Originally Posted by
CMe
The animals are definitely there so no problem with that aspect. The key thing with Woodhill is to understand which areas of your block to target. A review via google earth and the right questions pre hunt are critical to making the most of the early morning or later afternoon periods plus making sure you do not bugger those hunts up by mistakenly targeting them at midday.
Recently cleared/replanted areas with a year or two so of growth are perfect to spot deer out on dawn and dusk grabbing a feed so keep them for that time. That means don;t hunt directly upwind of them during the day!! anything bedded near them will head onto the other guys block if you do!! The pines that are less than between 3 and about 8 years old ( ie 1.5 m high to 5 m high are large enough to give good cover during the day but have feed in between. This is your number one daytime area to hunt. You can cut quietly across rows and look very carefully up and down each row before crossing to the next. Once the pines get too tall the stuff underneath dies off but often these areas are good places for the deer to hide in during their sleeping period. Only good to hunt if you like crawling though!! If one of these borders the open area though, set up for your evening hunt so you can pick them off as they emerge from these trees into the open. The pines that have been thinned are a hell of a mess and just not practical to hunt in for several years afterwards but deer love to bed around the edges where stuff has grown up through it. The mature pines are normally a passing through area but sometimes the deer will lie down in quite open places. So never assume there is nothing there!! Oh yea, on the subject of blaze gear, if you can't see the camo blaze gear you won't see a non camo blaze jacket either. Lots of technical articles around on that sort of thing. The problem with blaze anything is poor light or a mistaken belief you can see under that light condition- particularly important for us old fellas. Your cones in the center of the eye that see colour need a lot more light than the black and white rods on the sides do. It doesn't matter what colour it is when light is poor. You just can;t see colour full stop. Since you can see with your rods you mistakenly believe you can still see colour. I have made a hunters cap to get around this and hope that NZHS will OK me mentioning it on the forum in the next days as I really would like to make sure no one gets shot in Woodhill or anywhere else this roar. One wounding is enough!!
