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Gotta love Blacktails!- Blacktail, Whitetail, and Mule Deer all make rubs on trees to mark territory and leave scent. Whitetail bucks make scrapes, which are spots where the buck clears the ground in an area by pawing at it. They typically pee in it as well. Blacktail don't make scrapes like WTs. - Deer in general, feed mostly in the dark. The first and last half hours of the day are the times you would expect to see most deer. Doe, in general, are not hunted as much so they often will get up and feed a bit during daylight hours - every 4 to 6 hours or so. You can train deer to stay out in the mornings by placing a limited quantity of bait out each morning. Gradually, decreasing the amount of bait may have the effect of creating competition for the bait, so they might come out in mornings to be the first deer to get the bait. I wouldn't recommend this - what a pain in the butt. Deer bed during the day, chew their cud, and rarely stand up, normally to pee or grab a few bites to eat. Then they bed again, where they are typically well hidden and hard to hunt. Most of your cam captures will either be at night or of doe/fawns/yearlings moving after feeding during daylight. - Bucks, once they've rubbed off their velvet at the end of August, typically become invisible, becoming almost entirely nocturnal in areas where they are hunted and where there is constant human activity. Very experienced hunters can and do hunt deer successfully in the early season without long term baiting. Bucks will start to show in the daytime again as the rut approaches. Typically, they stick to the woods and edges of clearings, but they are up and moving, though not very visible. Every once in awhile, you will find one moving through a large clearing/clearcut/golf course, etc. Scouting the spot for rubs on smallish trees from previous seasons is a good way to guess where to place your cams and possibly where to place a tree stand or blind. Bucks typically don't use the same trails doe do. Look for what appear to be minor trails above (on the side of a hill) or on the expected downwind side of the trails that doe use. As humans, we expect other animals to think like us. We like clearings in the woods because we can see well there. Blacktails like brush and darkness because they can be hidden from prey in there. If there was food in the clearing, then I would expect the deer to feed there at dawn and dusk, and well into the night. They typically stay out of sight as much as possible. Your clearing may or may not be a good spot to hang a stand. A tree stand placed above a well used trail just inside the tree line (in the trees) might be better.
Definitely easier to catch them in the open during daylight early archery season when they are still in velvet and in their summertime habits. But your best chance is late rifle season during the rut they could be moving anytime
I say it is better (IMHO) to figure out where and why the deer live where they are and try to anticipate where/when you can catch them off guard and get a shot on a mature animal. Apples are fine for doing a survey of the animals in the area. Learning their habits and planning for fair chase methods to harvest a deer will make success much more enjoyable. That's just me. Every hunter has their own ideas of what a successful and personally rewarding hunt entails - there is no perfect answer. Killing a doe on Whidbey is not a bad thing. It is probably better than killing a buck. Reducing the doe population limits the overpopulation and overutilization of island resources. I believe you will find though that killing a doe is not too difficult once you get a feeling for the area. If filling the freezer is your primary purpose for hunting, then a mature doe (or a young spike buck) will provide a fair amount of meat and will likely be an achievable goal . If you're ready for a challenge, trying to harvest a 3+ year old buck is a true challenge that can easily yield twice as much meat as a doe or young buck, and will likely leave you questioning your sanity about why in the heck you're sitting in the pouring rain hoping to see some movement. It's addictive. As someone else stated, the first 10 or so days of September is when you might have pretty good odds of success in killing a buck. After that, your opportunities of killing a buck are far and away better in the last week of October and the four days of the late season in November. If you're committed to bow hunting, then buying a Modern Firearm tag and bowhunting later in the season will give you better odds of killing a good buck. That is when the bucks will be up and moving during daylight hours. Doe are available throughout the season - timing of the hunt is not really a factor. In the off-season, I recommend reading one or both of these books. The B. Iverson book is considered to be the "bible" of Blacktail hunting. The second is another highly recommended source of information, though there's not as much science as you might expect. They are spendy. You should be able to find a used edition for 10 bucks or less if you search the web on a regular basis. $50 seems a bit silly, but they are both akin to a college education in BT hunting. Compared to the price of a college course, they are a pretty good deal. Check your library or friends that already hunt BT. Chances are pretty good that one or more of them have one of the two books.https://www.amazon.com/Blacktail-Trophy-Tactics-Boyd-Iverson/dp/0963040510/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3QZL8K51UCK34&dchild=1&keywords=blacktail+trophy+tactics+2&qid=1602125648&sprefix=blacktail+tr%2Caps%2C224&sr=8-1https://www.amazon.com/Trophy-Blacktails-Science-Scott-Haugen/dp/098194230X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Trophy+blacktail+hunting+the+science+of+the+hunt&qid=1602125834&sr=8-1
