Dec 20 2009

December deer,

From my experiance this December we are seeing very little deer movement.  The Temps have been very cool with snow fall up to 10 inches as if that wasent enought the wind blew up to 50 Mph.  I dont believe that the deer movement has stopped but, i do believe that they have deffinatly changed their patterns.  After talking with Chris on the phone we decided to pull up the trail cam pictures from last december to see if that would give us a key to the puzzle.  We noticed that the deer were moving from around 11 to 3 not much in the night time hours.  December 17th i had a doe at 15 yds when a buck came in pushed her off and chased her for a while which leads me to believe that the second rut is on.  I do know that doe's go in to estrus every 28 day till they are bred. and that would put the end of the first rut on november 20. Chris and Dwayne said they saw 2 younger bucks with a fawn a couple days before.  I'm thinking that she had'nt been bred yet.  Chris checked the thick ceders this year in december when temps were below 0 and had found that the deer movement was crazy in there.  7 trails coming in and leaving.  Deer will eat ceder tree branches in december.  Deer are naturaly lazy creatures and will follow the easiest path in the winter time thats why trails are so thick.  Don't let this fool you for next year though cause these won't be the same patterns. They will be running on the summer feeding patterns. In the mornings the deer are coming from the food source and in the evenings the deer will come from the timber.

December deer hunting report