Deer Hunting Questions | Whitetail Hunting

Best Whitetail Deer Hunting Blind?

Question: I am at a lose with regard to what I need to do for a deer hunting blind this deer season. I don’t know if I want to build a ground blind or just buy a pop-up blind. If I decide to go with a pop-up blind, do I need to leave it up or can I put it up the night before I am going to hunt and leave it for the weekend?

I just got on a whitetail deer lease and do not know if I will stay on it, so I do not know if I want to worry about building and setting it up to take it down. Also what are the benefits of a pop up and how far from my feeder should I set it up? I will be rifle hunting for deer and hogs.

Answer: There are a lot of choices when trying to select a hunting blind for whitetail hunting and it can be a little overwhelming. For your situation I would suggest getting yourself a good sturdy pop-up that is big enough to move around in and find a good looking spot and set it up. This will also allow animals in the area to become familiar with your blind.

Hunters can leave a pop up blind up all season if they take the necessary precautions. Those precautions would include making sure you have the pop-up anchored down and tied off to trees or nearby brush. Those blue northers will destroy a blind that is not anchored down and may even blow it into the next county–which happened to me once in North Texas. Continue reading Best Whitetail Deer Hunting Blind?

Using Human Urine in Deer Scrapes

Question: I’ve heard a lot about deer scrapes in the past and my hunting buddy swears on urinating in them while whitetail hunting. Will human urine attract bucks to real or mock scrapes? And will it work with mock scrapes?

Answer: In the past hunters would hear a lot about mock scrapes. At one point, it seemed like everyone whitetail hunting on a TV show could teach how to make a mock scrape. However, it seems whitetail bucks are not as picky as we once thought. I know of one mock scrape study in particular where human urine as the only scent placed in some of the mock scrapes.

The researcher’s cameras recorded whitetail bucks using these mock scrapes and always left their own, real urine on the bare earth. This research showed that buck visits to mock scrapes with human urine were used at the same rate as those where buck urine had been used. Continue reading Using Human Urine in Deer Scrapes

Question About A Deer Lease

Question: I know this sounds like a ridiculous question, but I have an opportunity to secure a deer hunting lease from a landowner who has openly admitted to me that he intends to sell his property, but he is just not sure when this might happen. The landowner that is looking to lease his land has given me his word that I “won’t loose my money” should he sell. However, I have had no prior dealings with the man to make a sound judgement call on the strength of his word.

As I understand it, any new buyer would have no obligation to honor a hunting lease, and I cannot see him making it a requirement of the buyer. Any deer hunters ever been down this road before? No money has exchanged hands at this point, and I just want another opinion before I even think about moving further. It could be a good opportunity, but I don’t want to lose a bunch of money on a would-be deer lease. What would you do? Continue reading Question About A Deer Lease

How do Deer Get Tumors?

Whitetail hunters sometimes encounter deer with warts or lumps on the skin. These bumps do not hurt the deer since they are usually non-cancerous tumors called either fibromas or papillomas. In both cases, the warts or tumors are caused by viruses. The difference between the two is that fibromas grow either from the skin or from the layer beneath, while papillomas grow only from the skin.

To a hunter, both lumps will look dark-colored and hard to the touch. These external warts generally do not cause problems for afflicted animal, but they are not pretty to look at. Deer hunters often think the meat is inedible because of these tumors, but that is not the case. Since lumps are usually found only in the skin, not in the muscles, there is generally no problem.

However, there could be tumors located inside a deer’s body, such as on it’s organs, that could be cancerous and the venison should be discarded. While whitetail hunting, do not be overly alarmed if you come across an animal with external tumors because they are not uncommon.

Aging Mature Bucks from Camera Photos

Question: I live in southeast Minnesota and I only want to shoot mature whitetail deer on my land, but I’m new to whitetail deer hunting and don’t really know what I’m doing. I have had my trail camera out and have seen 2 nice bucks. One is a 2.5 year old deer I believe and the other is younger. I was wondering if I could send you some pictures of them and have you age them for me and give me some hints on how to do it? Our bow season opens September 19th and I don’t want to have one of the bucks walk under my stand and shoot him just to find out that he is not a mature deer. Your help would be appreciated.

