Deer Droppings
2015

Welcome to our Deer Droppings!

What are our deer droppings? That's simple, they are simply observations and thoughts that we have about whitetail deer and the outdoors. We also thought that calling them deer droppings was a little more creative than calling them our deer thoughts and observations. Hopefully the name will put a smile on your face!

How often will we find deer droppings? It's hard to tell when something will catch our fancy, but it won't be every day. Our fancy can be hard to catch at times so look for something a couple of times a month.

No More Trail Cameras?

I bought my first trail camera in 1996 and have had at least one in the woods since that time. That gives us a 20 year run. The reason I wanted a camera in our woods was because I always thought there were bucks out there that were bigger than those we were seeing. The camera proved that we had a lot of does and few bucks, most of those being very small. The monster buck that I hoped was eluding us never showed up on our camera in those early days. Bottom line, there were few, if any, large bucks roaming our woods at that time.

Fast forward 20 years and we now know that our bucks are bigger because our food plots have grown considerably and we've only killed 17 bucks in 20 years including one button buck mistake, a spike mistake and a young eight point that couldn't use one leg due to a broadhead in its leg. It's all about food and age.

After the first week of rifle season I've pulled all 13 of our trail cameras out of the woods. The big question is, Why. There are a few reasons that I've removed them and hopefully I can get my thoughts down here intelligently.

First of all, let me say that it is not that I believe the cameras are scaring away bucks. I've never in 20 years seen any good evidence that the cameras have kept bucks away.

Let me also say that I really enjoy the cameras throughout the spring, summer and early fall and I like having the pictures from past years to look back at. This fact could have me putting them back out at some time after I've had more time to think this whole thing over.

One of the problems is that there have been some years that we've known a year in advance that there won't be a buck that we want to shoot the next year. It's rough when you already know that a year later there likely won't be a buck that we feel is big enough to shoot. This hasn't happened often because we always think we can grow them bigger in a years time, but when we take our rose colored glasses off we sometimes get hit in the face with reality. Our expectations have grown too high.

Another difficulty is that the deer become too much like pets. We have to name them to tell them apart and that doesn't help us. When you have more than one eight point buck you have to name them something different to tell them apart when you talk about them. It's hard to shoot a pet.

The biggest problem may be that we get too good of a look at them. We have already determined whether or not we are going to shoot a buck well before we step into the woods. I think that we would have taken shots at many of our bucks the past few years if we hadn't have had such a good look at them beforehand. For instance, this year we never laid eyes on the big nine point buck because we had decided that we weren't going to kill him this year. We should have hunted and shot that buck and been real happy to have him. The past two seasons we haven't even hunted much because we'd already made our decision not to shoot any of the bucks and we didn't want to make too much commotion in the woods and scare them away. Go back to 2011 and take a look at the big ten point we were getting pictures of. We decided not to shoot that buck and we never saw him again after rifle season. I'd even had an opportunity to shoot that buck and just watched him walk away. What were we thinking?

One of the things that bothers me is that we couldn't be happy for others that shoot a buck. We were always worried that one of “our” bucks would get shot on a neighboring property. Deer hunting shouldn't cause anxiety or cause us to not want others to be successful.

I'd like to bring the excitement back to deer season. I want the first day of bow season to mean something. I want my heart to beat a little faster when I first see antlers on a deer, rather than recognize him and know him by name. I'll miss the pictures of other animals we get throughout the year. It's always fun to see a black bear, bobcat or coyote. Could we put out a camera to try to get pictures of these critters? Could we put the cameras back out and lower our standards allowing us to hunt the top bucks we see even though they do not meet certain lofty standards? Possibly. We'll always be thinking about it.  Let us know what you think.

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Deer Attractants

In the past I'd thought about testing deer attractants to find either the best. I wanted to buy all of the attractants on the market and put them out in front of cameras, but trying to standardize the test would be very difficult.

This past year a buddy of Ryan’s was using an attractant called Sugarbeet Crush and said it was working well so we bought some and put a camera on it. This attractant performed great for us. The deer couldn't get enough and we got a lot of great pictures of bucks.

I can't say that this is the best attractant on the market, but it did very well for us. We used other attractants that did well, but this one just seemed to draw them fast and they kept coming back.

We also tried the liquid version and it didn't perform anything like the powdered version. I'm not sure why, it smelled exactly like the powder, but the deer didn't come to it anything like the powder. To be honest we haven't had much success with any of the liquids we've tried over the years.

There isn't anything scientific about this, no blind study or anything like that. We just thought that Sugarbeet Crush had worked better for us than everything we have used in the past.

We put it on a stump and attracted some nice bucks like the one below with the pink nose.

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Scent Proof

What did the deer drop today? How about scent proof clothing and scent elimination in general.

Last week we were watching an old episode of Myth Busters. They were testing myths about challenging the noses of dogs. In one test they put Jamie in a scent proof suit, he took a shower in scent proof soap and wore scent proof deodorant, it looked like he used everything available on the market to cover scent. He was given a five minute lead on the hound dog. It turned out to be the easiest test for the dog, who didn't even put his nose to the ground. The dog simply held his head up and followed the scent right to Jamie.

I'm not an expert on the difference between the sniffing capabilities of a dog versus a deer, but I do know that the keenest sense of the whitetail deer is its sense of smell. I've read many articles on the unbelievable olfactory capabilities of deer.

I've always been skeptical of the claims of the scent proof industry and this Myth Busters episode seemed to confirm my doubts. Remember there is a lot of money to be made selling to whitetail hunters looking for that edge to shoot a trophy buck. Will it fool my nose, I'm sure. Will it fool the nose of a deer, I don't think so.