There are woods that are very difficult to penetrate and hunt easily like any other forest. Many people drive to these kinds of woods where there is no underbrush and there is less visibility for the hunters. In these kinds of places it is difficult to moves the deer out from the woods. In this article you will learn from the authors experience when he drove the deer out from the woods.
I know of one piece of woods which has been driven many times by large groups of hunters and I have never known of a deer being killed there by the watchers. This woods is nearly four miles long and about a mile wide at the widest point. The drivers invariably drive from the south with the watchers stationed in open territory at the north end of the woods. If the deer should leave this piece of woods it would be necessary for them to cross nearly a mile of open country in order for them to reach the safety of another wooded area. As a result of this condition, the deer turn back before reaching the north edge of the woods, preferring to risk the drivers instead of the open country. Quite a few deer have been killed by these drivers, but none by the watchers.
There is a place in the woods, about a mile from the north end, where nine out of ten deer which travel that woods pass through a grove of hemlocks where there is no underbrush and there is good visibility for a hunter. As far as I know, the organizers of these drives have never stationed a watcher at this place. The pattern is there, but none of the drivers seem to have noticed the possibilities of this place.
Sometimes it is almost impossible to move a deer out of a piece of woods. I remember a small wooded area which usually held a deer. This cover was about two hundred yards wide and less than a half-mile long.
One day two rabbit hunters with two dogs were planning to hunt it and another fellow and I decided that it would be a good time to try to shoot any deer which might be driven out by the dogs. He entered the woods with the rabbit hunters and I went to the north end where deer could be expected to go if started. The dogs started on a rabbit trail and the men drove the woods from the south. There were no deer ahead of the men when they reached my position and we decided that there had been none in the woods at that time. We went to a place near the south end where we might have a chance to shoot the rabbit and my companion met a deer face to face killing it with a charge of rabbit shot. The deer had stayed in that piece of woods with three men and two dogs for nearly three-quarters of an hour. This is an unusual case only because of the small size of the area hunted. On several occasions, I have entered woods which have just been hunted by drivers and have been able to start deer which evaded the drive. When a hunter decides to get his deer by waiting for it to come to him instead of going to the deer, he is apt to be in for a long wait, unless he has a good knowledge of the deer's usual actions in the section of the country where he is hunting.
Watching a well-traveled deer trail can be productive if there are other hunters in the woods who keep the deer on the move. Otherwise these trails are apt to be disappointing except for the possible chance that roving bucks might use them. If they are trails which are used by deer which are traveling to and from feeding and bedding areas, the hunter's chances are good in the early morning and in the late afternoon. Before watching any trail or crossing place, he will do well to find out when and why the deer use that particular trail.
Sometimes you might end up hunting some other animals in search of deer. That can be fun to do when you dont have deer to trail behind. The hunters have better chances of spotting the deer when they are traveling to and from feeding and bedding areas. So better watch your timing for hunting the deer. |
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