Does a vehicle moving through the woods scare deer away or just bump them a 100 yards or so? If you spook deer from a field, will they leave the area to find another food source? These are questions that hunters have been asking for decades, and there is probably no answer that works every time, yet thermal drone technology allows us to watch how deer react. The response to our last thermal drone article was good, so I’ll follow up with this post from Wildlife Research.
Rod Keck’s Advice
I once hunted in Nebraska with Rob Keck, who was the Executive Director of the National Wild Turkey Federation. With a title like that, one might think of him as just a “turkey man,” yet he hailed from South Carolina, where bag limits are very liberal, and he excelled at filling them. We were given stands for the morning hunt and debated how to get there without spooking deer in the flat terrain. I considered sneaking in along a two-track, but Keck had a better plan. “Let’s have the farmer drop us off in his truck,” he said, reasoning that deer were used to that sound. We did, and I had deer near my stand as soon as daylight arrived.
Deep Woods vs Farmland
Maryland’s black bear season opened on Monday, and I offered my box blind to a hunting buddy, especially since the opening-day weather was forecast to be rainy and windy. The box blind is just below the top of a mountain, and the challenge was getting there without making noise or using headlights. After an intense discussion at the clubhouse, he decided to drive to the top of the ridge, park the UTV where the wind would blow its scent down the other side, and then walk to the blind. Although I don’t often drive the logging roads of our hunt club, others frequently do, and one day I drove noisily up a steep hill when deer jumped up on both sides of the road. Had they been 75 yards or more from the path, I doubt they would have moved at all. They had to hear the loud engine and tires chugging up a rocky road, yet they held still until I was nearly on top of them.
