Where during the early morning?

So we’ve been pulling trail cam pictures off our deer land for a few months now, and as the bow season has started, the big bucks have been absent during the day with alot of night activity. In the summer we’d see the big bucks often in the daytime.

So as we approach gun season, I’ve started to wonder where these big brutes go during the day. Let’s assume the corn is down as most of the harvest in our area is done. Our land has no cultivated crop land, so we can’t simply sit around the edge of a field. We have 360 acres of a combination of heavy dense forest and cattle grazing ground.

The land is MI River bluff country and I try to stay up high as I’m convinced the bigger deer use the height to their tactical advantage by travelling or sitting up high.

I’m not sure of my question here, but I’m trying to determine on this type of land, how to hunt it even though we’ve been doing so for years. I’m wondering if we are pushing deer off their beds when we all walk in in the am.? So when do they bed if they are up all night? And where?

Thx in advance.

I think just the opposite! The BIG old bucks live/sleep in the lowest country you can get to. I use waders to get to my BIG/OLD deer spot…as they do not get old and big walking around in the same country the “Sorel boot hunters” hunt. A spot 10 sq. ft. above water is all they need and will use to spend the day away from everyone.

“Tactical”? lol Giving them WAY too much credit–during the rut. IMO

We have always hunted bluff country too. The biggest bucks I’ve ever seen have always come from the bottom to bottom 1/2 of those hills. They tend to sleep on the points out of the heavy wind, but close to ditches they can use as escape routes etc…

Once we figured out the main set of points that the biggest bucks liked to lay on, we had greater success in seeing them, getting them to move the way we wanted them to however was another story. Like Steve said, they get that big for a reason.

One year we knew we had a monster living on those points, and three of us walked in 2-3 points below where we suspected him to lay while it was still dark. We still hunted until about 8am, when the rest of the crew drove by on an ATV to start a slow walk towards us. They weren’t even off that ATV when that big buck ran right up to my dad who shot him.

That one measured 191, and had no intentions of staying anywhere near where he heard those ATVs, even before they stopped. We’ve also learned over the years that if we’re going to have people walk into opposite ends of a stretch of woods, even a pretty big stretch, we like to send them in at the same time. You’d be surprised how often a big buck will be running towards one end of a stretch as soon as somebody enters the other. And this holds true for big stretches. We did this routinely on a 120 acre wooded valley.