Quote:
Originally Posted by Smokinyotes
I have put a ton of time in so far this hunting season and sat in the blind for probably at least 40 hours. I’ve yet to see a buck that I would consider shooting but there are a lot of does and little bucks around. I would imagine there are big bucks in the area I’m hunting but they didn’t get that way by being stupid.
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So after my season of scouting/hunting I would say with confidence that in my area that there was a partial die off. I have noticed a decrease in doe numbers in some pockets but noticed a big drop in mature bucks. I am talking about bucks that I know survived hunting season as last year I ran my cams into Dec and had photos of them after the season. In my opinion the late spring combined with the late green up played a role. I didn’t run cams till after our nasty fire season and wonder if that had an impact. I have also been plagued by wolves/cougars that likely have an impact too but I always deal with predator issues
It definitely hit mature bucks harder and I would say in some areas the loss was pretty high. This year I could only find a small portion of the bucks from last year compared to normal. It has been a strange year season but I am not someone relying on what I physically see during the season
Still healthy deer numbers and definitely decent mature buck numbers but not what it was the past two years
The weather this year has messed up movement too. Previous years our action has been all day with a lot of action between 10am-2pm. This year majority of our action has been first light till 11am with almost nothing for the rest of the day
One of the reasons I hunt the bush is the fact I see a way longer period of movement vs those hunting open areas. With how restricted our action has been in the bush I imagine it’s impacted those hunting open areas more