Puzzled

[bwhntr]

OK. This is kind of long, so bear with me. This past Sunday afternoon and evening I bow hunted a 3 acre clover food plot that has held deer all year.Since the beginning of October, I have hunted this plot. This is private property with bowhunting only. I have watched anywhere from 15 to 25 yearlings, does and young bucks enter this food plot within 30 minutes of the same time each time I have sat in the stand, always from the same corner of the plot. I am a scent free fanatic, cover scent, etc. Always keeping the wind in my favor. The stand has only been hunted frequently. The way the standsite is entered, is where you are not exposed to the plot, and upwind of the plot. I have always heard that when a cold front is coming through to get out there and hunt. That happened this past Sunday. I sat from 12:30 till dark'30. Nothing entered the foodplot. No yearlings or anything. Could they somehow have picked up enough of my scent entering to the stand, from past entries, so that they found another place to feed. Or could the older bucks have dispersed them? Or maybe they possibly changed to another food source? I have been observing and hunting them since early October.

[nateberly]

My first guess is that there is a different food source that they are now using. It is now almost December and you said you started watching them in early October, that is two months and a lot can change in that time. If this happens again in the next few days, that would be confirmed, but if they come back it would have probably been a scent issue.

[ranwin33]

As nateberly said, most likely they have found another food source.  Stick it out, they will probably be back at sometime in the future when the clover is the only green thing left in the area.

[Woods Walker]

Somebody may have put a baitpile out on the adjoining property, so now you must bait too, to get them back! [:D] [;)]

[Mac]

[:D][:D][:D]It was MEEEEE!!!! [:D][:D][:D]

[ranwin33]

ORIGINAL: Woods Walker

Somebody may have put a baitpile out on the adjoining property, so now you must bait too, to get them back! [:D] [;)]

Would that be called a "bait and switch".

[bwhntr]

That's what happened. Corn pile about 200 yards away.

[ranwin33]

ORIGINAL: bwhntr

That's what happened. Corn pile about 200 yards away.

In that case, just plant a food plot.  That will pull them right back over to you, afterall a clover plot is the same as that bait pile they've got over there.  [:D]

[69Viking]

I don't see the bait pile as the only reason they changed their pattern.  A corn pile is not going to make all that much of a difference when everyone knows deer eat a variety of food during the span of a day and they would not sit and eat just corn all day, it can be part of their diet but not all of it.  An article in D&DH clearly explained this and I have witnessed the opposite.  I have seen deer enter a food plot and eat the greens while ignoring the fresh corn pile less than 30 yards away that you know they could see and smell it. 

[ranwin33]

While the deer won't eat the corn pile all day long, it may draw them off their regular route for a while because now they have a new destination in mind as they go browsing through the woods.  Before it may have been the foodplot he was hunting over, now it's the bait pile.  When the bait pile goes away the food plot may end up back on their regular route.