NORTHWOODS HUNTING

The first 3 days of the season were ok, with some doe and fawn seen, Tuesday’s weather was the beginning of the end by me, rain all day Tuesday, 20” of snow by Wednesday morning, wet and heavy, stuck to the trees and brush. No power for 4 days, generator noise, power company trucks . Very little shooting the first 3 days, none that I heard the last 6 days. 

4 Hunter's all of us sit hunting ended up seeing a combined total of 33 deer. Not one horn was seen in the northern forest zone. I didn't expect much as there was very little to be seen in my food plot all fall. Buck's had to be hanging low due to post rut.

  Some here say there is no rhyme or reason to the deer patterns.. The truth is , they don't have a pattern anymore. I have hunted in Price and Sawyer since 1988 and back then there were more deer and trails were pronounced and easy to see. Now days , like the O.P. says, they wonder with no pattern. The reason for that is they know better than to have a pattern cause if they have a pattern, the wolves figure out their pattern and are an easier kill.  This is why there are no " pockets of deer". The deer know better than to bunch up and move between bedding and feeding areas. When there is a few inches of snow on the ground, I try to find a track. When I do , I see they do not even walk in a straight line. They browse, lay down for an hour or so, then get up  to do the same. This is why the trails are not even there anymore. There was a time, I knew every trail in a square mile. You could sit there and see a feww deer per weekend. Not anymore. They are nomads and are 100% random.You can literally sit anywhere and see a deer , although , very few deer. Many weekends we dont even see a deer between me and my son. The trails are literally gone. you cant even tell they were there at one time.. The wolves had to have done this cause it was not like that before the wolves.

I have a cabin in Goegic Co, Mi. Been hunting there since 1998. The trend of northern WI deer numbers echo with the deer herd in the area I hunt. Good hunting until around 2005, then a steady decline. Trail cameras the last 10 years conclude 3-8 deer using 1/2 mile area per year with a few one time photos of a buck(s) in the beginning of November. There are deer, there are wolves and bear. Finding the pockets of deer do equal better hunting. But still the deer patterns that a person could put together seem to be a thing of the past as a hunting strategy. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for when or where they show up now. I’ll still be at it next year though. 

 We have definitely seen wolf sign and wolves in the past but the last 2 years nothing. This year lots of rubs and scrapes but none the 3 years before. We do quite a bit of scouting too. I would say only a third of the cabins had people in them and the ones that did cleared out Sunday at noon. There are definitely people that bait yet but the treestands we found did not have bait around them. That would be my gripe, people that leave stands on paper land for years on end to claim their "spot" I no longer care if I am there first I hunt the spot. We use climbers and for the most part carry them in and out. These are all ladder stands that seem to be everywhere. I pointed a few out to the warden he seemed pretty interested in them

Direwolf, I am surprised you didnt see any wolf sign or none on camera . What county were you hunting? I hunted Price and Sawyer co. for 35 gun seasons . This year was the first time I didnt go up north since 1989. I can walk on any logging road and see a wolf track in the mud in no time.  This is west Price and East Sawyer co. However, I did see more fawn tracks this year than I have in many years. I too, like Samfox, see very little rubs or scrapes. The only time I get a buck on the cam is from Oct. 31 to Nov. 15 . Where they go , I just don't know.  The neighbors down the road still bait like crazy and that does not help at all . To make matters worse , there are several cabin, in one spot , and all the owners are related , and they bait there too. 

I prefer to sit, we seem to see more that way. Our group was only 4 people this year and we saw 6 doe in 2 full days of hunting. We were not able to take advantage of the snow cover that fell Monday as we were going home. I think we would have connected with more time to hunt. We hunt paper company land and it really could use to be cut. More deer sign this year than in the past 5 years I'm sure last lack of winter helped. Very few people in the woods so we were able to hunt areas easily. I don't think baiting is too much of problem where we are anymore. We did get to meet the warden in the middle of nowhere. Was surprised by that. Pretty nice guy and we weren't doing anything wrong so no big deal. Hopefully the deer can bounce back up there. We saw no wolf sign at all and have not had any on camera 

I feel baiting and cabin feeding is a problem, along with the predator load. I have a buddy that did deer hunts as an outfitter in Ontario he says after the wolves got bad the bucks stopped making scrape and rub lines. Calling card for wolves he said. I still see bucks but very little buck sign.  
   If predator numbers go down and deer numbers go up, so bucks don’t have to travel miles between doe’s, they may become easier to hunt. As far as still hunting, I love it, but as I age it is becoming harder. Not so much the the walking, but the dragging.  I try to find concentrations of doe.  Where I hunt more logging would help. Between the predators, cars and cabin shooting are deer numbers are stagnant.