What Can You Do When Your Best Hunting Spot Stops Producing?

I think most of us have experienced it at one time or another, at least to a certain extent.

You hunt one of your favorite stands or blinds only to have an encounter with the buck you were after, but unfortunately you weren’t able to seal the deal, so you get right back in that stand the next day, and the day after that. If he was in there once, he is bound to come back through! Right? Maybe it wasn’t the big buck you were after, maybe you are seeing more deer movement than any other location you have, and you just know, if you hunt that spot enough times, the big one will show himself eventually! Right?

Both these scenarios depict a very common mistake a lot of hunters make every season. Over hunting or in some cases, not hunting smart, is a very quick and easy way to burn out a stand location. Normally the sightings and encounters are great, but they tend to drop of quickly, and often times result in no sightings at all.

The fix for that issue is rather simple, be disciplined and hunt smart. Don’t over hunt a stand location and only hunt it when the conditions are right!

So what do we do if we are hunting smart and not over hunting a location, and that location has gone from your “Honey Hole” to a location where you consider yourself lucky to even see a deer?

STEP 1:

First and foremost, we have to be honest with ourselves! Did we really hunt it smart, are we trying to blame the lack of deer activity on other things? Many hunters do, “the neighbors must be shooting all the deer”, or “we must have had trespassers“, if you can think of an excuse, I have probably heard it! So, let’s make sure we cut the B.S. and be honest with ourselves, otherwise we won’t solve anything!

STEP 2:

To understand why deer have either stopped or reduced using a certain area, we must first know why they used it in the first place. Make sure you take mental notes or even keep a log of your sightings and conditions for each location, this is invaluable information when trying to piece together the puzzle!

So was this area a transition area from bedding to feeding, or feeding to bedding? Maybe it was a funnel or pinch point, or possibly a bedding area? If we know why and how the deer used the area, we can start the process of elimination, and find the root cause for the decline in activity.

STEP 3:

Now we can start the actual trouble shooting part! What changed to cause the decline in activity? Again, we need to refer back to step 1, so that we aren’t making excuses. Remember, the goal here is to identify the root cause for the decline in deer activity.

STEP 4:

After identifying or at least narrowing down the causes for declining deer movement, we can start to implement strategies to improve it! These strategies could be as simple as giving an area time to “get back to normal “, or as complex as implementing a full habitat improvement plan with TSI, food plots, etc. that could take years to see the results.

So let’s run through a couple different scenarios here.

Scenario #1, the area we are hunting is a transition area between bedding and a food source. We normally see a lot of does utilizing this area until the pre-rut, then we usually witness a lot of buck cruising and scent checking activity! Now, unfortunately, we hardly see any does and without the does, there isn’t much reason for bucks to come through, so we don’t see any of them either. So now what do we do? We start the process of elimination!

What were the food sources that the deer were feeding on, and did those change?

The bedding area the deer were coming from and going to, did it change?

Is it possible that the doe family group or family groups that were using the area relocate?

Maybe our doe reduction efforts negatively effected our area? Keep in mind, the doe hierarchy picks the best core areas based on dominance. So normally the most dominant doe (the Matriarch) will have the best area to meet her needs, and it goes down the line from there. If we harvested several big mature does, it is possible that the other does in the area may take a year or so to move into those better core areas to get them re-etablished.

We have to go through the entire list of why’s and what’s to try and find out exactly what changed and caused the deer activity to decline. It’s a bit of a detective game, but with enough information we can definitely narrow down the root cause and hopefully adjust accordingly!

Scenario #2, this one is an actual issue that I am experiencing currently. I have a stand location that covers a narrow saddle that runs East and West connecting two long ridges that both run North and South. The saddle actually extends East turning into a very long ridge that runs a good majority of the length of my property.

Historically, the deer would either come of the long ridge to the East and work their way accross the saddle, and then drop off into the ravine to the North, or they would come from the South either up the ridges or the big ravine that was between them.

Last year I started to notice a pretty significant decline in deer activity coming from the East, but the movement from the South remained consistent. After going through all the possibilities, I did some scouting this spring/summer, and found that the long ridge to the East had grown super this with bush honeysuckle! So thick that I physically had to bend and break branches even while ducking and climbing over things in order to fight my way through. The deer actually started dropping off to the deep ravine that parallels the ridge to the North, and were side hilling it below, and out of sight of the stand. I don’t believe that they were doing it because of the stand, I believe they were doing it simply because the ridge had grown so thick, that it was simply an easier route for them to take.

My plan is to use a combination of herbicide and cutting to get some of that bush honeysuckle out of there and make it more accessible for the deer.

In closing, the solution to the problem of declining deer activity starts long before the problem arises! Start taking notes, analyze the encounters and sightings that you have, study satellite imagery or aerial photos of your property and the surrounding properties, and try and gain a solid understanding on how and more importantly, why the deer are doing what they do. This will not only make things easier to figure out if you fall victim to a decline in deer activity, it will also make you a better hunter!