See more deer by getting away from permanent stands
Basil Watts leases 180 acres of hunting land in Williamsburg County, SC with his lifelong hunting buddy, Jan Kauser from Goose Creek, SC. Like many other deer hunters, they are limited by the small property as to their number of permanent stands. However, as the season progresses, they increase their success by leaving those stands. Both hunters have taken uncountable numbers of deer and they are egalitarian about their hunting, taking bucks and does as they come.
“I started hunting deer so long ago nobody was baiting them and I don’t even know if baiting was legal,” Watts said. “We hunted deer with dogs on a lease in what is now the Town of St. James in Brunswick County, NC. We also still hunted by just sitting or sneaking through the woods. After losing that property to real estate development, I bought 362 acres at Ash in Brunswick County and began baiting deer by putting out corn piles and using spin feeders. I set up self-climbing or ladder stands in areas where I could see fairly well and the cover was mostly hardwoods. After a few days, deer would stop coming to feed while I was in the stand.”
He once watched a doe move downwind to detect his scent. After she alerted every deer in the area on several occasions by blowing and stomping, he outsmarted her.
“I set up downwind of where she had been smelling and seeing me,” he said. “The next time she looked up at the stand where I had been sitting, I put an end to all that. To this day, I still see very few deer, once one or two of them detect me in a permanent stand.”
They see and smell you
After several days of hunting season, deer learn where hunters are likely to be if they hunt only from permanent stands. They hear and see hunters entering and leaving and are able to detect hunters’ scent up to one week after they have left. This happens even if hunters do not see or hear the deer that have found them out.
“Stand burnout is a big problem,” Watts said. “I had a hunter on my lease who would not give our permanent stands a rest. Hunting every day, he walked from stand to stand. While we had some luck initially, the deer became so wary that they wouldn’t show until after dark and that bad impact lasted through at least two seasons. I knew I had to do something so I did not allow him to rejoin when I renewed the lease.”
Another thing Watts did was move his setups to places where deer had not yet been spooked by hunter activity. He used some pop-up blinds he bought for hunting turkeys or made blinds by tying lines to trees or poles and draping camouflage netting or tarps on them. In 2021, he bagged a 178-pound 9-pointer using that technique.
“I look for trails crossing little creek bottoms and set up blinds where I can see in a couple of directions. The key is cutting as little vegetation as possible to create shooting lanes. If the area is disturbed too much and we leave too much scent, deer will avoid that spot during daylight hours.”
Kauser said the biggest bugaboo for permanent stand hunters is the acorn drop. Deer that have been eating corn placed in the forest suddenly disappear.
“When you are hunting over a corn pile, you are waiting, not hunting,” Kauser said. “Where we hunt, acorns usually fall from late September through mid-October. Suddenly, we may see our corn rotting on the ground. That’s when I look for white oak acorns. One year, a hurricane hit and dropped all of the acorns early. It was very hard to figure out where to set up to hunt because the deer had scattered everywhere to eat them. Only after they had eaten most of them did they get into more of a pattern and we had better luck in December.”
Get set up
Kauser said that setting up or taking down a pop-up turkey blind or makeshift tarp blind takes only minutes. If he doesn’t have any luck within a day or two, it takes little time and effort to move them to another spot.
“It helps if you pick a spot near thick, potential bedding cover,” he said. “That makes it more likely deer will come out during shooting hours. I also look for scrapes, rubs, tracks and chewed acorns.”
Kauser said other food sources also influence deer feeding and movement. Agriculture can play a big role in the game of hide and seek.
“If deer are eating in a corn or soybean field, you need to set up near it,” he said. “Then, after the field is harvested, the waste grain sprouts, or the field is disked for replanting, and deer leave it for other foods. A newly planted wheat field can also pull deer away from baited stands. Our lease has a horse pasture and deer can head there to eat as well. You have to be mobile, constantly looking for food sources. You may have gone to a lot of trouble to build a comfortable stand and keep it baited and that’s why you want to keep going back to it, day after day. But if you aren’t seeing deer, you have to start looking around to see where they have gone and why and move with them.”
Mast and mast surveys
Since 1983 the NC Wildlife Resources Commission has conducted a Hard and Soft Mast Survey for the Mountain Region (ncwildlife.org/bear, click surveys, click hard and soft mast surveys). Soft mast includes pokeberry, cherry, grapes and blackgum. Hard mast includes white oak group, red oak group, hickories, beech and walnut. A good mast year equates to lower bear harvest and deer hunters can experience the same effect. However, WRC Deer Biologist Moriah Boggess said the relationship of hunter success to acorn abundance is complicated.
“Popular hunting culture oversimplifies oaks,” Boggess said. “North Carolina has many oak species, which is important because each species is masting on its own calendar. Red oaks have a big mast year every 3 to 5 years. White oaks have a big mast year every other year or so. White oaks are more reliable.”
Nutrients of acorns vary widely across species. Deer may seem to prefer white oaks more than red oaks, but it depends upon the individual tree. Humans crave sugar and sweet foods, but a deer is seeking out a plant that meets its current nutritional needs. That demand varies according to individual deer and availability of other foods. Acorns are so attractive because they are nutrient dense and excellent sources of carbohydrate and fats. Deer have adapted to eating acorns, but not to eating corn.
“That’s why hunting deer where they are is so important,” Boggess said. “You can’t take a pattern from one year and expect to see the same pattern the next year because species masting is going to change. Deer behavior is also really changing from the late summer to early fall because those food sources are really changing. It’s like taking a snow globe and shaking everything up and starting all over again. When we have big mast years, it can really turn things upside down for hunters.”
Plant oaks for future hunting success
Each year, the North Carolina Forest Service (ncforestservice.gov) offers 16 million tree seedlings of 40 species for sale. Oak species availability varies according to the acorns collected by volunteers and NCFS personnel.
NCFS also helps landowners by developing forest management plans, offering tree planting advice, cost share assistance, prescribed burn assistance and other woodland services.
The North Carolina Woods for Wildlife Conservation Initiative strives to engage more woodland owners in forest management and certification, enhance habitat for species of conservation concern and promote the conservation of imperiled habitats including longleaf and bottomland hardwood forests.
The project area is 14 counties in southeastern North Carolina. Through 2022, it helped improve 1415 acres of bottomland hardwoods, complete 36,446 acres of prescribed burning in longleaf, improve 9467 acres of longleaf, restore 11,600 acres of longleaf through plantings, and reach more than 10,000 landowners and citizens through outreach, technical assistance, management plan preparation and cost share assistance.
The South Carolina Forestry Commission (scfc.gov) offers 15 million tree seedlings, including oak seedlings, annually. It also offers forest planning and management assistance to landowners.
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