Hunting Spooked Deer

April 17, 2012 By Bill Winke

I shot a doe on opening day of archery season on a large tract of public land. Can I keep hunting that stand or should I move on? - Dave Rolls, Waynesboro, Pa.

HOW TO ASSESS THE DAMAGE

Your question has a fairly simple answer but I'm going to elaborate more for people who have other questions about spooked deer.

First to your question. I think you can go back to hunting that stand a week later. I don't think removing the doe will have enough impact to keep deer from that area for any longer than that. I would be more worried about other hunters walking through the area than I would about the fact that you left a bit of blood and human scent to remove the doe. Ideally, you were able to get her out without a lot of commotion. That is important, but assuming that fact, you should be fine going back to the stand a week later.

Now for the bigger issue: how to determine what to do with spooked deer and when to give up on a stand for the season. Here are my thoughts on that subject.

NOT ALL SCARES ARE THE SAME

There are two types of scared. When a buck is badly scared, he knows that the source of his shock is a human and he knows exactly where that human was positioned at the time of the scare. He now associates a location with danger. Often he will turn inside out and he busts out of the area.

Maybe he saw you in the stand and realized that you were a human. Possibly, he picked up a heavy dose of your scent that hit him like a slap in the face. He knew you had to be very close. Or maybe you shot at him and nicked him. Either way, you nearly scared him out of his skin.

The second type of scared is a lot milder. This is not outright fear, but something that suggests caution. A mildly scared buck will bound off rather than blow out like a rocket. Maybe he heard you walking to your stand, or even saw you from across the field. Possibly, he smelled you but was not close enough to get a real heavy dose or maybe he saw you in the stand but was not able to figure out exactly what you were. He knows something is wrong, but in his mind, the danger isn't imminent. He hasn't tied true danger to a specific location. I would say this is the reaction you would get when a deer encounters the area where you removed the doe and left a lot of your scent.

WHY IT MATTERS

Bucks adjust their travels when they casually encounter humans, but only after they run into the scent on a regular basis. It is not something that causes them undue stress with the first event. They are constantly adjusting their daily movements to avoid human activity. It is part of their daily lives. A single mildly threatening incident is no big deal.

However, if the buck is badly scared, shocked or frightened and pinpoints the source of the danger to a specific location, he will not soon forget what happened nor will he soon return to that location. Every time he is near that area, he will be cautious, probably for weeks to come. So figuring out what to do after spooking a buck starts with figuring out how badly he is spooked in the first place.

IF THEY ARE MILDLY SPOOKED

Mildly scared bucks certainly become more cautious and harder to kill in that area. You have damaged your chances for success. That is the main reason that the first time you hunt a new stand is usually your best chance for success. However, you may not have completely dashed your hopes.

There are two levels of mildly spooked. The first one is when the buck encounters you, or your scent, where he is used to running into humans. If you alerted the buck in a way that he might consider normal for that area, you can expect little negative reaction. For example, let's say he hit your scent where he is used to finding human scent, on a walking path or a woodland trail near a park, for example. Maybe you bumped him near a roadway where he often encounters people. Or he saw you in an area where the farmer often walks to check fence. It is not a big deal.

If that is the case, keep hunting the stand as you normally would, in your regular rotation, resting it as often as you might if you had not spooked a buck.

The second type of mild scare occurs in a place and in a fashion where human activity is not a regular occurrence. In this case, the buck will not be so forgiving. Let's say you jump him from his bed as you are sneaking in to your stand. As he bounds off, you think, "He didn't look too spooked."

Maybe he didn't look overly spooked, but deer don't like surprises in their bedrooms. He will remember it. If they are not used to seeing a person doing what you just did, they will see it as a moderately dangerous invasion. It may be a couple of days before the buck comes back and when he does, he will likely be very cautious. This is not what I would call a bad scare because the buck won't pin your presence to a specific tree. You were simply walking through a place where he didn't expect to encounter a human.

Now it makes sense to wait a few days longer than you normally would before going back to that stand. The hope is that the buck will cautiously pass through the area a few times without perceiving any danger and forget the incident, and quickly return to natural movement. If you go in too soon, you reinforce the threat and he may stop using that area.

IF THEY ARE BADLY SCARED

When a buck attributes your presence to a particular tree, and shows great alarm at the discovery, you may as well stop hunting it for several weeks. In other words, you need to move on. That is the safest bet. He probably won't totally leave the area, so moving to a completely different part of the buck's range may still produce the shot you have been working all season to create.

There is one situation where you can ignore a spooked buck. If you bump a buck during the rut that you have never seen before, he may well be simply moving through the area. In that case, don't abandon the stand. There is no sense wasting a good stand to keep from further alarming a buck that may never return anyway. Go back to hunting the stand as soon as the wind is right.

CONCLUSION

Every situation is different; you don't want to needlessly abandon a great stand nor cling too long to a stand that the buck will now avoid. I nicked a buck last season that disappeared off the face of the earth. I never got him on any trail cameras and never saw him again. He knows that spot equals danger. On the flip side, I have seen bucks come back to the same field fifteen minutes after the farmer bumped them off.

They know how to rate the dangers they encounter and react accordingly.

You need to learn to do the same thing.