Answer: The 9 point buck looks to be exactly what you thought; a 2 1/2 year old buck. The 8 point whitetail is a yearling (1 1/2 year old buck). By the way, many people refer to fawns as yearlings. Fawns are fawns, yearlings are 1 1/2 year old does or bucks (they have their first set of antlers as yearlings).

With whitetail, some characteristics you can use for aging whitetail bucks on the hoof is to look at antler mass, the chest in relation to the belly, and the shape of the head. In almost all cases, antler mass increases with age. For example, look at the yearling 8 compared to the 2 1/2 year old 9. In addition, as a buck gets older, his belly gets larger and fuller. So does his chest.

With a larger chest and belly, this can cause the back of a mature whitetail to sway downward and make the legs appear shorter. Lastly, play close attention to a buck’s head. As a buck gets older, his head will appear shorter (from left to right) and deeper (up and down).

It’s a good idea to keep good photos of all age “known” age clases of bucks to improve your ability to accurately age deer while whitetail hunting. That way, when you get photos of deer that you are unsure of, you can compare them to your file photos and judge the new whitetail buck based on the above criteria.

What Kind of Deer is It?

Question: We went whitetail hunting on the last weekend of the deer season and while me were riding along the trails at our hunting camp, and on the way to our stands, my father’s freind looked to the right and saw something. He stopped the four wheeler and told me and his son to be quiet, and then he walks back couple feet and fires his 30-30!

He did not tell us what he was shooting at so we started walking to see what he got. We found a blood trail and then I saw something laying down, but it did not look like a deer. It was not completely brown or white, but it was a deer with white on the back, its head was brown, and it had brown spots on it back.

Well, I said you shot a dog to my fathers freind and he says no that’s my deer. So we walk over and sure enough it was! I was surprised this was the first time I ever saw a whitetail deer with these kind of spots. What kind of deer is white with brown spots? Continue reading What Kind of Deer is It?

Do Whitetail Deer Have Canine Teeth?

Question: What percentage of deer have canine teeth? On the last day of the rifle deer season I harvested a whitetail doe. At first appearance, the doe seemed… well, normal. However, upon further inspection I felt something hard and sharp in the front, upper part of her jaw, where there are not supposed to be any teeth. Using a knife, I uncovered a small canine-looking tooth in the doe’s mouth. What I am wondering is how common is this occurrence in a doe? When I searched the Internet, I could only find information on this in whitetail bucks.

Answer: Lower canines are present in all normal whitetail frrt, but upper canines are rare. Of the eight front teeth on a whitetail’s lower jaw, six are incisors and the outermost two are canines. These canines have simply moved forward through evolutionary adaption to look and function like incisors. Deer feed with these front teeth by pinching a leaf or bud against their upper palate and tearing it away from the plant.

Tumors in White-tailed Deer?

Question: I came across a photo of a deer with horrible tumors on it’s neck. I’ve seen deer that looked like they had internal tumors on their neck and around their jaw, but the tumors in this photo are huge and external. What is the deal with this deer’s tumors? Is it cancer?

Answer: Wow, that is a lot of tumors on that deer. I’ve never seen a deer that looked that bad off, so I did some looking around and this is what I found. The deer was obviously shot, but I suspect that it would have died either directly from the tumors or from complications because of the tumors.

Source: I’ve never seen tumors that agressive before. And that deer seems to be pretty young, and the tumors seem to have developed at a pretty agressive rate. From what I know about tumors, these cutaneous growths can be malignant and the result of a cancer similar to BPV. It is true that these tumors will somtimes slowly heal somewhat, often times they will eventually kill the deer by blocking their mouth, nose, or eyes.

If the growths around this deer’s mouth get higher or bigger, I think they could easiliy interfere with it’s ability to eat food, resulting in a slow and pianful starvation. Because of this large chance (and the remote possibility of complete healing) I would suggest harvesting this animal. Personally, I would not suggest consuming the meat. Its true that these fibromasts can be contained to the skin, but sometimes they are the result of internal problems. There is no way to know without an autopsy by a trained professional. I think the deer would be more valuable if you donated it to a vet school or research center.