Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Blacktails

Is there any other kind of deer?

This will be my 35th season chasing blacktails. I guess that answers the questions about whether I liked it and whether would I do it again.

Successful .. yeah, it'd be fair to say that.

Starting from scratch, blacktail hunting is an uphill battle. Wicked learning curve including learning the country, learning the habitat, learning the deer's behavior, and so on.

Good luck!!

Tom

What're the odds of being successful on a diy blacktail hunt on public land?

That's hard to nail down. "It depends."

Worst case, a hunter unfamiliar with the area, with no guide or friends, unfamiliar with the kind of cover, terrain, weather, deer habits. I dunno, but probably under 2% chance of success.

Best case, in a good area a local hunter with long familiarity and time to hunt the whole season has no reason not to tag out every year if that's their first priority.

Tom

I keep hearing that blacktails are extremely hard to hunt. But I can't imagine they're too much harder to hunt than florida public land whitetail....

Don't know about that. Could well be right.

Lets reverse the question just for grins.

How much chance do you think I'd have, as an Oregonian who has never seen Florida outside one trip that kept me in downtown Orlando 10 years ago, to buy a tag, show up cold turkey with gun in hand, figure out without any help in one trip how to kill a whitetail? It seems pretty unlikely to me.

Tom

You've got a great point. I feel like deer are deer and the terrain probly isn't a whole lot different barring topography ( were flat as opposed to your mountains). Its very thick over there correct?

Lot of variation in that. Blacktail habitat varies from coastal rain forest in the northwest corner in SE Alaska to open oak steppe in the southeast corner in north-central California. Most of the more open parts are on private land, at least in Oregon.

Most of the open areas on public used to be clear cuts. With the drop in logging during the 80s, much of that has grown up to where it's not too huntable and is not being replaced.

Not too huntable describes alot of the florida boosh also...

How much stand hunting is done in Florida vs other types? That's something relatively unusual here especially on public land. Most people are either road hunting or trying to glass from a landing. Those were more effective back when we had more clear cuts. Encountering another hunter more than a half mile from a road is pretty remarkable.

Edit: I should have added that those hunters I do see more than a half mile from the road account for the bulk of the people who tag out every year. Those are the people who've paid their dues in years of sore feet who've learned the country and cover and deer habits and know what it takes to get them despite conditions.

Most everyone stand hunts down here. My dad was into what we call slippin( read still hunting). Therefore I too am a still hunter. Not much glassing to be done unless your hunting ranches or sod farms.

+1. If I had to give one reason for the low success rate with Blacktails it would be the culture of road hunting. Get out of the truck and start walking and you'll start getting your deer.

Road hunting is the number 1 method of hunting public land whitetail in florida. As in most practiced not most effective.

Whitetail aren't blacktail, and deer densities in the southeast are much greater than they are in the areas I hunt in southern Oregon.

Im sure that there's some difference in the animals themselves. I always thought we had one of the lowest deer densities in the US.

My experience may be worth dik, but I think the Washington blacktails are in a whole different league. I think Hair Loss Syndrome has put a beating on the population. And they don't get pressured into being nocturnal THEY ARE NOCTURNAL. I don't think they move more then a few feet per day and simply lay down in a thick clear cut, hold tight worse than pressured game birds, and then stand up after the sun is down. They are pretty content to sleep out days of rain, wind and hail while you glass and beat the brush, then pack up and go home. THEN they will stand up and feed. Not saying WA BTs are smarter, stating that blacktails in general are probably pretty tough to tag, adding the numbers are greatly diminished in western WA.

I have run through the same clear cuts(at 3am with a spot light) that I'd hunted for several days and not seen a thing, only to see nice 4X4s and a few 3X3s within 100 yards of my stand.

My experience is W.WA and for a period of 3 years. FWIW. I think OR has many more BTs than WA, but it's only an opinion. AK would be worth the time and effort if you are really concerned about tagging-out IMO.

I think the Ferry out of B'Ham a decent option if you have time to sit on it for a few days vs fly with guns, baggage, addtional fees.

Jesse I think that your right the black tails in both NW and WW are down in numbers big time. There are still populations of them in SO that is where the greatest success is right now exluding private land. The majority of the Black tails in WO and WW are on private timber lands and they are living in Reprod ( replanted trees). At least in NW Oregon its hard to find big mature tree's. There is more public land in SO than NW Oregon. I went though a 25 year period of getting a deer every year in Oregon including years that I bowhunted. In the last 4 years I have seen zero bucks and a total of about 10 deer in walk in behind gates areas. I should be going down going down south but its hard to leave the area you know. I should know better we bowhunt the same area and rarely see deer even in mid summer when the bucks are in velvet and are out in the open. But they are a blast to hunt and its hard to get them out of your system as Tom pointed out. Big bucks go almost totaly nocturnal until the rut then you can some times catch them on the move. I am willing to bet that 75% of 3 or 4 point bucks taken in timber lands are killed the last week and half of the season when they start looking for the ladies. It's actualy rare in the area we hunt to find a perfect 4 point most are 3 and 4 or big three's. Deer in Western Oregon are smaller than the deer in SO they seem to get a bit bigger, definatly better racks. I think the all time Oregon bucks were taken in the Williamte valley area. Just about all the shows you see on TV that hunt blacktails are hunting private lands in SO.

They fianly cut the doe tags by 65% this year in NW Oregon they should cut them to zero and start issuing limited tags until they can come back.

A great deal of the difficulty in hunting blacktail & mule deer is the habitat in which they live.
Does your Florida topography resemble this Northern California Blacktail Country?













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[img]http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d63/HunterHarry/5-10.jpg[/img]

Oh of course not. The closest thing we have to mountains are the phosphate mine dredge hills

That is southern Oregon now I am guessing that NW Oregon is similar its a lot thicker

Nice pics, but that's a savanna compared to the western WA coast. You could glass the piss out of that terrain.

No rain or grey skies? No ferns or cedars? Totally different blacktails in my opinion, but Boone and Crockett doesn't see it that way from what I recall.