How many years trying before calling it quits?

Long post short last year was my third year gun season in WI and the first where I saw something and actually fired a shot, bagging the 5 pointer. So far this year it’s right back to nothing anywhere, but plenty of shots all around on private land. With only 17% of the total deer harvest coming from public land, how many years with nothing would you try before hanging it up? All I ever hear is people talk about all the deer they pass on looking for record book bucks and I can’t even get one fawn. Just seems as a lost cause to me currently.

I wouldn’t quit, I would do the opposite. It’s not as easy as going out opening day and climbing a tree and shooting a deer. There is work involved with it and not just in the fall. Find several pieces of state land and go scout it in the spring. Find where the deer are traveling and try to figure out why. Take a GPS and mark those high traffic spots. Do more scouting in the summer and look for food sources the deer are targeting. Putting some boots on the ground before the season will make a great deal of difference.

Salmon,
It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.

I do scout all spring, summer, and fall while mushroom hunting and at work. I go to different properties each day, usually sitting over trails between ag fields or potential bedding. It’s not like I’m out in the woods blind, I just don’t see the point when I’m out this much in all these different places and the results are all the same.

It is what you make it.

I didn’t fire a shot this year but have 3 in the freezer and spend time hunting with 19 people. It was my most fun year yet and I went into it with zero expectations, actually anticipating only hunting 2 days and getting back to fishing.

In the woods eyes on the ground at all times investigating deer travel, habitat, and preditors. I’ve never been a pre season scouter.

All that information you gather you incorporate into your hunting strategy each day.

If you enjoy the time outside I’d like to think that is enough to keep you going.

There’s a lot of ways to deer hunt and lots of social activities surrounding deer hunting… Not all are enjoyable to everyone!! Might be time for a change of hunting style and or social aspect to keep it fun.

I bring lots of people in the boat fishing… The ones who don’t look outside the boat at nature are sure to have a lesser expertise than those who do. It is something I notice immediately with each person. If deer ran the streets and we’re surrounded by buildings I wouldn’t hunt them even if it was easy!

Walked 10 miles of woods this weekend only to drag and happily butcher deer other people shot. Met lots of new people and had a blast!! If it was 3 weekends of stand time I wouldn’t have had nearly as much fun.

Good luck and keep you head up. Not everyone is supposed to fill a tag and nobody deserves a deer.

“All I ever hear is people talk about all the deer they pass on looking for record book bucks..””

That is because anytime someone opens their mouth about taking anything less than a “trophy” people feel the need to jump down their throat about how its too little and they should have let them grow. The same goes for when someone keeps a walleye, crappie or gill that someone would have thrown back. You don’t hear of the smaller animals because of the ridicule that is unnecessarily handed out by holier than you “sportsmen”. (Im sure I have been guilty of it myself)

I used to hund in SE MN and we have 10-12 ppl in our party, we did mainly drives. About 50/50 private to public. We pushed some gnarly stuff that the deer would spend their days in where hunters did not want to go. Some years were better than others but we always got good numbers of deer. Sometimes not till the last day of the season. It pays to keep going and not give up.

The big question is. Do you still enjoy it?

I certainly understand that it can be frustrating when it seems everyone but you is seeing and bagging deer. I’ve been there myself, it can feel like you’re hopelessly snakebitten, but it only takes one minute to change that. You have to keep the faith.

A couple of points that may help.

It sounds like you’ve identified some spots, so the biggest thing is to keep sitting on them!

Keep in mind, the sudden appearance of a billion guys all wearing orange and crashing around in the woods does NOT go unnoticed by the deer! They will stop whatever they are doing until they feel like it’s safe to carry on. If you keep sitting on high percentage shots, you will be rewarded, you just have to keep in mind that the travel and use patterns are disrupted by the season opener.

BTW, this is true on public and private land, this is just a fact of life with deer hunting and everone has to deal with it to some extent.Even on private land, it’s not always easy. Very few of us have the kind of vast tracts of land where deer simply never leave our property. So even if you have private land it can be frustrating when the deer you’ve been watching all year suddenly disappear and/or get shot by the neighbors.

