Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Leaving a deer unattended in coyote/wolf country

I live in the heart of wolf, black bear, cougar, and coyote country and have yet to loose any meat left over night when the tee shirt I wore was left hanging and blowing in the wind. I have always left the tee shirt worn to bear bait site and after a couple days they are use to my smell and even had one climb our stand and smell my boots before going down and back to the grub barrel.

Only by the Grace and Miracles of Almighy GOD and a couple of Guardian Angels.

And that, KW is the Truth. It strained HIM a few times, too.

Retired forest ranger taught me the trick of carrying a small pack of moth balls, sealed air tight twice with vacuum sealer.

Spread the moth balls around the downed carcus, bears, lions will never touch it.

Plenty of times. It’s not like a wolf is around every corner. Throw your hat on it until you come back.

A bit off topic but I do this all the time, mostly now hunting from the ground. No problem - deer simply ignore it, and I've been whitetailin' a long time.

-Ken

Taking a leak doesn't do anything. Try it in front of a trail cam and the coyotes and deer stand there a minute and sniff it. I never had to use a t shirt, however, I do have 2 double block and tackles wit 50 ' of rope . The coyotes wont get it . The crows might pick the eyes but I never had to use the block and tackle.

I've lost deer to both wolves and coyotes, overnight and within a couple hours. It's not 100% but your best chance at keeping them away is leaving a sweaty tshirt or underwear on them.

Na, Jag got that one just last year and photoshopped his own mug....

A bud and I had a moose down. Packed the first load over the ridge to the float-plane lake, stashing the game-bagged pieces on a big root wad in the shade, went back for more. On our final (3rd?) return, some bags were down, torn, toothmarks....

I left my bud in our camp, about 100 yards from the meat, while I hiked the 5 miles out to the truck to arrange for a plane. He cleared a little brush for a good sight-line to the meat, made coffee, and potted the young black bear when it came back less than an hour after I had left. Luckily, it was only a blackie - there was a week-old kill site about 50 yards from where I had dropped my bull, which was why, probably, that the bear was looking and likely trailed us back to camp. I suspect a brown bear had already mostly cleaned up the old gut pile, and moved on, so we got lucky.

Out of Kotzebue a few years ago, I got foolish and shot 5 caribou bulls (my daily bag limit). Don't do that!!!! But damn - that was fun- started at the back of the single-line string of about a dozen and worked my way forward. Ran the string of the 5 rounds in the M98...

My little POS sled behind the Bravo snowmachine would only hold two, with my survival pack, so after gutting, I gathered the rest into one pile, covered them with a poly-tarp, anchored around the edges by snow and brush branches, and retrieved them the next weekend. The tarp had blown off half of one, which had been worked over and copiously shat on by ravens. Apparently a lot of ravens.

Those two are the only incidents of this sort I have incurred. Clothing or piss marking would have made no difference.

Pee is supposedly sterile (I read somewhere - probably in treating snake-spit to the eyes in Africa). I wonder if it carries little or no human scent. Or if it does, it doesn't matter. And yeah, canines, at least, will mark over human pee spots. It's what they do. And they will then trespass on "your" territory.

Farley Mowat ("Never Cry Wolf") was full of scat.

Leaving a clothing article behind for a lost dog works, but I dunno about on a kill. Can't hurt to try, I suppose. I have my doubts tho, considering I've had radio covers, chain-saws. sleeping pads, a hoodie, and have seen a plastic Coleman canoe and other stuff chewed on by bears. Most or all of it had plenty of human scent on it.

Your best bet is to move the meat as far away from the gut pile as possible. I've hung stuff above 10 feet in trees, and found wolf and bear tracks underneath later. A friend protected his elk kill from coyotes and coons by hanging the bagged pieces over the edge of shear rimrock. Another guy I know hung half his caribou kill about 5 or 6 feet off the ground, under a spruce a mile down off the mountain from where he had killed it. By the time he got back a few days later (it was a 10 mile pack out), a wolf had pulled it down- I got there before he did, on my own hunt, and saw the story in the snow. The wolf had cut his trail part-way down, and tracked right down behind him. i don't know when.

Once you’ve been there there’s enough of your scent there that if scent is going to work (which it isn’t) leaving a hat isn’t going to add much.

Set up a trail cam nearby on your kill that you lave the clothing on. Trail cam will record their action, maybe.

Yep a mule deer buck in Northwest Colorado in 84 it was snowing dressed it out then packed it with snow the only thing that fuqked with it overnight were the Magpies

I'm thinking deer in areas people frequent may act different to human smell, urine, etc than deer or elk in back country.

I've climbed trees bowhunting and has deer come bdownwindour later and 10 ft downwind and nearly jump out of their skin and run a short distance away.

I've seen muley does come into a little forest meadow on a trail in the evening and smell where I twisted a tiny sapling away on my side of the trail for me to get a clear shot with an arrow that evening hours later. The hair stood up as she started searching the area until she ratted me out 6 hours after I left my scent there.

A few times I've seen elk turn and haul ass back after smelling my track I took into the waylay spot 2 hours earlier. One cow was com8ng up the trail I had walked down much earlier. If the bull had been on her tail I would have stuck him but he was following her from 60 yards behind when she passed by me and then hit the spot I left as I had come down the trail. She turned tail and went back past him and he turned as he was just in range and left with her. Crap. Big 6x6.

I wouldn't leave a deer in the field. At the very least it would be field dressed, cut in half and hanging in a tree. If I couldn't hang it I'd bone it and pack it out since I always have a packframe with me. More than once I've come out of the woods long after dark by flashlight with a loaded packframe. Coyotes are welcome to the gutpile, skin and bones

What about bobcats?

I’ve never seen it myself,

But hear of folks finding deer they lost, next day..

Covered up in leaves and sticks....

I have had moose trail me. Mostly cows.

The best one ... At daylight I came almost half a mle down a long boggy meadow, got up in my birch tree stand on the point of the ridge overlooking said meadow.

A while later a cow came out and hit my trail and stopped . She stood there for a couple minutes, then dropped her nose down to the game trail and tracked me right down, standing there 15 feet under the tree stand with a puzzled look on her face.

The double tine bull that I killed had come to the stand I was calling from earlier, and had left to take a dump a couple hundred yards away. When I rounded the spruce tree on my return, he had his nose buried in my trail out from the tree-stand.
You ain't gonna do that with an elk or moose- not in one load anyway. I've done it with caribou, but those are generally 100# plus pack-outs, and I've oldened (not smartened) beyond that! Thank God!

Shot a decent buck a few years ago coming home from work on a property we own down the road.Didn’t have a knife in the truck so went home and grabbed supper and the knife.Was gone a hour tops get back to the deer hind quarters are ate to the bone coyotes.

I never said I'd do it with an elk or moose. This thread is about deer which is why I posted what I did. For what it is worth I have taken 25 elk and if I had an elk down 3 quarters would be hanging and one would come out in my packframe. Done that many, many times.

My dad always carried a can of black pepper when he hunted out west. When he killed an elk he poured the pepper all over it. He said it kept other animals from eating it before he could get it out.

It’ll eat the undies as an appetizer.

I've never heard that trick before. I can see why that would work though. This I will remember!