Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Which medium big game animal is spookiest.

A four or five year old whitetail doe...

Lowland Bongo

A mature whitetail deer.

The smartest and spookiest, but not considered a big game animal, would be the coyote.

Whichever one is in season when I have a tag.




Dave

This would apply here.

I guess we'd need to define "spookiest" a little further - to me that's turn-tail and be gone at the ever-so-slightest hint of anything.
I've found the older does to be lingerers, so if the topic were "biggest PIA" - they'd surely get my vote.

Is spookiest the easiest one to scare off, or the one you never got to see in the first place?

Cats are pretty damn sneaky, not sure I'd call them spooky though. Mature white tails are for sure spooky. Crazy to see them materialize during the rut in an area you hunted hard just a week before and found little sign and saw no deer.

Mature coues whitetail does and true free range axis deer...

If you've ever spent a day with a cougar guide and a pack of hounds, you'd be surprised just how many are out there and are never seen by people.

I believe it!

Good point.........


Casey

Of the critters I've hunted, a mature muley buck is the one that does not stick around to identify sound or movement--they just haul azz.


Casey

I worked on a cougar study in the 1980's. The researcher did a literature review of previous lion studies and talked to the researchers of those studies. They all told him what would happen:

--The public would be surprised how many cougars he caught.

--His own wildlife agency would be surprised by how many cougars he caught.

--The public would be all up in arms over all these cougars roaming around.

--In response, his agency would increase the cougar quotas.

And that is exactly what happened..........


Casey

A mature sika deer of either sex on the Eastern Shore of Maryland are some of the skittish animals I have ever seen. Jumpy ,hard to pattern and hard to see in the daylight ,the rut helps but not a lot. And they jump a bow string like no other medium game animal I ever seen...........

We've got enough cougars that they opened a trapping season for them. You'd think you'd see one once in awhile, but nope. Heck, I've got a game cam picture of what appears to be a were-wolf checking a bait but nary a cougar. If they didn't leave tracks I'd swear they were mythical.

Bangeye: I have Hunted most all of them and in my experience a 5 1/2 year old plus Mule Deer is extremely wary!
That is until about November 20th when the rut renders them much less cautious.
Yeah try and capture one of these on public lands!
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

I'd throw mature Columbia blacktails into the mix. They can spend their entire life in a square mile and never be seen by human eyes. Unlike mulies or whitetail's that will run into the next state if pressured, many times they will just bury themselves into a patch of salal and stay there until the pressure is off.

Buck Jackalope

I've spotted countless doe but the bucks stay hidden.

My vote is yearling caribou...🙀