Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics What happened to Leupold?

As low as one per square mile in the wilderness areas. Though I think DEC officially has it as 1-5 throughout most of the park to include both public and private land. And you ain't going to be setting up on a good vantage point and glassing thousands of yards from one location. You want to know whats 100 yards over yonder you mosey on over there for a look. I NEVER said it was as bad ass as anything out west you thick headed jackass.

How does one “mosey”?

i have hunted larger whitetail bucks in a few different states ,this type a deer does not act like a regular deer feeding ,moving or even bedding. i have seen these wise old bucks lay down and eat crap grass ,piss in their same bed and just stay in a 10 foot area for days,i have also seen them move in the cold and snow 3-6 miles in late mourning from feeding in good corn or alfalfa back to a bedding area in a mature forest hide in a couple of small cider tree trees and stay bedded for a day or two. true bowhunters see much more what whitetails do because we are out there many more days than most gun hunters ,nothing wrong with just rifle hunting but if you just gun hunt you just don`t see what a bigger whitetail buck does. read the book by the Wensel Brothers those boys know how to kill big whitetail bucks with just a simple recurve bow and a hand sharpened broadhead. good luck this fall,Pete53

My experience hunting deer in "big woods" back east was the NF in VA. I gravitated to designated wilderness because those were the places I wanted to be during deer season, not so much for the deer population itself. Not a dense population and it varied tremendously year to year as far as numbers and quality. Many more and larger deer down in the farmlands of the Piedmont but hearing dogs barking and car doors slamming didn't do it for me. I'd rather see fewer hunters and fewer deer if that's the choice.

Lots of mature oaks, stands of pine on some mountainsides and huge hemlocks down in the creek bottoms and on shady northern slopes but those are mostly gone now. And dense thickets of mountain laurel everywhere, lots of them impossible to walk through.

Deer there depended on acorns. The year after a big crop was good for horns and numbers. The year of a big crop made the hunting tough, we'd jump lots of deer heading down the trail in the dark but once the sun came up they'd be laying down in the laurel thickets stuffed with acorns.

I would assume deer numbers would be comparably low in any heavily forested wilderness area. Grizzlies are extremely bad here. So bad and so elusive that nobody ever sees one.

Blackheart, this thread has been kinda fun, although at your expense.... you do have a point, hunting whitetails in a mature forest with no Ag etc... is very difficult. How do you pattern such deer?
The deer in my area seem to wander around aimlessly, the only pattern I can find is they prefer the valley where people live in order to avoid the wolves.

I am not much of a whitetail hunter and the only time I seem to have a chance is during the rut... the bucks are up and moving and less wary.....

Hunt the Olympic Peninsula in WA or the coastal range in Oregon then tell us about tough hunting. LOL

As anywhere they'll be where habitat/food is best. The vicinity of creeks, rivers, beaver ponds and swamps are always good bets, particularly with oak ridges above them.. Regenerating recent clear cuts are good too but not available in the designated wilderness areas here. We do have them in other state forest lands outside the wilderness areas and they are hot spots.The bucks wander alot during rut because the doe groups are so spread out, so if you have snow, finding a fresh track and following it is a good bet if in an area where you're unlikely to push it in front of another hunter or onto private land.

I've been there too. It does look like it would be some tough hunting.

Baw Faw peak west of Chehalis towards the coast, brushy sumbitch, Hill’s get a lot bigger if ya go east towards the cascades

Theres plenty of ag here but theres also tons of other food: acorns, nuts, browse, corn feeders, persimmons . They can avoid the ag fields and do during season if they get pressured. You have to learn the timber.

Meanwhile..... somewhere in the Adirondacks.....

That pic could be from the Adorondacks. Looks very similar. The slide mountain Wilderness/high peaks area in the Catskills doesn't look much different either except it's more hardwood forest than the Adirondacks..

That's kinda what I was thinking, that's why I drove out and took a pic this morning, and the commander needed some vegetable starts!!😂😂

I would think you have more hardwood back there, we're mostly Douglas fir, hemlock, cedar with some maple and alder, alder being more common.... Lots of sword fern, salal, Oregon grape, briars and devils club for underbrush...

I have to say, JGRaider is likely considered to be one of the most successful deer hunters on these forums...

Yep, no small feat killing mulies of that caliber....

He obviously doesn't know much about big woods deer hunting in the Northeast.

And you obviously know nothing about hunting deer anywhere else....

I concur...

Just a walk in a park...North Oregon Coast 😎