blacktails on the feed tonite

[brew]

wanted to watch the Hawks before i took off hunting today (big mistake)...didn't get up into the woods till about 1:30--about 3 i see a deer bedded down at the edge of the timber in a bowl about 275 yards down.. i've got an older (10 yrs old) pair of leupold wind river 10x42 binos and with my tired old eyes was fairly confident it was about a 6" spike.  went to get the spotting scope out of the back seat when it dawned on me that momma had cleaned the back seat out friday as she took the dog's to the vet using my truck---ugh!  glassed the deer for another 20 minutes when a truck came up the road--i flagged him down and asked him if he could see half-way decent cuz i thought there was a buck bedded down in the clear cut.  he assured me he could as he told me about the new pair of Swarovski binos he just bought for this hunting season.  i  triangulated where the deer was and after a few seconds he told me he could finally see the deer....for the next 5 minutes i don't know what pi**ed him off more---that i was actually able to spot the deer or that his $2,300 pair of binos weren't better than mine...boy he was ticked off...he kept going back and forth that he couldn't believe that i was actually able to spot the deer and that his expensive binos couldn't distinguish if it had horns or not.  eventually he asked me if i was going to take a shot and told him no...i would still be packing that dang deer out...drove off and wished him good luck.  i came back to that spot around 4:30 and there was another vehicle stopped about 75 yards up the road and i glassed it and the buck  was still bedded down there.  headed up the hill to a big clear cut where i really like to be at last light as i have always seen deer in it..on the way for the next hour it was like someone had flipped a switch...i couldn't go more than a few hundred yards and had deer all over the road...it ranges from open reprod to pretty thick and the deer were walking over top of each other eating as fast as they could.  i literally had deer within 40 feet of my truck that i had bumped off the road walk to the side of the road and grab 2 feet of a sword fern and gobble it up as fast as they could.  don't know if there is a big storm coming tonite or all the traffic had them hunkered down all day but i have never drove up to deer in a road and just had them walk off the road and start eating as fast as they can...it reminded me of a bunch of fat boys at a shakeys pizza lunch buffet...will try it again tomorrow but afraid with the amount they were feeding tonite that they will be slow to move in the morning.

[mtn.goat]

Pretty interesting, I had the very same experience tonight as well.  Jack nothing as far as deer all week and tonight as you said, the switch was flipped.... deer making me stop the truck on the way out of the woods, just after dark, unreal.  Crazy you had the same experience, on the same night.  Where were you, very roughly  .  I was in the 653 unit.

[fishnfur]

   No real storms coming.  Just the same crappy stuff as today.  Your guess about the hunter traffic may be correct.  That's was old timers call a "deer day".  Suddenly, for no apparent reason, there are deer everywhere when normally you'd be lucky to see one or two.

Funny how they eat sword fern a lot in some areas, and skip it almost completely in others. 

Edit:  The weather says there's a mild storm offshore tonight that might produce 30 mph winds.  A stronger one will hit tomorrow.  NOAA gives no indication of that forecast.

[brew]

i was in the vail unit...667...sat in my truck and watched this doe destroy a fern patch 30 feet off the road from where i was sitting idling in my diesel pick-up after i nearly pushed her off the road in front of me...her and two other antlerless deer walked out into the road about 60 feet in front of me.  two went to my right and started eating the alder leaves/twigs and the third walked back across the road in front of me to the left and began grabbing the sword ferns and chewing them up like they were going out of style.  she grabbed those ferns around the base of the plant and just chewed them up about as fast as i can type this..almost like slurping up speghetti noodles...pretty impressive as she really didn't care that i was sitting there watching her

[JeffRaines]

I noticed the same thing in Vail yesterday. Deer were everywhere! I did a stupid and left the truck with just my binos and walked out to a landing and glassed up a single deer in an area of reprod, couldn't put antlers on it, so I went back to truck to grab my rifle and rangefinder and come back and couldn't find it  I didn't see any other deer near it, so could've been a buck.

Seen about 15 does between 3 and 630. They were out in force! Wish I could hunt today, but I have kid duty. Oh well, I still have late season and late archery to make a connection.

[fishnfur]

It must have had something to do with that storm early today.  Geeze it was blowing like crazy down here.  Trees knocking around, and I bet we got over two inches of rain where I hunted.  The deer were in total hiding.  The only animals I saw were two does and an elk herd down on the Columbian WT Refuge.