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Hunt Introduction This whitetail deer bowhunt takes place on a large acreage of public land in central North Dakota. A friend of mine had hunted here 2 years ago and had a good hunt, and invited me to go with him on a hunt there this year, so I couldn't turn it down. The area we'll be hunting is very open country, with very few trees big enough for a tree stand. There's a river bottom that runs through the area, but even that doesn't have many trees along it. There are a number of planted fields of corn and sunflowers, and there are a number of alfalfa fields as well. According to my friend, the deer will likely be really concentrating to feed in the planted sunflower fields, even more than the corn or alfalfa. We decided to come this early in the season because the bucks should still be in bachelor groups and in their late summer feeding patterns, hopefully making them a little more predictable. Pre-Hunt Scouting  We saw deer and a good buck in this area, but it was too difficult to figure out a plan of attack with the lack of trees for a stand  Same story at this location - good spot, but difficult to set up on Wednesday A.M.  I was set up on this cornfield this morning After scouting for most of the day Tuesday, I found a good stand location and a good tree in the same place, and put up a stand. It's on the edge of a cornfield and an alfalfa field in what appeared to be a very heavy travel corridor. I felt good about the location and was eager to hunt it this morning.  View of my stand  View to the left of my treestand  Several does and fawns feeding in the corn I saw a button buck at first light, and then over the next 2 hours, I saw 14 does and fawns. I expected them to be coming out of the corn and into the brush/cover, but instead they were coming out of the brush and into the corn to feed. They fed for a while in the corn until two coyotes appeared all of a sudden and were trotting through the corn, at which point the deer became nervous and all left. I sat for a while longer and didn't see anything else. There was another corn field about half a mile away that I was interested to check out, so I went there next. What I found there got me excited. From a distance, I had been able to see a cornfield, but up close, I saw that there was also about a 20 acre planted sunflower field tucked in there as well and the deer were really smoking it, hard. There was considerably more sign here than where I hunted this morning, and there were trails all over the place coming into the sunflowers. There happened to be a workable tree for a stand situated near several heavily used trails, so I got one of my other stands and set it up there, intending to hunt it this afternoon.  The sunflower field I found to hunt this afternoon - note that the plants are basically nothing but stems after the deer were done with them Wednesday P.M.  A ground view of the entire sunflower field This evening I hunted the new stand at the sunflower field, and boy was it hot. From 4 p.m. until dark (8:30), I saw 40 deer come into that sunflower field. Interestingly, 95% of the deer came from one side of the sunflower field only, despite there being heavy trails leading to the other side as well. I'm guessing deer coming into the other side don't get there until after dark. Of the deer I saw this evening, nine were bucks, including two 8-points, one 10-point, one 6-point, one 5-point, three forkhorns, and one spike. Unfortunately, most of the deer came out on trails out of range of my treestand, although the 6-point (a big rack for a 6, and in full velvet) and the 5-point did pose nicely for me at 17 yards. I was determined to hold out for a good buck, like the 8-point or the 10-point I saw out of range tonight, both of which I felt certain would have scored in the 120-135" range. Several of the bucks were still in velvet, including a nice 8-point. I made note of which trails most of the bucks came out on, and plan to scout those out tomorrow for a possible stand location change, although I'm not extremely optimistic because I didn't see any good looking trees over there. Tomorrow morning I'll hunt this stand again.  My evening stand  View to the right - where most of the deer came out of the brush  View to the left  View straight out in front of my stand
Joshua Flournoy owns and manages the Livehunts.com web site. Joshua resides in east Texas with his wife and four children. |
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