Hunting Whitetail, what do you look for to find food sources/Bedding

[dand883]

I've got some vacation coming up in a few weeks for deer season, so i've been filling the time watching youtube videos and waiting until i can get out in the woods. It's got me thinking a bit as i watch these and read about what other people look for.

Most of the videos are usually out of the states with high concentrations of deer and food sources we don't have here. "hunt the water source" or "find the oaks and hunt the acorns dropping" don't work so well in areas with no oaks and lots of water everywhere.

I figure being a canadian site, there's probably a lot more knowledge to be had in these forums than anywhere else for what works here. So what do you guys look for for main food sources in the woods? What do you search for when looking for sign or a new spot? Where do you look for bedding?

Here in the east it's mixed woods, usually pretty thick, tons of cover pretty much anywhere and unless you're near farmland it's usually woods/clearcuts and powerlines. Most people tend to hunt the clearcuts and powerlines or drive drive the roads.

 

[trevj]

Get out a walk around. A lot!

With the leaves off the trees, a lot of the game trails will stand out really well, almost like they were highlighted, if you pay attention.

Really harder to explain than to do. Go for walks in the woods. Doddle along the edges of fields and open areas. Look for well beaten trails. Deer are lazier than people. They like to walk the beaten paths, and follow the easy routes.

Follow the trails back in to the weeds from the open feeding areas. A dollar says you end up standing in a bet down flat spot that was deer bed!

Once you tune your eyes to seeing the stuff, you start seeing it everywhere! Really.

People tend to hunt the clear cuts and power lines because the deer have a pretty good food supply there, and come to the hunter, rather than having to go into the woods to go to the deer.

 

[Longwalker]

Yup, Tevj nailed it. Get out there and observe! Canada is a really big place. My local deer in Saskatchewan feed on wild peavine and aspen leaves in the bush some parts of the year, on alfalfa, clover and cereal crops or even canola other parts of the year, and may migrate to easy food like haystacks or grain bags when winter sets in. Some live in wide open plains and grassland, some in northern Taiga. Some of our deer travel several KM between feeding and bedding areas, most days. That's unheard of most other places. We have a few oaks in the river valleys of the SE, but no extensive Eastern nut bearing hardwood forests. Regions with hardwoods and mast crops require different hunting habits/techniques. Judging for your avatar, you may, perhaps benefit form checking out wild / feral apple trees as a food source. And bedding in Cedar / Alder swamps? Just a suggestion.

 

[DTM5]

We explore the property a lot and look for travel corridors; We are in mixed woods and thick brush too, not farm country. Deer are basically eating everything they can get their lips on, browsing constantly. We hunt pinch points between ponds, the side of ridges where travel and escape routes are plentiful, around beaver dams, and it seems always close proximity to swampy areas are good places to find travel routes and sign. Ambush style hunting is our approach, occasionally we do a push to get them moving or a super slow still hunt. Rattling antlers has worked a few times for us, brings in the young dumb ones fast if they are within earshot. If you rattle, be ready for fast action or be prepared to sit for an hour or two....just don't get busted. They'll come looking for the source of the noise. Using scent lures can help as well.

 

[greatwhite]

Look for tracks is probably the easiest thing to do. Once you have tracks start following them

 

[Kelly Timoffee]

Food source first. Find the barley and pea fields.

OR

Bring your own and they will find it.

 

[dand883]

Get out a walk around. A lot!

With the leaves off the trees, a lot of the game trails will stand out really well, almost like they were highlighted, if you pay attention.

Really harder to explain than to do. Go for walks in the woods. Doddle along the edges of fields and open areas. Look for well beaten trails. Deer are lazier than people. They like to walk the beaten paths, and follow the easy routes.

Follow the trails back in to the weeds from the open feeding areas. A dollar says you end up standing in a bet down flat spot that was deer bed!

Once you tune your eyes to seeing the stuff, you start seeing it everywhere! Really.

People tend to hunt the clear cuts and power lines because the deer have a pretty good food supply there, and come to the hunter, rather than having to go into the woods to go to the deer.

That's what i am in the process of. I just got an old camp in a new area and have been in the process of exploring around as i go.

We explore the property a lot and look for travel corridors; We are in mixed woods and thick brush too, not farm country. Deer are basically eating everything they can get their lips on, browsing constantly. We hunt pinch points between ponds, the side of ridges where travel and escape routes are plentiful, around beaver dams, and it seems always close proximity to swampy areas are good places to find travel routes and sign. Ambush style hunting is our approach, occasionally we do a push to get them moving or a super slow still hunt. Rattling antlers has worked a few times for us, brings in the young dumb ones fast if they are within earshot. If you rattle, be ready for fast action or be prepared to sit for an hour or two....just don't get busted. They'll come looking for the source of the noise. Using scent lures can help as well.