The biggest thing IMO is to change things up in terms of trying to hunt more and hunt differently. Question everything about your setup and be willing not to change where you hunt, but change how you hunt where you hunt.

Finally, in Saxton Pope’s classic book on hunting with the bow, he points out that his indian companion and teacher Ishi was more successful at hunting not because of equipment or talent in using it. Ishi bagged more game because he was simply vastly more skilled at hunting. Huting has a long learning curve with many bumps in the road along the way. It’s also always easy to know when you do things right. Or wrong, sometimes. That’s part of it as well.

Grouse

Bow hunters often go through this after spending countless hours a season, sometimes having deer within 5 yards from your tree stand without being able to draw or release an arrow. Honestly I still recall those hunts just as well as the few times I harvested a deer. The memories still haunt me many years later. That’s what deer hunting is all about to me.

sticker wrote:

It’s not as easy as going out opening day and climbing a tree and shooting a deer.

Wait…its not??!?!

I think the failure to determine where deer will move into safe areas is one of the least used stand locations for deer hunting. Don’t disregard hunting trails that lead into cover.
For the most part the deer are looking to bed down and hide when the Orange Army invades. Opening morning during the first hours of light the deer will be running for cover. Find areas where the deer have been feeding or using Scrape/Rut areas, then look for trails leading into and out of areas that will give the deer sanctuary.

The struggle of public land hunting…

This may sound crazy, but put down the gun and grab a bow if you can. Up until this year I have been hunting nothing but public both eastern WI and now SE MN. Just in the last month I have got extremely lucky and stumbled into a few farmers that let me have the run of the place. I mention getting into archery because over the last 6 years i have noticed that the day of gun opener the deer either push into neighboring property or hold up in the nastiest country you can imagine. I actually considered my season over the day gun hunting opened!

Now if you insist on gun hunting, I would recommend thinking outside the box. This is especially true when hunting smaller tracts of public. You often hear people say get way back in away from the hunters. Well if way back in is only a half mile, everyone is going there. Try to find spots that don’t look like much. The biggest deer I’ve seen on public were in the weird spots that get overlooked. If they thought like every other deer they would probably be dead already!

Public is not going to be a numbers game in most cases. In 6 years I took one deer, he was nice, but by no means breaking any records!

Good luck and keep at it! Once you learn too think like those weird public land bucks it becomes really fun!

I’d have a bunch more questions to directly assess your situation, but sounds like you enjoy hunting and are just frustrated by lack of success. The easiest thing you can do, especially on public land, to increase your success is get into your spot early and be settled in for at least 30-60 minutes before the rest of orange army starts going into the woods. The other is to stay in stand as long as possible, especially over lunch. Both of these scenarios get the other hunters working for you by moving deer.

I didn’t hunt deer the last 3 years because of the dissapointment of hunting public land and I have hunted deer my entire life. This year I decided to hunt again because I missed gun season so much. I settled on an area I found lots of sign while Grouse hunting. I got in my stand an hour before light on sat. 30 min before light here comes a flashlight wandering towards me. My worst nightmare come true. I flashed my light at him, he grumbled his displeasure OUT LOUD possibly ruining an opportunity at something nearby but left the area. This was thick cover and he had no exact location picked out. He went in a circle before coming back to me. I stuck it out and got a nice mature doe Sunday morning. I thought my spot was safe since I just pulled off the side of the road and no parking spots were apparent. I was wrong. No matter how much you think nobody else could possibly pick the same area they usually do. Next year I plan to find a smarter spot AND have a secondary spot as well. It’s amazing with the plethora of public land up north how small it seems during gun season. Oh on opener afternoon when I came back after lunch a guy pulls up to me and says they planned to drive the woods I was hunting! He asked if I was hunting there and I thanked him for the consideration. No doubt in my mind gun hunting public land on opener morning is a major crap shoot. Nobody has any idea who plans to hunt where. The only way to avoid is to start after light but then you miss that magic hour and being all set up ahead of time.

