5Sep
Whitetails Only Watchers: WOW
Join nationally acclaimed wildlife consultant and WO’s Director of Field Operations Neil Dougherty for some trail camera scouting. Neil has rigged 3 hunting locations with remote BuckEye Cams at WO’s 200 acre Deer Hunting and Research Property in Southwestern NY (see map). The BuckEye Cams are downloading pictures 24-7 to this website putting you in the middle of the action at the click of a mouse!
Join the “WO Nation” by “weighing in” with some whitetail watching of your own. Tell us what you are seeing out there and what your cameras are recording. Send your reports and pictures to: amanda@elkpublishing.com and give Neil some help with his bi-weekly blog and check it every day for important updates.
Check out our three buckeye cams live now by clicking on the icons below!
 Buckeye Cam1 |
Buckeye Cam2 |
Buckeye Cam3 |
blew it this morning! had good activity up on the hill near some cut timber. had a 3 1/2 yr old 8 come right underneath me following a doe into a 1/10 acre clover plot. got a bad shot off. tracked blood 200 yards, he never bedded then just quit bleeding. i hope he makes it another week and a half and someone gets a rip at him with a gun. i had a 2 1/2 yr old 8 point just about walk in to me while tracking. i feel terrible about wounding a buck i tried so hard to get the last couple of weeks. oh well it happens.
If you think you had a vital hit you should contact Deer Search they have leashed dogs that are trained to track deer. Your ‘Oh Well It happens’ comment is disgusting.
Tues 11/10 saw minimal activity in AM. 11/11 – does still holding tight, only coming out to feed 4pm – and then getting flushed by bucks, and this is not related to human and/or hunting pressure. My son saw a nice 2 – 3 year old flush a doe out of a food plot last evening at last light. A few big boys ( 3+) are showing up on scrape cameras at night, activity on the food plot & scrape cams has slowed signifigantly since Sunday 11/8. Scraping activity in general is picking up during the past week with new scrapes showing up on a regular basis.
The chase was on! Hunted today in Mendon, NY. This morning had three 1.5 year olds hanging around and acting tough toward each other. One came right in to grunting and the can. Moved to a different location for the late morning and afternoon hunt. At 1:30 a 3.5 year old 8 pt came crashing through chasing after a doe. (Three smaller bucks lost the trail about 100 yards away.) Both were running around for about 15 minutes. She tried to give him the slip and after a couple of loops decided to take a breather right under my stand. She saw me grab my bow but was too tired to care. Once he saw her the chase was on again but after a couple of mouth bleats he stopped 10′ from the tree. End of the show.
Sightings have slowed down quite a bit over the last few days on the homefront. Not sure if the breeding phase has started to kick in or what…morning hunts have been better than afternoons.
tony, the deer i hit i saw the following day chasing a doe, the comment you said was disgusting was not meant lightly. the fact of the matter is that every one who bow hunts loses a deer now and again, trust me i felt terrible. back to reporting deer movement, i saw a 2 1/2 yr old 8 point tending a doe yesterday at 1:30 beside the road on my way off the hill. my uncle witnessed a slow version of a breeding party yesterday. 3 spikes and a 4 pointer and a big 8 were all trying to get close to doe. they weren’t running alll over the place acting crazy though.
Eric – OK so we can assume it was a flesh wound & non-vital hit, thats good news. Their recovery abilities are amazing, your comments didn’t reflect the diligence that you appear to have demonstrated in the field, and I apologize. Thanks for the updates, hopefully I will have something to report tomorrow evening, rained out today.
Nice 3 1/2 year old breeding doe this morning in front of me.
i also seen 3 bucks on sat in bow range. 8 point following 4 point. seen a little buck with 1 side left must of got in it with the other 2 bucks haha
My son & I sat all day 11/15 and observed no activity. I am in contact with 3 other bowhunters in our area – we all observed no deer movement in a variety of locations. Don’t know what to make of it, or it was just ‘one of those days’. New scrapes are still appearing. We still have not seen a ‘chase’ this season.
To tony in washington co. i also am hunting wash co. near comstock. both sat 11/14 and sunday 11/15 were slow days with no sightings. fri. 11/13 i saw a button buck and small 4 pt. on the evening hunt. deer still coming into my food plots.
Hi All,
Decided to give my NY property a break this past weekend and stay home and hunt NJ. Not much action there either. Temps got really warm even first thing in the AM.
Sat PM saw a large 6 ptr and a spike. Sun AM saw nothing. Mon AM had 6 does come thru and just mill around before heading to a bedding area. No bucks following. ??
Will be headed back to NY this weekend for the rifle opener.
Good Luck to all.
Look at camera 1, photo 910. Can anyone tell what that is a picture of? Looks like some kind of big cat to me.
ken, i thought the same thing….a co-worker has a lion on his cellphone back here near albany
‘Lockdown’ is over here and the bucks are back on their feet looking, if you are practicing QDM this is whats been happening the past week – NOTHING – starting 11/17 we saw a couple 2 year olds on their feet, and very susceptible to calling (grunts). Yesterday I moved at 10 am closer to where I knew the does were hanging out, on my move I saw a yearling 4 pt eating in a small food plot at 10:15am. At 1230 I had a 2 year old walk past my stand and out into an alphalpha field, I grunted at him, I wanted a better look, and I had a doe decoy in the corner he didn’t notice. He would turn and look but not come. He was about 80yds out into the field when I heard the 2nd deer coming , and he turned down a runway and came 8 paces from my stand, a beautiful 3 year old 9 pt (170 lbs / 118″). After I watched him fall, I got on the phone. Jabbering on the phone I turned around and there was another 2 year old buck at 30 yards. When I got down to the truck and we were standing around an hour later there was yet ANOTHER 2 year old in the pasture/sanctuary. During retrieval, that yearling 4pt was bedded within feet of the edge of that plot. (you can find photos of this bow kill shortly on http://www.adkhunter.com) There are many lessons in this story – Good luck guys. PS- Keith hope you check this in time.
