Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Atv vs walking

Easy choice for me. I don't have an ATV, so I walk. Sure would be nice to have one to haul deer out of the woods though.

My 450 lb hunting buddy drives his Grizzly to the ladder, climbs the tree, and shoots a deer. Every year.

Well sure you can shoot a deer by doing it. But if the goal is to shoot a mature buck…they’re a different breed of critter.

Good point..Just killin a deer is one thing but to consistantly take mature bucks every year it is a whole other ballgame....Hell i can kill a deer every year sitting in a lawn chair in the bed of my pickup 😁......Hb

Big deer and elk know the difference between hunting traffic and normal traffic, including the individual vehicle, whether it's an ATV or pickup. Don't you know it when a storage car pulls into your driveway? Still, whitetails believe in hunkering down, and I have seen may just stay still and let a truck, ATV, or even a canoe pass.

PM SU35 about his experiences; I've seen the same thing myself. Of course, an aTV is wonderful to help retrieve game, and I'll use one when I can.

I'm all for ATVs, just don't own one. Yet.

Good points, all....

Look at it like this:

Your in your car and have several open alcoholic containers.
A State Trooper drives by. Your no doubt thinking “ oh oh, I need to get rid of those”......
The Trooper passes by without even looking at you and you relax.
BUT - if the Trooper makes eye contact with you and pulls over and exits his vehicle...............!

Guess who just shat his pants and wants to disappear! 😲 Laffin

Another thing to consider is that when walking, at least you have a chance of spotting the deer before it spots you.

I think it would be a very rare occurrence where a deer would be unaware of you if you come by on a 4 wheeler, even with a muffler silencer on it and the wind right.

People don't realize how far sound travels in an absolutely quiet woods. Hunting big woods just off private property I saw a lot of difference seeing deer when I rode my ATV within about a quarter mile through my buddy's property and then walked from there. Then my buddy said that he was worried about soil erosion and asked that I walk instead of ride through his property. What a difference in deer sightings! Deer have way better hearing than people and if I can hear an ATV, a deer sure can and isn't going to be moving for a while in that area.

I have been killing deer in a particular ATV staging area fir over 24 years, some big, some smaller, but I can normally get a deer or two put even with the constant ATV traffic.I don't mi d them and neither do the deer

The answer is - It depends on the property


I have a place no one frequents ….
If you drive a truck in the driveway there you can literally see deer crossing out of the area within 30 minutes, if you walk to your stand you will see maybe 5 deer.
Now park on the road and walk into your stand without crossing the place - and you’ll see 30 deer.

So how educated the critter are is huge
Are ATV’s on the property at all

I hunt 1200 private acres in NE PA. There are 3 or 4 trails through the area. I ride it often in an ATV or a UTV. I ride up next to deer and bear often, sometimes less than 10 or 12 feet. Some animals do spook but they are a low percentage.
I think they believe it is just another vehicle and most exhibit little if any fear.

If I walk that same area I am not going to get close to any animal. They will be gone as soon as they detect me.

I should note that we have never hunted any animal from an ATV and never gave them a reason to fear an ATV.

Agree ^^^^

Yearlings are dumb.

Put a silencer on your ATV for a very different experience, you really don't think that animals are not stupid enough to not know that the sound of 4 wheelers cranking up is not DANGER, Do you?

We hunted off of 4 wheelers for years, then went to electric vehicles....man, what a difference in the number of animals you see! Deep creeks that have to be crossed are often the demise of the use of electric vehicles, and we had winches on the front of the vehicle with an extra 100' cable wound up in the back.

Most people are not deer "hunters", they are just shooters.

Check this out, and they work:

https://atvsilencer.com/

They help but in my experience with one on a Grizzly 660 they make the engine run a bit hotter from the back pressure. I removed the muffler in the Spring and reinstalled once the temps got cooler in the Fall.

When I hunted my 200 acre farm in GA, I debated the ATV vs walking question off and on. I know that when I walked in the dark and spooked deer, they seem very disturbed, maybe because they could hear me but not quite make out what I was from time to time. Observing deer from a stand when an ATV was near by and passing I would watch to see how the deer react. They would lift their heads and turn their ears but as long as it continued, they did not seem to care. This is not what I'd call wilderness, mostly farm area. My overall opinion is that deer (in this case) are not as disturbed when they can hear something coming and going that does not catch them off guard, especially when they are around farm equipment. I theorize that they are less spooked when they hear an ATV vs the walking disturbance of something they can not identify in the dark.

Increased noise and scent makes deer tend more toward nocturnal and staying in the thick. ATVs are smellier and noisier than a walking hunter.

I've hunted an area where riding a quad you can literally ride 30 yards from deer and they'll stand and stare at you. But if they see you walking, at any distance, they immediately bolt.

In my neck of the woods we use an atv for lots of things hunting is one of them. I plow snow ,ride to work (in the summer) go camping ect.
For hunting I find a place on state land 10-40 miles off the HWY and camp. Then walk 0-5 miles in any direction to find game, use my atv as base camp game transport not hunting. But no one is packing out a moose on a pack frame plus rifle and backpack with all your gear.. Meat would be rotten by the time you got half your animal back to the truck.
An atv/utility vehicle is a must have.

Deer will feed next to a busy road and the cars won't bother them. It's when one leaves the road that they come alive. If they're used to atv's on the mountain, they'll largely ignore it as long as it follows the same trail each time. They have to get used to them being around.

I've never used an ATV to get into hunting areas. That's because I hunt Corps of Engineer land and WIHA, both off-limits to motorized vehicles. But, buddy, let me tell ya'- if I owned my own land, you'd best believe I'd be rocking one.