I have a good friend that just luv`s hunting Public land. He has spent a ton of time and energy learning to stalk and he has gotten very good at it he never sits. He may cover 10-12 miles in a days hunt, he wears all wool and a very soft boots that will flex and makes less noise. If he can spot a deer bedded I have seen him get within 10 yards for the shot without the deer spooking. It is the type of hunting not for everyone but I am always amazed how many deer and nice ones he pulls out of these public grounds.

I went 7 years without getting a deer when I started bow hunting. Also took me a couple of weeks every year to get my head screwed on straight using the wind in my favor a instead of the deers. Don’t give up.

Evan Pheneger wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>sticker wrote:</div>
It’s not as easy as going out opening day and climbing a tree and shooting a deer.

Wait…its not??!?!

Well, if you can get someone else to do all the pre season work, then I guess it is…

Tom P. wrote:

he wears all wool and a very soft boots that will flex and makes less noise.

Don’t get me wrong here because I love my wool jackets and bibs, there is nothing warmer than wrapping up in wool clothing.
The problem with it in the woods though is, every seed pod that has a spiny sticker attached, is attached onto your clothing. I walk through a briar thicket at one time in my wool gear, you can’t imagine how long it took me
to pull that poop off my gear.

Quiet? YES!, Warm? YES!, Except it is not very Hunter friendly in the thickets.

reelman wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Tom P. wrote:</div>
he wears all wool and a very soft boots that will flex and makes less noise.

Don’t get me wrong here because I love my wool jackets and bibs, there is nothing warmer than wrapping up in wool clothing.
The problem with it in the woods though is, every seed pod that has a spiny sticker attached, is attached onto your clothing. I walk through a briar thicket at one time in my wool gear, you can’t imagine how long it took me
to pull that poop off my gear.

Quiet? YES!, Warm? YES!, Except it is not very Hunter friendly in the thickets.

Yea he hates that part of wool and it itches like h-ll, but he is willing to do what it takes.

The amount of time he spends going over Google Maps trying to decipher bedding areas and scouting those areas ahead of time, he does defiantly earn every deer he shoots. To him that is the ultimate to be able take that deer right from his bed room. In the last 14 years that I have known him he has never failed to take at least one deer every year.

If your not enjoying it, do something else. No sense in wasting time unhappy.

I shot a nice buck my first year hunting at age 12. Never saw another deer for 4 years. I learned to hate hunting whitetail. Still don’t enjoy it that much.
However, what I learned in those 5 years was to go where no me else will. This dumb azz tradition of the 9 days around thanksgiving for 600,000 hunters to hit the woods at the same time is crazy. Wold much rather see multiple seasons like Colorado, and spread it out. But then the bow hunters woyld cry becuase they need special treatment and it would interfere with them.

Even on my private land I see everything change in minutes before season. Hunting pressure changes everything when you have that many people out at once. Spread it out, less people, and deer will remain on their natural patterns. More fun to hunt that way in my opinion

I think one other thing that might help those who started hunting between about 1985 and 2010 is to understand that those 25 years represented (in many areas in the midwest) the peak of the peak of the peak of sustained whitetail numbers.

In about 2005, the crew hunting adjacent land was complaining to me about the lack of deer numbers because they hadn’t filled the meat pole with 7 deer by noon of opening day. They had done so for about 10 years and couldn’t figure out how it happened that they had “failed” to shoot 7 deer in 6 hours.

Taking the long view, what we have now is closer IMO to normal if you look at things in terms of a hunting lifetime. We may never get back to the extreme numbers of deer we saw in that 25 year span, so expecting “things to come back” to that level is probably misguided and sets bad expectations.

If it were easy, it would be called “deer shooting”.

Grouse

“I think one other thing that might help those who started hunting between about 1985 and 2010 is to understand that those 25 years represented (in many areas in the midwest) the peak of the peak of the peak of sustained whitetail numbers.”

Unbelievably true!! Deer mgt was the polar opposite of what it is now.I tell people that all the time.