I posted before reading Neils analysis ‘Stuck in the Rut’. Keep that in mind when you read Neils post from today after reading my story, you will probably go back and re-read my entry. Hats off to Neil & Craig this was a great idea ! -
Ken,
It looks like a big cat but look closer ,I believe it’s a coyote that has sarcoptic mange. Thats why the tail looks like a cord, not being bushy as the norm.Also look at the neck / head region at an angle from the right of your screen , you will see the point not the roundness of a cats head. I have killed many coyotes with mange and they look cat like in a distance.
Doe fawn family groups are getting back together. Still some chasing going on but not like 2 weeks ago. behavior getting back to “normal”. More food driven than breeding.
Chasing was observed on both ends of our cooperative Saturday 11/21 during rifle season. These are the first hard chases that we have observed, and it appears this is likely caused by fewer does being in estrous ? Food plot activity over the weekend was non-existent here, and it is not related to hunting pressure as the one I watched on Sunday had not been hunted at all during archery season.
Boy that was close ! Guess not all the neigbors are cooperating ? See pic #582 on camera # 2.
Has anyone seen any older (3 1/2) yr. olds or older this past week, (21st to 29th) let alone harvest any.I saw 2 bucks 1 1//2 and a 2 yr old 4 and 5 point respectively here in 3C. I hunt Catskill Mtns. and some Hudson Valley too. I still hunt, with stand hunting at prime time on key trails. Many people I spoke with said they are not seeing much for antlers this season.Could it be because these older bucks are a different critter or are you guys not seeing them too?Like to hear responses.
I have quite a network of freinds who hunt mature bucks.Since
Nov.20,none of us have seen a mature buck.Actually buck sightings in general have declined quite a bit.Does with fawns are being seen daily.I shot a 2 1/2 yr.old that had been wounded,i hated burning my tag but could not let the deer suffer.A neighbor had wounded it and never followed up on the deer.All of this hunting is in 7A,7R,Oswego,OnondagaCayuga counties.
deer sightings are few and far between for me since gun season started. road hunters got a deer thanksgiving night. there is lots of pressure all around me.
Same here guys, and we do not have the ‘intense’ hunting pressure. There have been a couple of sighting of a buck we think is 4.5 or 5.5, in thick cover with no shot opportunity. During the past few days 2 bucks estimated at 3.5 holed up with a hot doe in Albany County. The only deer we saw Sunday 11/29 were bumped by another hunter leaving a stand.
When do you expect the second rut to start? when will the older bucks start moving again? I have been seeing several 1.5 yr old bucks the last week or so, but nothing older.
Deer hunting has been terrible for my steuben county land. Myself and another guy saw a total of 5 deer this weekend. One doe and four fawns. I found two dead deer. One was a spike horn and the other was a female fawn. Trail camera picked up two bucks the past week, a 3 pointer and a 6 pointer. My food plot is hammered so i don’t think i can rely on that to draw any deer in this coming weekend with the cold weather. My oak trees didn’t have nearly as good a crop of acorns as my neighbors did (I’m at a higher elevation). I hope others are doing better than me.
Buck sightings were very few during gun season. The first 2 bucks I saw all season was a 6-pointer & a spike on Dec. 3. Not many bucks being taken around here, but the ones that were all seem to be big ones. The next town over from me, someone shot a 12-pointer that will be a new county record. The land next to ours is a 30 acre piece. It is hunted by 12 guys. Between them, they didn’t even see a doe. What they did find was 3 dead deer shot by a .22. They were an 8-pointer, 6-pointer & a spike. Seems like a guy on top of the hill is baiting them & shooting them at night as a vendetta.
I wonder what you guys have for predators; bear, coyotes ,big bobcats. Between the bears and the coyotes around here”Ulster , Sullivan and Green ” counties they have really put a hurt on our herd. I hunt the coyotes and get a few, and I guide a few hunters after deer season thru the winter but more need to hunt them to bring the numbers down. As for deer, 2; 3.5 yr. olds were taken in the mountains not real big but one had heavy palmated left beam,another buck scored 135 in western Ulster county .Good luck guys.
There was alot of movement & feeding, and hitting scrapes after yesterdays storm, which dumped 6-8″ in our area. Mostly nighttime activity. They have started fighting again this week.
Was out black powder hunting yesterday in about 12″ snow and came across a couple of red spots in snow seem there is a doe in heat in the area I was hunting and I did see two decent bucks in area and there still there (lol) as i missed them both .
forgot to tell you this was Southeastern Mass.
You made a fair point, but have you actually thought about how it might affect other people? I do not say you are wrong, I just need to indicate that there’s more than one side to this story.