Whitetails Only Nation

Blog by Neil Dougherty

Sunday night found me pouring over deer camera picks as we kick off the 2009 rut tracking. The WOW site has been consistently producing a good array of buck photos. We are averaging around 100 picks per night and picking up couple of good looking younger bucks.

I pulled the PC cards off our second research site Sunday afternoon. We had about six thousand picks over the past week. I am still printing each bucks mug shot but it looks like we photographed around fifteen different bucks last week. I’ll give the cameras another week in hopes of finding a few more unique bucks before setting the starting number used to monitor the rut.

This fall is proving to be difficult to identify unique bucks in NY. Typically, the easiest way to perform a deer survey is to pre-bait a location for a couple of weeks with corn then place the cameras and continue baiting for two more weeks. The corn concentrates feeding and allows the cameras to capture some high quality close-ups. However, it is illegal to put any food out in NYS even for camera census work. In NY the best method for photographing deer is to stake out a food source. For the time being the WOW cameras are all situated on food plots to capture as many deer as possible during feeding.

The difficulty lies in staying on top of preferred food sources. The food plots are no doubt attractive but they may not be the most attractive food source for a given week. The Clover Ridge food plot has been planted with a mixture of clover and chicory. Both food sources are high in protein and attractive during spring, summer, and fall. You may have noticed the plot has had very little feeding activity over the past couple of weeks. The difficulty lies in the food sources surrounding the plot. The north and west side of the plot is an oak woods that is dropping both red and white acorns right now. The southern side of the plots is loaded with soft mast. Berries and fruits are in abundance right now and the deer are pulling off the food plots to take advantage of the bounty. FYI the highest number of photos taken last week was at the base of a pear tree not in food plots.

Look carefully at the picks they can tell you a lot about the deer woods.

Take for example this image from Clover Ridge. Deer are moving quickly past camera as they travel to more preferred food sources located off camera. The plot is not documenting a lot of head down slow feeding behavior. However, be watchful for a change in behavior. The first few heavy frosts will kill many of preferred foods deer are currently on and some of the soft and hard mast sources will be cleaned up. In a couple of weeks more deer will be feeding in this plot.

For those of you lucky enough to be out hunting keep in mind food preferences are changing rapidly this time of year. As soon as the acorns (white before red) or apples or one of a dozen preferred foods are cleaned up they move on to something else. Deer are packing on the pounds right now, bucks will pack on 30% of their body weight starting September 1 and ending around October 15th. Energy foods pack on the pounds. Acorns, beechnuts, and virtually all fruits and berries are highly sought this time of year. Concentrate your hunting efforts around these specialized food sources. Pay attention to the weather in your hunting area. Not just the day you are planning on hunting but the days preceding it as well. Deer know wind storms knock fruit and mast off trees. An apple tree with no ground fruit last week can have a bushel of fruit on the ground after a blow. Hunting around fruit trees is typically better during or immediately following a wind storm. Typically, deer start using food plots heavily once again after the “candy” has been cleaned up.

Keep the cameras rolling and keep cataloguing your bucks. We still have one more week until our initial buck census will be complete.

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