Thread: Spooking Deer

if the ONLY see you,or ONLY hear you..they might do as you have described but NORMALLY if the scent you its game over....reds are well known for the stop and look back to see what spoked them.
heavily hunted animals go and dont stop....quiet animals with little pressure may hang around...as Ryan said...it depends on their life experience......the quick and the dead.... slow deer and ones who stop to look dont last long under heavy pressure.

That guy is good I watch all his videos

Originally Posted by Sako851

That guy is good I watch all his videos

He’s a goer ah
Gave his partner a pair of my Talan boots - they'd just got married
Look what he wears on his feet

Runs a 240 trap line - stays night on snowline - clears line on way down next day.
Stays Fiord - back up the line next day etc
Sees a LOT of Deer !!

Someone with bush knowledge must of taken him under their wing at a very early age - he knows too much to have had it come to him via mistakes like most of us :-)

Was hunting fallow on Saturday, had one of those dry throat moments where I started coughing and damn near choking. Bunch of fallow walked around the corner of a hill to see wtf was going on. They hung around long enough for my son to get a shot in but he pulled it.

The hound and I spook a lot of deer, 5 close encounters this last trip. If they bark or smell us I leave them be and don’t bother pursuing them so they don’t run over into the next watershed, they settle down quicker not have pressure them.

If your lucky some deer see movement and run 10m-20m and may stop a few seconds then trot off 100m-300m or so and go back to feeding if they aren’t bedded down, so might get another stalk in on the same animal.
Some deer hear unnatural sounds for the conditions and bolt off then stop to check whats going on for as long as minutes then feeding again or walk off not to far away.

Most of the time we don’t need to put the pressure on them, we have plenty of time 3-6 day trips and just move onto the next lots of animals. Some days we may stalk into 12 different animals.
I also use the stag call and fawn call in certain situations to stop animals, if your been around a deer farm or plenty of time in the hills listening to stag communicating to each other ( non roar call ) you will know the call along with antlers clashing.

I think deer are a bit like humans - having different temperaments. Some will be nervous and run a long way. A great strategy if the predator has a long range rifle. Some will run a short way and save themselves a lot of energy. I don't think this is entirely heritable either as deer would get warier and warier over a few generations but they do seem to revert to placidness if not hunted for a while. I'm not sure that much abstract learning as we know it goes on. With random behaviour, the predator has some uncertainty whether to pursue the prey in expectation of finding it again or whether to just cut their losses and look for another one. With reds, I've often heard them barking apparently nearby for quite a while, perhaps trying to intimidate you or luring you into wasting more time and energy. But I can't recall ever seeing or shooting a deer that has barked at me. Sika on the other hand quite often run just a short distance, squeal loudly and then let themselves be seen and shot. Reds often move about restlessly for a minute or two before trotting off, so you have a chance of a shot even after they are a little spooked.

You wouldn't expect that deer would change their flight behaviour much after a death experience either. Two deer are standing together and one gets shot dead and its mate runs off. One of them never gets a chance to learn and do it differently in future. But does the surviving deer become accustomed to gunshots and easier to hunt next time. Great scenario !! Goats and pigs are very vocal before they die and warn the rest of the mob something has gone badly wrong but I don't think deer do ? A rifle shot is a bit startling up close but some distance away, certainly not the most alarming thing a deer could hear (eg dogs barking). Most likely there are some instinctively alarming signals that make deer more nervous after repeated encounters and they modify their behaviour to avoid them: stealthy footfalls and twig snapping (so different from the louder noises deer make moving around), human smell, voices, perhaps deer blood ? Would finding a deer carcass make other deer sh*t bscared and vacate the area ?

Originally Posted by Bagheera

I think deer are a bit like humans - having different temperaments. Some will be nervous and run a long way. A great strategy if the predator has a long range rifle. Some will run a short way and save themselves a lot of energy. I don't think this is entirely heritable either as deer would get warier and warier over a few generations but they do seem to revert to placidness if not hunted for a while. I'm not sure that much abstract learning as we know it goes on. With random behaviour, the predator has some uncertainty whether to pursue the prey in expectation of finding it again or whether to just cut their losses and look for another one. With reds, I've often heard them barking apparently nearby for quite a while, perhaps trying to intimidate you or luring you into wasting more time and energy. But I can't recall ever seeing or shooting a deer that has barked at me. Sika on the other hand quite often run just a short distance, squeal loudly and then let themselves be seen and shot. Reds often move about restlessly for a minute or two before trotting off, so you have a chance of a shot even after they are a little spooked.

You wouldn't expect that deer would change their flight behaviour much after a death experience either. Two deer are standing together and one gets shot dead and its mate runs off. One of them never gets a chance to learn and do it differently in future. But does the surviving deer become accustomed to gunshots and easier to hunt next time. Great scenario !! Goats and pigs are very vocal before they die and warn the rest of the mob something has gone badly wrong but I don't think deer do ? A rifle shot is a bit startling up close but some distance away, certainly not the most alarming thing a deer could hear (eg dogs barking). Most likely there are some instinctively alarming signals that make deer more nervous after repeated encounters and they modify their behaviour to avoid them: stealthy footfalls and twig snapping (so different from the louder noises deer make moving around), human smell, voices, perhaps deer blood ? Would finding a deer carcass make other deer sh*t bscared and vacate the area ?

chur. it was breezy on saturday and i was saving big movments for when the wind blew a bit harder. youre probably right about gunshots as i could hear trucks or fram equipment banging which is a first like a distant gunshot. i didnt want to scent the area out to bad so they hopefully not pushed further away. will find out in the weekend i guess.

Ive shot a deer not 7-800yards from where guy was mowing lawns....carted one out recently and 4 jokers sitting on tail gate having midday beerzies not 100yards from where I had been dressing deer in the bush...it does make you think about backstop if you miss.
listening to heavy machinery working while stalking is hard work....

Out of anywhere I've hunted in NZ the blue mountain fallow seem to be the most on edge, they're out of there quicker than you can blink, it's unreal the pressure that place gets compared to anywhere else in Southland.

The fallow up near wangavegas are very edgey... well the girls are. We wandered up on 3 stags mooching around. We didn't want to shoot them, it was a meat hunt so I was really after women and children. But we didn't want to spook them as they might spook others.

In the end we had no choice as we they were between us and where we wanted to be. So we stood out in the open maybe 100m away and started walking, they just stood there and looked at us until we were maybe 40m away before they decided to head off. Even then they just ran down to the bushline 200-300m away, and started play fighting.