No doubt that things generally tighten up for us after Thanksgiving due to pressure and the number of deer we see will go down for a while, like you mention. This year has just been an extreme, and it seems to be the same for nearly everyone else around here that I speak with. Early to Mid-December generally turns out hunts where you may see only half as many deer you were seeing in the first few weeks of the season. We're now having weeks where 6-10 different hunts were made on our 1,000 acres and 3-4 deer were seen in total. Good bucks keep showing up on the trail cams, but only at night.
It seems like a lot of the hunters are out of the woods after Christmas, so I generally see deer numbers start to pick up for our January hunting, including the primitive weapons season. I hope that is the case and will be trying hard to do some freezer-filling over the next month. Bought an additional chest freezer to set back some extra venison and pork, but I may just leave the dang thing in its cardboard box for now!
