and put her head down flat on the ground. The other deer followed suit. When the drivers passed about 60 yards above them, they got up and went back the way the came. Smart critters!! Happens all the time, organized drives by hunters is not an end all for deer in front of the drivers. We occasionally have a hunter still hunt 100 to 150 yards behind the drivers to watch for deer sneaking back, or hiding. Many times while in a tree stand I have seen deer hiding or sneaking from drivers. My one buddy killed a nice 8 point that was stretched out in a depression one year. He never noticed the deer until after he was in the elevated stand, and the deer thought it was well hidden, which it was from someone on the ground. Bottom line to this is, don't get upset because a deer drive just whet by where you are set up, instead get ready, thing might get interesting.
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Post by blackbruin on Jan 6, 2019 9:08:22 GMT -5
Always have watch shadowing the drive. Always have watch stay until drive is over, even if we pass you!
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Post by ridgecommander on Jan 6, 2019 9:39:57 GMT -5
I have heard people say that deer will lie down flat on the ground when pressured by hunters. Never personally saw it till yesterday.
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Post by bushmaster on Jan 6, 2019 12:50:46 GMT -5
I had a buck lie flat under a blowdown while I was doing a drive one time. I've also seen them hold there bed until I walked by while small game hunting. I was like 10 ft. away from him. Almost like he knew it wasn't buck season.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 6, 2019 14:12:16 GMT -5
Often times I believe buck are much smarter than we give them credit for.
Should a Saturday deer opener come to pass, we might just outsmart them, at least for one day. 🙃
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Post by Deleted on Jan 6, 2019 14:33:19 GMT -5
I had a buck lie flat under a blowdown while I was doing a drive one time. I've also seen them hold there bed until I walked by while small game hunting. I was like 10 ft. away from him. Almost like he knew it wasn't buck season. A few years ago while being a driver on a bear drive working my body through a patch of thick laurel I lifted my foot to step over a blowdown and a buck that had been lying on the other side exploded out of there. He was right next to the log and my foot probably would have hit him.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 6, 2019 14:34:05 GMT -5
Just a quicky report from the past three days at camp. I took a friend along. He had a buck tag to fill. I had only a doe tag, so guess who saw the bucks? Yep. Two of them, one close enough for a 'can't miss' shot.
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Post by davet on Jan 6, 2019 18:46:52 GMT -5
I have heard people say that deer will lie down flat on the ground when pressured by hunters. Never personally saw it till yesterday. Saw this happen once in flintlock season. We had 6 or 7 guys "surrounding" a wood\weed patch. I saw this buck crawling flat-out through the weeds. All I could see was his back legs and the tips of his horns. That rascal made it to the road.....jumped up and across the road into a posted property. Darnest thing.
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Post by jj103 on Jan 7, 2019 13:51:08 GMT -5
Crew is light this week. Only 6 guys today and on the second drive today 36 deer came out. No shots fired every watcher had an excuse 😜
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Post by fleroo on Jan 7, 2019 14:20:00 GMT -5
It's incredible you can get 6 guys to flintlock hunt on Monday of the second week. It's more incredible you can push 36 deer out on a flintlock drive. Yinz live in a vastly different area than us poor saps yonder here.
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Post by jj103 on Jan 7, 2019 14:50:51 GMT -5
It's incredible you can get 6 guys to flintlock hunt on Monday of the second week. It's more incredible you can push 36 deer out on a flintlock drive. Yinz live in a vastly different area than us poor saps yonder here. . We are lucky to live where we do when it comes to hunting and we have friends that love to hunt. Good people
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Post by jj103 on Jan 8, 2019 8:18:16 GMT -5
Should have about 8 guys today. Hope we can kill a couple doe
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Post by jj103 on Jan 8, 2019 14:25:16 GMT -5
Ended up only having 6 guys but we killed 2 more doe today 👍
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Post by Deleted on Jan 8, 2019 15:57:44 GMT -5
What happened, jj? Didn't fleroo show up after you invited him?
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Post by jj103 on Jan 8, 2019 16:28:52 GMT -5
No mutt. He’s all talk😜
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Post by good ole boy on Jan 8, 2019 18:36:39 GMT -5
Man,it,s killing me to have to bite my tongue. coffeespit
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Post by jj103 on Jan 9, 2019 8:48:37 GMT -5
Headed out soon. Need to keep filling doe tags
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Post by ridgecommander on Jan 9, 2019 9:00:48 GMT -5
Headed out soon. Need to keep filling doe tags Maybe you have posted this before, but are you guys getting together in rifle deer to drive and shoot does? You seem to be able to get a decent crew together every day in the late season. You should be able to really knock back the doe population in rifle if you did the same. Flintlock is a tough way to make a dent in a population.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 9, 2019 9:05:07 GMT -5
Dave and I will be in camp this weekend, trying to fill a tag or two.
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Post by jj103 on Jan 9, 2019 9:06:47 GMT -5
We do drive and fill doe tags during rifle but there are so many places we can’t hunt that and the deer find those places fast. Our best day in rifle we killed 9 doe
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Post by jj103 on Jan 9, 2019 9:14:38 GMT -5
I should add that some of the crew here now doesn’t rifle hunt here so we have a lot of different hunters throughout the year
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Post by ridgecommander on Jan 9, 2019 9:45:26 GMT -5
We do drive and fill doe tags during rifle but there are so many places we can’t hunt that and the deer find those places fast. Our best day in rifle we killed 9 doe Sounds like you are putting a ton of pressure on them in flintlock but still manage to put out dozens on a drive so the deer are not all headed to refuge. I guess I am asking if you hunt as much during the week in rifle season which would be much more productive. .
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Post by dougell on Jan 9, 2019 10:02:08 GMT -5
I grew up a county away from JJ.Back in the 90's my father brother and I used to hunt during doe season with a couple of the farmers and their son's around my parents house.There was a lot of agriculture and a lot of the woods were timbered in the late 1980's.We shot what we had tags for but the neighbors slaughtered them relentlessly.By the end of the 3 day doe season,it was unusual for there to be less than 30 dead doe but more often than not,closer to 40.The next year there would be just as many,if not more deer.This went on until my father passed away in 1997 and I just stopped going back to hunt.My brother bought a bunch of property and a few of the neighbor's sons moved away.It was basically two guys hunting by then and they weren't killing a fraction of the deer we used to kill.I finally got a doe tag one year and went back to hunt around 2005.I walked up the mountain one morning in a pre-dawn snow storm after not stepping foot in that area since 1997.When it got light,I couldn't believe what I saw.The clearcuts that used to be too thick to walk through were open enough to shoot 100 yards.Everything had changed and there were a fraction of the deer there used to be.Back in the 90's with the mild winters we were having,you just couldn't kill enough to make a dent.
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Post by jj103 on Jan 9, 2019 15:07:23 GMT -5
We do drive and fill doe tags during rifle but there are so many places we can’t hunt that and the deer find those places fast. Our best day in rifle we killed 9 doe Sounds like you are putting a ton of pressure on them in flintlock but still manage to put out dozens on a drive so the deer are not all headed to refuge. I guess I am asking if you hunt as much during the week in rifle season which would be much more productive. . . We hunt every day of rifle. We normally kill around 35 to 40 antlerless deer
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Post by jj103 on Jan 9, 2019 15:16:40 GMT -5
saw A lot of deer again today. One shot by one of our guys but missed. Try again tomorrow
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