Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Atv vs walking

How do they effect the deer as far as early morning riding going in vs walking I’ve done the walking up mountains for 30 odd years and had good success

I don’t own an atv. Mostly despise them. But, then again, one sure would be handy for getting a deer out of the woods. I’ve heard folks say they ride up on deer. But I prefer to walk while I can.

I would think that if you ride the area you hunt often on an ATV that the deer would ignore it but also think deer say here they come, hide.

I've had deer run from them and had deer stamd there amd watch me ride past. In farm country wr use them religiously for crossing fields and dropping off/picking up hunters from the stand. It doesn't spook the deer nearly as much as walking a field edge.

If they are used to noise and heavy equipment no big deal.

I’ve been going in early for years walking my ass off whilst the neighbors come in at daylight on the atvs I’m starting to rethink what if I went in still early on the utv but half way the walking distance

OP, how close to where you expect to see game are you talking about riding? I prefer to walk a ways myself.

If someone were hunting me I rather them try to drive up near me than to walk up on me.

On another note my cousin always said when his brothers would hunt wood ducks early in the morning they would pass his stand that was on the road on their way home. If he was in his stand he would get them to stop at his stand, turn off their atv for a minute and crank up and go on home. He said the deer associated the atv stopping with picking up the hunter, and right after the atv left the deer would come out.😀😀

I prefer to walk on the 170 acre farm we deer hunt on, but while working the farm, scouting, cutting trails and just riding ATV's for pleasure we see many deer. Deer on the farm do not be to concerned with an ATV. They will typically stop moving and after you have passed by they continue on their way.

Now my brother belongs to a hunt club that is located on 700+ acres in the middle of a national forest but the club members ride ATV's for pleasure on the property all year long so when hunting season comes they ride their ATV's right up to their hunting area for the day. My brother parked his within 40 yards of his deer stand and killed two deer this year, one walked right by his ATV.

I am in several hunting leases that consist of vast areas of old reclaimed strip jobs and I might find a target buck that is miles out the mountain so I sometimes ride my 4wheeler 8 or more miles to the area I am hunting but I always stash the ATV a 1/2 mile or so from my stand and walk the rest of the way in for all day sits....I think roaring into my stand on an ATV 30 minutes before daylight would stir the area up too much so I prefer to sneak in ...this has worked well for me .......Hb

IME it depends on ATV use in the area hunted. There was a piece of property I could hunt near our home and ATVs were not ridden much there. My son watched a large buck out of my sight stand on a flat below me as I rode by and then crossed the ridge. Where I hunt now has ATV traffic from gas well tenders on a regular basis and I have watched does stay bedded in plain sight of the rider.

I have found that ATV traffic spooks mule deer and elk who are not accustomed to the noise. Perhaps where they are used to ATVs it’s not an issue. I have seen mule deer ignore a passing truck and haul azz at the sound of a four wheeler a mile away.

The ranch I hunt is about 2,600 acres. There’s no way to cover that kind of ground on foot. Patches of it, yes. But for the most part we use either our pickups or an atv/utv to get around. There’s also regular maintenance done by others on a site within the property boundaries as well. So the deer are pretty much used to the traffic and not particularly spooky. Bigger bucks will most often step into the brush and watch us drive by - stop and they won’t stay long.

Elk on the other hand are transient and even if we’re quite some distance away, will almost always take off.....

At 68 and bum knees, I use my atv as often as possible to realistically cut down on my having to walk unnecessarily. That means riding close enough to still slip into my hunt area or place it somewhere down the hill out of my hunt area to get back to the truck or other start area.

Game retrieval is a biggie for all of us. Very few fall close to the road and your not going to drive a pickup or Jeep in this black sticky country if there’s even a hint of moisture. Almost all of my elk get dressed gutless and bagged to come out on the quad. Many of the deer, too. It just makes sense..... we don’t want to create ruts and trash the terrain, so the light foot print of the atv’s is a huge advantage.

Most of the guys I meet that hate atv’s, don’t own one. Their reasoning being based on poor riding habits by others - often illegal riding that spoils their chances at game. No one is happy when you’ve toiled up a closed trail or road in the predawn darkness, only to have some A-Hole drive by on a quad to your hunting location.......we’ve all had it happen I suspect. Still others are simply jealous and A-Holes themselves.......
My 2019 Blacktail hitching a ride.

My neighbor rides and then parks his ATV under his ladder stand on the ridge, has done so for years and usually kills a nice buck or two annually.
The stand is 20' and he has formed a brush garage under it, rides right into it.

I’ve got a nephew that rides his atv right up to his stand to the point that he can step from the atv right onto the stand ladder. He always does this about 15 mins after daylight. He can never figure out why he doesn’t see much but I’ve shot a couple deer by getting set up before daylight on the escape corridors from his stand

I don't think deer are bother until the machine stops.
Where we hunt the deer will watch the quad,tractor etc. w/o a problem as long as you drive on by.