Another thing to remember is not all areas are created equal in terms of opportunities or trophy potential. I have access to private property and some public that doesn’t see a lot of hunting pressure. I do the majority of my hunting during the Oct archery season that sees virtually zero hunting pressure. Even if I had a rifle in my hands I would have only had an opportunity to harvest a deer on about 25% of my stands the last two years. It may be a bit misleading because we had two tough winters in 2013 & 2014 so the deer densities have been low and are just now starting to recover to better numbers. I also have lack of mineral, agriculture and predator suppression that surely has some kind of impact.

I’ve just learned to let the area set the expectations. As others have said: If it’s not fun it’s probably time to mix it up or make some changes.

I haven’t seen a deer on opening day of WI gun season yet, and have 5 years hunting it. I have taken a doe every year but its always been after opening weekend except one which was the Sunday.
I have only seen one buck hunting gun season and never got a shot and then that buck was taken two days later by another hunter in the same woods I heard it get shot.

So I guess what you could say is I know the feeling of not seeing a lot of deer, or feeling like everyone else is somehow luckier.

Biggest advice I can give is use every map the DNR has, find every possible type of public land you can and hunt it. Also maybe try extending your season and by that I mean try bow-hunting or maybe add a muzzleloader to your arsenal and don’t be afraid to go out in antlerless only season or holiday hunt and find a doe or two DONT GET CAUGHT THINKING ITS ALL ABOUT A BUCK AND A BIG RACK. I’d personally rather take a doe at the end of the season and not see another person all day, rather than have 5 hunters walk by and move a big buck towards me and get lucky. (I would love for that to happen, but I would rather see no one else and it be just me and the deer I took)

What part of state are you in?

get setup where its hard to get to and thick. go for a hiding spot versus a view.

Make some ground blinds from deadfall tree limbs, prior to the season. Have several to rotate thru during the season, morning and evening stand. Don’t be afraid to sit during mid day. I’ve shot plenty of deer at noon. I don’t use scent block. My brother and I have always done well but others in our party of 6 seem to never even see a dear. I wonder if they are looking, sitting still, keeping quiet, etc….never give up. Find a group to hunt with and try a different tactic or two. My brother chain smokes in the woods too and he always gets more than one dear.

Make some ground blinds from deadfall tree limbs, prior to the season. Have several to rotate thru during the season, morning and evening stand. Don’t be afraid to sit during mid day. I’ve shot plenty of deer at noon. I don’t use scent block. My brother and I have always done well but others in our party of 6 seem to never even see a dear. I wonder if they are looking, sitting still, keeping quiet, etc….never give up. Find a group to hunt with and try a different tactic or two. My brother chain smokes in the woods too and he always gets more than one dear. Antler soup isn’t my thing so I shoot anything from a button buck , doe, etc…. The smaller deer are more suitable for steaks and chops anyways.

Nic Barker wrote:

I haven’t seen a deer on opening day of WI gun season yet, and have 5 years hunting it. I have taken a doe every year but its always been after opening weekend except one which was the Sunday.
I have only seen one buck hunting gun season and never got a shot and then that buck was taken two days later by another hunter in the same woods I heard it get shot.

So I guess what you could say is I know the feeling of not seeing a lot of deer, or feeling like everyone else is somehow luckier.

Biggest advice I can give is use every map the DNR has, find every possible type of public land you can and hunt it. Also maybe try extending your season and by that I mean try bow-hunting or maybe add a muzzleloader to your arsenal and don’t be afraid to go out in antlerless only season or holiday hunt and find a doe or two DONT GET CAUGHT THINKING ITS ALL ABOUT A BUCK AND A BIG RACK. I’d personally rather take a doe at the end of the season and not see another person all day, rather than have 5 hunters walk by and move a big buck towards me and get lucky. (I would love for that to happen, but I would rather see no one else and it be just me and the deer I took)

What part of state are you in?

Some good advice here about archery, doe, and antlerless hunts. The hunting won’t change because we’re bummed about it. But we can probably find ways to make it more fun and expect less. Best of luck.