Advice for new hunter on tracking/finding game

[aflineman]

Out and about. All times of year. Before, during and after hunting season. See what the animals are doing, how they react to pressure and the change of weather/seasons. Takes time. Years really. Then you have a fire or drought, and you need to relearn it all over again. Just a part of the fun of hunting.

 

[TTSX]

My advice is to get lucky. The deer I've shot/shot at have all magically appeared around a corner or popping out of a bush while I'm observing a hill side. Then there was one deer that was snacking on a bush and didn't hear me walk right up to within 50' of it. Let that one go because it was too early in the season and to easy. Ended up being an empty handed season. Take the shot you're given if it's a clean one

 

[dangerranger60]

If you covered 90 miles on your hunt you are moving too much!
My Grandfather used to carry a dime novel in his pocket, He would find a stump and sit down to read. It is surprising how many animals you never see when you are moving around! If you are seeing tracks the deer are there, you just are not seeing them!
On your next scouting trip take a couple hours and just sit. See if that helps you see more animals. Good Luck. DR

 

[Howard1955]

Deer are funny beasts - smart, too.

I've read about people being careful to "mask their scent", so the deer won't shy away from them. But during the summer, I've had deer come into my vegetable garden (where my wife and I are working on a daily basis) and then chew on the strap of a trail camera I had set out there. If anything, they seemed to associate the smell of humans with a hearty meal of fresh veggies.

But, as soon as hunting season rolls around, they're suddenly as scarce as hen's teeth. Too bad it's illegal to bait them around here.

 

[RGRBaggins275]

IMO you dont really have to track deer and elk you need to pattern them. Coastal Columbian Blacktail do not migrate seasonally, if your finding tracks and rubs then they are using that area year round, find the spot in that area with the most fresh droppings and put a trailcam in there and you will find them, write down the times of day, scout a shooting position above and get there at least an hour before during season and wait motionless and camoed out. Note their pattern may change as the season arrives but they are still in that area. Glass clearcut edges and reprod during the day. Always have more than one spot you know they are at to hunt due to pressure.

The trick to coastal Rosevelt elk is to find a herd, but they do cover more range... look for areas inundated with fresh droppings but know they may have simply moved over a ridge or deeper into heavy timber, learn the elk trails and use the ones with the most tracks to move between spots with the most fresh droppings. Both deer and elk; fresh droppings are key, find those spots before the season opens.

Awesome tips, thank you! Can I ask what you mean by reprod? My instinct tells me that means to investigate the tree lines, but I am not familiar with that term.

 

[RGRBaggins275]

View attachment 891634

Deer are funny beasts - smart, too.

I've read about people being careful to "mask their scent", so the deer won't shy away from them. But during the summer, I've had deer come into my vegetable garden (where my wife and I are working on a daily basis) and then chew on the strap of a trail camera I had set out there. If anything, they seemed to associate the smell of humans with a hearty meal of fresh veggies.

But, as soon as hunting season rolls around, they're suddenly as scarce as hen's teeth. Too bad it's illegal to bait them around here.

View attachment 891641

Great post, and I've seen the same in my area. We have deer that act like locusts with our garden. I live in the suburbs so there is no threat for them hunting wise and they seem to know that intuitively. I have read up on "scent blockers" and the like enough to realize that they either don't work at all, or at least not well. I try to use the wind to my advantage, but it is infinitely more difficult when you don't know where the deer are at that moment. A few years ago I was following what I believed to be a fresh trail left by a blacktail, and as I got away from the road a good ways the trail disappeared. The wind was in my face (slight breeze really), so I pushed a little farther into the woodline and was unable to regain the trail. When I came back to where the deer seemingly was raptured, I noticed a bit of undergrowth that had been trampled about 15m to my left. What I had found was that the deer had "button hooked" to go back to the new-growth downhill for bed-down and that I had walked right past him. He couldn't have been more than 50m away from me when I "snuck" past, and my guess is that if he didn't hear me, the wind moving downhill gave me away as I investigated uphill. I found his empty bed, and though I remained quiet to the rest of the world, my inner monologue let loose a string of expletives that would make my old NCOs in the Rangers blush.

 

[RGRBaggins275]

In case your a visual learner

View attachment 889379 View attachment 889380 View attachment 889383 View attachment 889384 View attachment 889385 View attachment 889386 View attachment 889387

Thank you! Pictures are always helpful. Cute dog, btw. Reminds me of my old pup, Daisy.

 

[Forester]

Awesome tips, thank you! Can I ask what you mean by reprod? My instinct tells me that means to investigate the tree lines, but I am not familiar with that term.

Reprod is young timber
"Reproduction" of the next stand.

 

[DirectDrive]

Reprod is young timber
"Reproduction" of the next stand.

And sometimes it's real thick if it hasn't been thinned.
A deer could be 10 feet away and you'd never see him in thick reprod.

 

[Forester]

And sometimes it's real thick if it hasn't been thinned.
A deer could be 10 feet away and you'd never see him in thick reprod.

Very true. I have kicked up multiple deer in young timber.
last year while doing a timber inventory, I turned around and saw a mature buck slowly stand up and sneeeeeek away.
he had been laying down about 10 feet from me for several minutes while I was standing there doing my work.

 

[RGRBaggins275]

If you covered 90 miles on your hunt you are moving too much!
My Grandfather used to carry a dime novel in his pocket, He would find a stump and sit down to read. It is surprising how many animals you never see when you are moving around! If you are seeing tracks the deer are there, you just are not seeing them!
On your next scouting trip take a couple hours and just sit. See if that helps you see more animals. Good Luck. DR

I suspected we might have been moving around too much. I think we got a bit over zealous thinking if we just move a bit further we'll catch up to the herd. I'll make a point this season to stay in place for a while. On that note, what kinds of areas do you all look for in a glassing spot? I usually try to be uphill overlooking a clear cut with my back to the sun. Would you recommend going into an area looking for sign and then find a spot to glass it? Or would that potentially scare off any game?