I've never really rattled much, always went for the quiet as i can approach.

Food source first. Find the barley and pea fields.

OR

Bring your own and they will find it.

There aren't many barley or pea fields in the middle of the wood, or else i would be hunting those.

 

[Kelly Timoffee]

That's what i am in the process of. I just got an old camp in a new area and have been in the process of exploring around as i go.



I've never really rattled much, always went for the quiet as i can approach.



There aren't many barley or pea fields in the middle of the wood, or else i would be hunting those.

Hit the local feed/ag shop and get some feed and watch your odds improve, depending on your regulations.Add that to calling and scent use and you'll be all set.

 

[trevj]

That's what i am in the process of. I just got an old camp in a new area and have been in the process of exploring around as i go.

I've never really rattled much, always went for the quiet as i can approach.

There aren't many barley or pea fields in the middle of the wood, or else i would be hunting those.

The more time you spend moving through the woods, the better your eye should develop, for seeing game trails, bedding spots, rubs, and scrapes.
Hunting the Boreal area North of Cold Lake AB, we were not allowed to bait, so we didn't. It was about learning to recognize the deer feeding areas, recognizing their transit areas, and sometimes, finding their bedding areas (which, often as not, meant they were not going to use those areas for quite a while), but mostly it was about getting out and walking, and paying attention to what is there to see.
Let your early season outings (Grouse season, eg.) serve as a reason to look and see what is around, paying particular attention to the deer you bust up, or that bust you.

Even in places you cannot hunt, if you can observe the deer, and how they behave, you can learn a lot.
Those are also places that are really good for trying out stuff like grunting and rattling. Most guys take two big antlers and beat them together like there are two monsters beating the crap out of each other, and every other deer within earshot scoots out of the grid square! If you ever get to see a couple bucks walking down the trail in the early season, while they spar with each other like a couple teenage boys at the mall, the noises they make are far quieter than you would have thought, but those ones sure do draw in the bucks within earshot(and that is farther than you would think, as they have excellent hearing!). Same with grunting. Its a far quieter noise than you expect, if you get to listen to undisturbed deer talking to each other.
The woods is NOT a perfectly quiet place, and you can actually make a lot of noise going through it, without scaring everything there into the next County, if you make the right kinds of noises. Getting out and watching deer that are not disturbed, really helps to understand that better too. A couple-three steps, stop, look around, listen, move on a bit, repeat. Deer live by their ears first, so walking through the woods like you are on a mission to get the dog tired out, is going to signal far and wide ahead of you that something 'wrong' is coming, but you can go through there sounding a lot closer to a moving deer, and find yourself far closer to them.

If you have the ability and willingness to do the work, and it's legal, look at rounding up a little seed for some choice food items. Alfalfa and other Legumes for the summer and early fall, Brassica's (cabbages, Brussels Sprouts) for after the frost (if they have not been eaten off already). Alfalfa has an awful lot of seeds for a pound carried, and the effect in an area will last far far longer than slugging fifty pound bags of bait/feed from the feed store in to make piles.

 

[53Izzy744]

Look for tracks is probably the easiest thing to do. Once you have tracks start following them

Yup, there is almost always a deer at the end of those tracks.

 

[TheCoachZed]

If you can hunt late-season, track in the snow. Most effective way to hunt in the east in the cold, and it's why the old-time heroes like the Benoits all did it.

Earlier in the season, look for old farmland, if there's some around. Old farms means old apple trees and berries and other things deer like to eat. My best hunting spots are all near old orchards.

Also, if you can find places to access with a canoe or kayak, that's huge. It reduces scent spread over an area, and will put you ahead of the people who are too lazy to get out of their truck, and also the people who don't have a boat, or never thought of hunting with one. Some of the best hunting places around here in southeast NB are all boat-only access.

 

[jonnyboy1014]

Ive got a really grassy area where i know deer sleep. Ive walked through it and found perfect imprints of deer lying down

 

[Runningfool]

In the immortal words of Rut Daniels, “hunt the hallways, not the kitchen or the bedroom”.

 

[trevj]

Yup, there is almost always a deer at the end of those tracks.

Y'know, that may be, but that has no bearing on whether you ever get to actually see those deer!

Case in point, I owned an acre and a half just north of Edmonton, on which I figure there were about 100K rabbit tracks put every time it snowed, but I never did see one of them there, nor in the surrounding bush areas where the tracks were.

You don't need to worry so much about that there are tracks there, if those tracks are made when they do you no good.

I used to figure any day out in the woods that I saw a deer, was a perfect day, whether it was running away, or I crept past it as it stood alondside a trail that I was on. If you scare up deer, at least you know they are there when you are! If you see tracks, you never know if they were just passing through, or they just watched you do that to their territory...