Blacktails in the rain

[warbird2006]

I made several trips around Harrison, Hope, Boston Bar, but didn't see anything. Most of the time was raining or at least drizzling. Any tips for hunting in this miserable weather mayhem?

[Harvest the Land]

I made several trips around Harrison, Hope, Boston Bar, but didn't see anything. Most of the time was raining or at least drizzling. Any tips for hunting in this miserable weather mayhem?

Get out of the truck and have a look in the timber

[N¡ck]

Wonder if anyone has tried one of those portable ground blinds.
Find a game trail or where you know doe hang out,
Set up, give a few calls, open a beer and wait.

[ACB]

Wonder if anyone has tried one of those portable ground blinds.
Find a game trail or where you know doe hang out,
Set up, give a few calls, open a beer and wait.
Beer and gunpowder, what could go wrong?

[Spy]

Get out of the truck and have a look in the timber
This is what I found works best lol.. Find a deer trail and start creeping around like you have lost something. You will eventually be rewarded. The rain is great as it noisy and you can move around, find some Cedar trees they like to sit under them in shitty weather.. I have found that BTs are normally in the closets spot that everyone speeds past on their way to the “hunting grounds”. I have learned to hunt spots everyone overlooks.

[fuzzybiscuit]

Get out of the truck and have a look in the timber

Timber hunting Blacktails in the rain has got to be one of my favourite things to do. It puts things a little bit more in your favour.

Don’t discount hunting cut blocks in the rain either though. I quite often found them mere yards from the timber and my theory always was the rain made it quite loud in the timber making it easier for things to sneak up on them with their reduced hearing and sense of smell. Out in the open they could rely on sight to make it harder for something to get close so we quite often saw them bedded down in the open not far from the Timbers edge so they could make a quick escape.

[jamfarm]

I listened to a podcast about mule deer hunting and applied that advice to blacktail hunting. You have to get into the area that you’re hunting in the dark, sit at the edge of a cut block, clearing or somewhere with good visibility. Get there at least 30 minutes before light & sit, you could see a buck heading back to its bedding area.

About 30-45 minutes after full daylight then you start your spot and stalk hunt. I think it’s better hunting BT’s in the rain, fog, wind or blowing snow, I think it covers the noise that you make. As others have mentioned here on HBC over the years regarding BT hunting, take 3 steps, stop, look. It’s painfully slow but I have crept up on many deer that way.

I also find that when you’re moving that slow sometimes you’ll see them before they see you. If you’re moving slow and the BT see you first, they’ll get accustomed to you if you’re moving slow and they won’t view you as a threat. Don’t make much eye contact, make sure the wind is right, act like a deer and how they move and you can get super close to does and fawns, I’ve even sat down 10’ away from bedded deer.

I think the other thing that helps is what I call doing a death march, do the sitting thing in the morning and then do the slow creep hiking through the whole day, don’t go back to the truck, get away from roads, find old growth forest and hunt right until dark and hike back to the truck in the dark, which is true for elk hunting too.

Get to know the area you hunt, it’ll take years to really figure an area out and keep discovering new areas. Do all these things and you’ll harvest a buck or two every year.

[caddisguy]

Wonder if anyone has tried one of those portable ground blinds.
Find a game trail or where you know doe hang out,
Set up, give a few calls, open a beer and wait.

I had a couple doghouse blinds out this season, but ended up not using them much. I just had them out incase I wanted a break from any snotty weather. I put them out too late (vehicle issues) too in my opinion... mid August... I think it actually resulted in the deer avoiding close proximity to the blinds when the season opened. I did sit in them for a bit a couple times... man who knew it would be so hard for me to sit in one place for any extended period haha ... props to those who can sit in blinds or tree stands for hours

Also noticed a widow maker wanting to fall towards one of the blinds. At one point I actually thought if I gave the tree a shove in the right direction, it wouldn't fall on the blind. Nope... my little shove wasn't changing the direction it wanted to go.... SMASH... dead center of the pop-up blind. It actually survived with the only damage being a broken fiberglass tent-pole-like support thingy. Was pretty amazed.

But anyway to the OP it's like others say... blacktails like to stay in their rainforest jungle homes for the most part. Spring and summer you'll see them all over in the open, roads, cuts and such. Fall comes around, seeing them in the open is the exception to the norm and it's often just them crossing from one patch of timber to the next.