 

[Koda]

Awesome tips, thank you! Can I ask what you mean by reprod? My instinct tells me that means to investigate the tree lines, but I am not familiar with that term.

as others have replied, yes, reprod is shorthand for Reproductive Growth where they replant clearcuts and the new trees are planted close together producing super thick stands of new trees that are difficult to walk thru. In my experience I find a LOT of tracks and fresh deer sign moving thru and around reprod stands (yup, Ive hiked thru them... crawling at times...) and believe bucks use reprod stands for cover especially when hunting pressure is high.
Glassing the edges of reprod stands especially around first and last light you can catch deer moving between their nightime foraging grounds and bedding in the reprod stands during the daytime for cover and rest.

 

[Koda]

Would you recommend going into an area looking for sign and then find a spot to glass it? Or would that potentially scare off any game?

myself I typically wait at least 24hrs to hunt an area I previously hunted or went thru looking for sign. In a given area I like to have at least 3 different spots to hunt that I know have deer. I read somewhere a study showed deer take about 5 days to forget interruptions in their location but I suspect its less for deer in the north coast range where its so thick cover that deer dont have to move far at all to forage or hide.

 

[DirectDrive]

Make sure the wind/breeze is in your favor every chance you get.

After a cool night, glass a south facing slope.
They want to warm up just like you.

 

[joshkk]

It is absolutely worth buying a copy of

Advanced Hunting on Deer and Elk Trails

Book by Francis E. Sell, I have re-read mine at least a handful of times and gleaned more and more with each reading. Written in the '50s, most of the fundamentals of biology of the animals and physics of air movement are still totally relevant, the writing is excellent, the lessons very informative. Some of the specific gear recommendations are dated and there are large swaths of the country where human development and expansion into habitat have changed animal behavior in the time since the book was written. Here is a preview that you can read dozens of pages:

Advanced Hunting on Deer and Elk Trails

Successful deer and elk hunting goes far beyond luck, it is dependent for the most part upon knowledge and procedure. The man who takes his hunting seriously will be fascinated by the techniques and thinking of the perfectionist, Francis E. Sell. In his first book, The American Deer hunter, the...

www.google.com

**KEY TAKE AWAY FOR ME** and a mental picture to help illustrate it: Imagine a bank of fog in a mountain valley... As the day breaks and the air begins to warm, you can see the fog rising up the flanks of the hills until it goes above the ridge and moves on. At some point in the evening, the day has cooled to a point that the air movement switches and begins to descend the hills, and you see the fog bank come down from the ridge top and roll down the hillsides until it fills the valley.

This is the key to understanding where and when the animals feed and sleep. (They sleep higher during the day and eat lower during the night). They get up from their beds and begin working downhill early enough in the evening that the wind is still blowing uphill, that way their noses will warn them of any danger ahead on the paths they're taking or anything lurking in their feeding grounds as they approach. Later in the evening, after they've gotten to the lower feeding grounds, the winds switch and blow downhill, so all night long they can browse more safely because they would now catch scent of anything that was following on their own freshly laid evening trail. In the early morning, while the winds are still blowing downhill, they begin their upward trek towards bed, again with the wind to their noses. They get into their beds and, voila, the winds switch yet again, now blowing uphill towards them all day long while they sleep and alerting them to any predator following on the trail they just took in. The brilliance of the More-Than-Human-World is remarkable.

While they vary their specific routes from day to day, week to week, season to season, many of these routes are etched into the landscape by generations of use. Try to use what others have said about the sort of bedding cover and browsing areas to connect the dots about where trails you find are likely coming and going and then figure out a spot that you can get to quietly and with the wind in your favor and overwatch a trail at a convenient shooting distance/setup. Have a couple such spots scouted before the season, so you have options depending on weather or if others are there, etc. The set up spot for an evening hunt and a morning hunt may not be the same, even if they're along the same trail, because the thermal winds will be different. Scout some of those trails in the area during off season and then go home and look at it on satellite google earth and try to use your logic (including knowledge of the prevailing directional winds in the area) to puzzle it out, measure distances for potential shots, etc. (I know there are apps for all that now and many people would like to have that in the field with them scouting, but you can do a lot for free just with google maps.)

This is pretty much all in the first ten pages of the preview I linked to... Get that book!

Josh

 

[RGRBaggins275]

Make sure the wind/breeze is in your favor every chance you get.

After a cool night, glass a south facing slope.
They want to warm up just like you.

Good advice, thank you!

 

[Forester]

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[joshkk]

Another piece of practice to take away from what I wrote above about the daily/nightly rhythms of the wind and animals: If you are actually moving along trails yourself in or into an area that you think might hold animals, make sure that you are walking the right way on the trail for that time of day so that even if they hear you snapping twigs or rustling or whatnot, it will be appropriate to how a deer or elk would be moving along the trail at that time of day. If you're heading downhill while all other animals would be heading uphill or vice versa, they will be keenly aware that you are something out of place.

 

[DirectDrive]

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View attachment 892452

Caption :
"Poppo Gets Pants Pulled Down"

 

[cowboykid8]

Slow down a lot when you think you are in a likely spot. I read a book written by a guy who killed many B&C deer. He took a step and then glassed for multiple minutes before taking his next step... Now I don't know if you need to do that but I have been in situations where I saw tracks looked around and saw and heard nothing, pulled up the binos and was able to catch a tail flicker of a doe or fawn walking away.

If you have found a heard of elk, I'm not sure you can sneak up behind them if they have spotted you first. Lots of eyes, ears and noses, try getting out in front (if that is downwind)