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Setup breakdown in new growth pines.

mschultz373 said:
I walked a WMA that’s mostly pine today and noticed lots of red oaks and blackjack oaks along the edges between a section of dense, young pine and older pine with some hardwoods mixed in. It was my first time coming across a blackjack oak - are those worth keeping tabs on?

It was 98F out today and I bumped two deer - one big one about 30yards away from me as I cut into an old hardwood stand in a corner of the WMA. Good intel.
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Sounds like a productive scout. Although I am unfamiliar with the Blackjack oak, I would guess it should be a lot like or belong to the White oak family. I generally clump oaks into two categories, the reds and the whites. Generally speaking, reds will be less favored by deer since they have more tannins and are bitter until the acorns have had a chance to lay out on the ground and get bleached out by the rain and sun. Then the deer will eat them. White oak acorns will be preferred as soon as they hit the ground as long as they are not wormy. The last few years our white oaks have not done well or have been wormy. If they only have reds to eat, they often times won't be too choosy.

Hunting hot feed trees is my favorite way to hunt deer.
 
NMSbowhunter said:
Sounds like a productive scout. Although I am unfamiliar with the Blackjack oak, I would guess it should be a lot like or belong to the White oak family. I generally clump oaks into two categories, the reds and the whites. Generally speaking, reds will be less favored by deer since they have more tannins and are bitter until the acorns have had a chance to lay out on the ground and get bleached out by the rain and sun. Then the deer will eat them. White oak acorns will be preferred as soon as they hit the ground as long as they are not wormy. The last few years our white oaks have not done well or have been wormy. If they only have reds to eat, they often times won't be too choosy.

Hunting hot feed trees is my favorite way to hunt deer.
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Do you tend to re-visit those known oaks in the early season and set up on the ones dropping?

I would guess your areas are like us, in that, by the time gun season opens (late Nov) and then rut begins (mid-late Dec), almost all the oaks have largely dropped and been eaten up.


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mschultz373 said:
Do you tend to re-visit those known oaks in the early season and set up on the ones dropping?

I would guess your areas are like us, in that, by the time gun season opens (late Nov) and then rut begins (mid-late Dec), almost all the oaks have largely dropped and been eaten up.


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Yes, chasing hot oaks is an early season strategy. Any one oak will only be good for a short while so when you find one hunt it immediately, hunt it out and move on. That is one of the main reasons I have gotten away from trying to have preset spots aside from primary scrape areas in dense cover (mid to late season strategy). I never know which tree out of hundreds of thousands will be good, so I have to be able to move and adapt on the fly. I make a speed tour to find a couple of hot oaks just prior to opening day and have those ready to go hunt over. Then once I hunt those out, I move on to find more. The saddle and 2TC make for a very nice, light way to climb and hunt on the fly. I do plan to also do a lot more ground hunting this season also.
 
Weldabeast said:
I've only just started dabbling in this type of terrain but so far, as far as I can tell u gotta find the invisible features....like u mentioned, ditches/drainage thru the flats are definitely worth looking at. They are so subtle....barely 6-12" in "elevation" change will "funnel" the critters....invisible "edges" like where knee high palmettos butt up to chest high palmettos...I'm having to retrain my eyes to see those small differences. There are small oak hammocks mixed in out there but they usually get hunted really hard. Flag ponds are the main "feature" out on the flats...the deer bed alone the edges and while the deer can walk right thru the deepest parts they tend to skirt them so u can use the flag ponds to find pinch points
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You may try qGIS if you want to get a useful map to at least have some elevation changes to go to, as opposed to a huge block of “X” terrain to walk. Most states have publicly available elevation data that you can download and load into custom maps.

I have found it useful for the uber-flat marshes we have, if only to identify even 1’ higher places that give a direction to my boots on the ground.


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8f5453a175c3fd6300e52946ed585965.jpg

Here’s a pic from the same WMA I walked Friday, but from last December. I would call this semi-thick pine - hard to get into, but opens up to 15-30yards viability. Logged sometime around 2007.

This is actually in an area right by one of the two main parking areas and it sits next to a boundary road. I don’t know if anyone else hunted it, and maybe foolishly, I never did, but the few times I went in there, it was clear the deer had been bedded down at some point and there were often fresh droppings.


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Another area of the same WMA. Must’ve been logged sometime between ‘17 and ‘19, per aerials. I was walking to a different spot and didn’t hunt here, but I remember there being pretty clear trails. Seemed tough given the tall grass and no trees to get into. There is a small creek bottom out there that might be worth checking again, but it is so open that I don’t know if much would use it. You can see way in the back where another stand of tall row pines (and some hardwoods) are.


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mschultz373 said:
I walked a WMA that’s mostly pine today and noticed lots of red oaks and blackjack oaks along the edges between a section of dense, young pine and older pine with some hardwoods mixed in. It was my first time coming across a blackjack oak - are those worth keeping tabs on?

It was 98F out today and I bumped two deer - one big one about 30yards away from me as I cut into an old hardwood stand in a corner of the WMA. Good intel.
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No reason at all to keep up with blackjacks in my experience. Skwerls dont even seem to mess with them.
 
Here local we have a red oak that everybody calls black jack but ours is actually called turkey oak but they are very similar. I called them the wrong name my whole life and still do outta habit sometimes. Those acorns fall later in the year. The deer here eat them but I don't think they are the first pick of given a choice. Turkey oak grows on high and dry sand hills and ridges...a more wide open terrain. The more wide open terrain and the acorns falling late in the year when the guns are out I think the sign I find under those trees is majority night time
 
Weldabeast said:
Not this weekend but the following weekend I'm going to go poke around in a wma that is all planted pine with some swampy mixed in. I'll get some good pics to share. If I remember, a screenshot of the location on the overhead satellite view and what it really looks like standing there... That's always fun
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I’ve heard it said - Bucks have wet feet. Sounds great


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katiesmom said:
Any tips on doing that, that you'd care to share?
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Another simple way to do it is to look at the tract on Google Earth and then dial back to the older photos, like I illustrated in post #21 above. Usually, you can tell to within a year or so when the spot was cut. Another clue is with pines, if you can see spaces between the pines, a lot of the time those areas have thick understory since light can get to the ground. If you can't see the ground, a lot of times they are more open underneath.
 
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