I think they’re bothered where we hunt in WI.

We haven’t been using them unless it’s well before the season or we have to move stands.

Now that we don’t use them to get in the woods, we see more deer.

Cant speak for whitetails, but I worked on a pedestrian vs ATV elk disturbance study in the White River National Forest in the summer of 2000. Elk ran further when disturbed by an ATV than when disturbed by us walking up on them. It wasn't a huge difference, but it was a statistically significant difference.

This is my experience on a farm as well, and it’s annoying. Deer that just lay or stand there as you idle by in a truck or quad will blow up and bust you if you try to walk the edges of the fields.

You know what spooks deer? Getting out of a vehicle.

The answer I am going to give you may leave you scratching your head as to what to do, but that is just the way it is.

First off, let me explain my situation. I'm the patriarch of a deer camp that sits on 200 acres in SW Bracken County. Our Opening Days sound like WWIII. There are at least 45 deer per square mile and 1 hunter per 20 acres. There is a lot of ATV traffic in the woods, especially just in the hour before The Opener. That gives me a lot of data points for making this answer. Our place is mostly on a ridge that is halfway between two roads approximately 2 miles apart. A lot of the neighbors use ATVs to access their stands and retrieve deer.

The first situation I will give you is what I hear on The Opener. I like to head out earlier than most, because my Opening Day stand is situated the farthest from the cabin. I am usually up the tree and settled in long before others are moving. Along about 20 minutes before legal hunting begins, you start hearing truck doors slamming and the ATVs cranking up. There is then several minutes of Putt-Putting before things settle back down. What the guys on the ATVs cannot hear is the crashing of deer through the woods ahead of the ATVs. It is quite spectacular. There are deer running every which way. It all settles down for a few minutes and then the shooting starts. From this perspective, I would say that ATVs definitely perturb the deer. However, there is more to this.

When you think about it, the deer really do not have anywhere to run. Well, they do. They run to where the ATV traffic is the least, and that is my place. Part of our success is that we have probably half the hunters that the rest of the neighbors have. We basically use the neighbors, the Orange Army, as beaters. On the other hand, in the big scheme of things, there are so many deer and so many hunters that a deer pushed out of one spot goes to another, and there is usually a hunter there as well.

Up until about 5 years ago, we did not have any ATV traffic on our property. Then our oldest hunter, SuperCore. developed heart trouble and had quad-bypass surgery. He acquired an ATV and now putt-putts out to his blind. You would think that from what I've written his luck would take a nosedive. It has not. He has about as good a record of shooting big bucks as anyone, and his success rate did not go down after acquiring the ATV.

However. . .!

I have no experience with an ATV, but I regularly bowhunted out of a climbing stand for two decades, and I used to park my truck within 80 yards of the stand site. I took all my largest bucks doing this. As long as I went in early and came out late, it was not a problem.

SuperCore is pushing 80, and he has a tendency to want to leave the blind early so he can be back at camp before dark. I have a tower blind about 500 yards away and there is a steep ravine between us. He cranks up his ATV and all of a sudden that ravine comes alive with bounding deer. I have also watched deer right at the margin of the treeline, just getting ready to pop out. SuperCore starts the engine, and they scurry back into the woods. So from this, you might conclude the ATV is chasing them away.

My overall surmise is that ATVs perturb the deer. However, their memories seem to be rather short and their stubborness and curiousity work to your favor. If they want to be somewhere to feed, you can dissuade them for a bit, but eventually, their stomachs will overrule their fear, and they will go back to what they were doing.

In the mornings, an ATV ride is going to put them off a bit. If you go in early, they will be back an hour after sunrise to do their morning thing. If you wait until after legal hunting in the evening to come out, an ATV will not perturb the deer that much. However, be advised that if you run an ATV, the deer are aware of your presence for at least a half a mile all around you, and they are reacting.

Critters like deer and elk become accustomed to regular vehicle and pedestrian traffic on a trail or road. If something happens that deviates from that, like stopping, or getting out of a vehicle, they tend to respond by moving away. Back in the early 80's CPW attached heart monitors to deer and drove by them on an established snowmobile trail. The deer didn't usually run when the sled stayed on the established trail and didn't stop, but theie heart rate went up an surprising amount whenever a sled drove by, even though they didn't display any obvious response..

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.

Deer get used to a routine and when it changes, they pay attention. You can drive a trail every day and they'll ignore you. But if you stop or take a different way, they notice and react.

Electric golf cart. No noise. No smell. Exhaust smell does not permeate hunting clothes.

On my farm…if the deer hear the Polaris crank up they know there will be corn in the feeder in 30 minutes

That will happen only if those deer aren’t already in the middle of a cribbage game. People don’t know just how smart deer really are.

The deer where I hunt are used to hearing atvs and vehicles. We drive atvs close to stand locations then walk a short distance to the stand. I see deer many times within 15 minutes on getting on stand.