You don't even need to do crazy hiking up into the saddles and benches or even uphill / downhill. Anyone who can walk a short distance can do it. Hiking in just about anywhere 50-100 yards into the timber even in the flats, good chance you come across trails, tracks, poops and such... if so, creep around and still-hunt that timber, if not, move along and take a poke into the timber somewhere else.

That's the thing about R2. There is virtually no hunting pressure beyond view of roads and there aren't a heck of a lot of roads in R2 (especially now...) Overall R2 is probably one of the most huntable yet under hunted regions on the planet when one considers the ratio of area that exists versus area that ever sees the presence of a hunter. Driving roads and watching cuts in R2 though, it's like a lottery ticket, odds are bad. You could play 30x a year for 20 years and still possibly come up empty. All these years, I've never actually never seen a buck during season while driving FSR's in R2, day or night.... come to think of it, in all the fall seasons I think I have only ever spotted one doe while driving.

[brian]

Wonder if anyone has tried one of those portable ground blinds.
Find a game trail or where you know doe hang out,
Set up, give a few calls, open a beer and wait.
Problem is he will only show by the eighth beer.

My experience is wind and rain is great for getting out there and being quiet, but they are slinking around being really quiet too. Like others said, still hunt the timber and obsessively use optics. Best case scenario is you see them before they see you. Next best scenario is they see you but are standing around presenting you with a shot opportunity anyways. I myself will more often sit around and wait for them to come to me on a quiet day with a predictable wind and when the forest is too noisy to move around in. As for how rain affects their activity/movement? I don't know if it does much, at least not light rain and drizzle. Heavy winds and rain creates havoc for their senses. I'm sure it makes them really freakin' cautious. People say they come out of the wood work and are more likely to be caught in the open, but that has not been my experience. Every rainy day deer I have shot has been in the timber.

[N¡ck]

I've only ever used blinds for waterfowl. I can last a few hours before I start going a bit crazy. A flask of whiskey helps 😉
Wonder if it's a good tactic for blacktail.

[Ubertuber]

Blacktail hunting in the heavy rain is gets me exited. Find some mature timber in a bit of a draw, get out of the truck and go slow. Usually try to uphill so returning is easy.
Oh yeah, I always bring a dry set of cloths for the drive home.

[Spy]

Blinds have limited vision, you don’t need camo either you just need the wind in your favour and a good vantage point and or hiding spot.. Use the trees and bush as cover as you move along it just takes practice...

[caddisguy]

I've only ever used blinds for waterfowl. I can last a few hours before I start going a bit crazy. A flask of whiskey helps 
Wonder if it's a good tactic for blacktail.

Can be. I think still hunting is the best way to go, but sometimes when its 2C and coming down like a hose, sitting in one spot with limited view can seem like a good alternative. When I'm getting soaked and cold it makes me a little more fidgety wanting to move faster and such, not good. You can definitely tag BT's from a blind, can't count all the bucks that cruised passed blind cams while I wasn't in the blind over the years

[MichelD]

I have tried for many years to still hunt blacktails in the timber but they have almost always defied me. Years ago I had 10 acres on a coastal island and about this time of year in howling wind and rain I would walk into my back end and then over into a grove of big virgin cedars and the deer would be hiding out there. My daughter (now 45) says one of her earliest memories is looking out the window of her little room I built onto our cabin to see me coming home with a buck slung over my back.

Fast forward to the last couple of years. I've been watching a well used trail from a rough ground blind I made of branches and blowdown limbs with my back against a tree and one morning over several hours last year I saw 12 does come along and this year saw seven deer over five hours.

What I noticed was that they are incredibly cagey and cautious. The does are often in groups and led by the oldest biggest one and she leads by looking around, taking a step, stopping, looking around, standing completely still for sometimes several minutes before continuing. And if you have three or four pairs of eyes and ears looking out for movement, that is a lot of scrutiny.

They are always on high alert. All I can say is two things:

1 .I have seen way more deer by sitting in one place than I ever have by walking around and;

2. If you are going to still hunt blacktails in the timber, do what they do. Spend a lot more time looking than you do moving.

[john-brennan]

I used to hunt 50-100 yards in the timber line of large slashes and walk slow I shot lots this way being