2013 DEER SEASON WRAP UP!

[MTCOMMER]

Im not sure how often many of you hunt, but I am curious how everyone did.  Lots of talk the past few weeks about how slow the season was compared to other years.  Its was relatively slow for up, we are hunting 240 north of Alex.  Ended up getting 1 buck, could have had lots of does, but mostly just opening morning.  The 2nd weekend was slow also.
Was everyone else seeing deer?  Did it seem slower to others around the state?
Our neighbors have quite a few cameras up, and the deer sightings just dropped of the map after the 1st weekend, and it seems like wolves have been moving into our area.  Hopefully they will find their way out - but not a deer was seen by our party the 2nd weekend.

How did everyone else fair?   

[deadeye]

Although things started slow early in the week, we did see a lot of does with fawns (mostly twins) and a number of smaller bucks.  Later in the week we saw more nicer bucks and things got interesting on Friday and Saturday.  We shot one 10 point and 5 does.  My brother in law shot the 10 point on Friday and let a much bigger 8 point walk by on Saturday.  Both my son and I saw big bucks but as things go, the bucks are still out there.  Overall it seemed like there were fewer deer around.  I've been out with the bow many times and saw a lot less than previous years.  Same issue with trail cameras.  I can't say if the population is down in my area or the deer just didn't move as much.  I'm thinking there are fewer deer because I didn't bump into as many as previous years. I plan to go muzzle loader hunting and then finish the year with the bow.  Who knows maybe I'll run into mr big yet.

[dakids]

I hunted the week before the rifle opener and saw deer every sit and passed on the buck my brother shot on the opener.  My youngest daughter got her doe at 11:00 and dad, oldest daughter, and older brother all shot their deer within 5 min of each other sat. right before dark.  We has several deer on trail cam that night near the gut piles. We didn't hunt to much sunday as we started cutting up the 5 deer we had.  My parents stayed up and hunted the next 6 days and saw deer every night.  Just not Mr. Big.  I hunted Saturday and saw 2 deer.  We had deer on trail cam every day.  No big bucks but then again we didn't have a single mature buck all year.  We have three food plots and the deer were using them every day.  We are surrounded by very thick logged off areas and the deer can step out of the thick stuff right into the food.  The hunters in our area that I talked to all reported seeing very few deer all season long. 

[MTCOMMER]

Sounds like all the deer in the state were on your farm.
That seems to be a common theme, if you have a food source next to their bedding areas, they dont need to move far to get back and forth.  Unfortunately for us, our corn crop was demolished early by deer and then some bugs or something, so our couple acres never grew any meaningful corn.  Next year I hope to plant a few more plots and keep the deer around.