Deep dive on cold fronts and how to hunt them

[moog5050]

So of equal importance, do we ever run into you in Critics in Honeoye Falls.  That's our primary stomping grounds for a breakfast break after a morning hunt.  Pretty good food there.  Plus, its centrally located to Mendon, Rush, Caledonia and Lima where our properties are located.  And no one looks at you funny walking in with bibs with blood on them.

[moog5050]

23 minutes ago, TheHornHunter said:

From my experience when the winds shift NW that typically comes with rising pressure and then when it switches southerly the pressure starts to drop. I generalized cold fronts here for the "typical" one I've see, but cold fronts are like deer - everyone is different. They can have easterly winds, be low pressure, etc... but if you were to tell me a cold front was coming next week I would put 70% odds on it starting with a NW wind and ending with either S or SW.

That's interesting.  I will start paying attention to this. 

[dbHunterNY]

37 minutes ago, TheHornHunter said:

Thanks for the input! We don't have any TSI on our farms but I could see how that would attract them. It's one of my priorities for this upcoming offseason.

it falls in line with what you said when it's really cold later in the season they hole up if it's more energy to go get the whatever quality of food available to them if it's mostly browse with any acorn crop left versus say a nice big unharvested ag field packed with carbs. when you do TSI you just want to make sure invasive species like bush honeysuckle and buck thorn don't take over. they provide great cover but very low quality food. you started a good thread and kicked it off with a great post.

[dbHunterNY]

1 hour ago, The_Real_TCIII said:

No I'm talking the usual suspects on the thread, most hunted Thursday through the weekend. It lines up with #3 really

activity seen by those hunting the farm definitely picked up when it warmed up a tad. that said i'm sure people movement must have had an effect too as more were out. regardless of people pressure i'm with ya.

[dbHunterNY]

38 minutes ago, TheHornHunter said:

That's possible. I go by the barometric pressure data off weather underground and don't have my own reader, but that data typically shows pressure rises as temperatures drop, then flat line as temps stabilize and drop as temps rise. That of course is a generalization and every cold front is different, but on average that's what I would expect from my experience.

it also shows sunrise and sunset times along with a guess on first and last light. i like weather underground too. the format is all that info overlayed over each other. no switching back and forth between screens or pages.

[TheHornHunter]

17 hours ago, moog5050 said:

So of equal importance, do we ever run into you in Critics in Honeoye Falls.  That's our primary stomping grounds for a breakfast break after a morning hunt.  Pretty good food there.  Plus, its centrally located to Mendon, Rush, Caledonia and Lima where our properties are located.  And no one looks at you funny walking in with bibs with blood on them.

It's certainly possible! I hunted a spot right around the corner from there for a few years and was there pretty much every week, but this year I've only been over once. Good food and good vibes like you mentioned. Tough to find too many places where you don't get people looking at you sideways in hunting gear.

[TheHornHunter]

17 hours ago, moog5050 said:

That's interesting.  I will start paying attention to this. 

The front we are dealing with today is a low pressure front - I find these typically have more rain/snow while the high pressure ones typically bring more cold. One day I will do some research into meteorology and try to better understand the science behind it

[TheHornHunter]

17 hours ago, dbHunterNY said:

it falls in line with what you said when it's really cold later in the season they hole up if it's more energy to go get the whatever quality of food available to them if it's mostly browse with any acorn crop left versus say a nice big unharvested ag field packed with carbs. when you do TSI you just want to make sure invasive species like bush honeysuckle and buck thorn don't take over. they provide great cover but very low quality food. you started a good thread and kicked it off with a great post.

They barely touched our big ag during the coldest temps, but they hammered our neighbor's small tucked away brassica plot and I saw quite a bit of foraging in one of our creekbeds. Thanks for the input on the TSI! Have you used it to try and direct movement? That's the primary reason I want to do it and of course have the added benefit of additional browse. We have a maybe 50 acre square shaped timber plot surrounded by pretty good staging areas of tall grass / brush and then like 400 acres of ag (only 175 of which is ours, but all of the 50 acres and most of the staging stuff is ours too). The issue we have is deer bed mostly in the timber and come out all over the staging and ag so it's tough to hunt them because there's no natural pinch points or funnels. We see tons of deer and deer sign there, but it's tough to get them in range or to get in close without having deer get downwind because the travel is so unpredictable. I was thinking if we did some TSI in the timber we could create our own funnels and essentially force them to certain exits.

I killed a nice 120 class 8 point there last year (he was only two unfortunately, i screwed up and misaged him on the hoof), found sheds from three deer this spring were 130"+ (we didn't run any cams) and the neighbor killed a beautiful 3 year old 140 class 8 pointer this year that we were hoping to keep around for another year. I have a few cams on it this year and we have several more 130-140 class bucks and I know there are bigger ones there but all the cameras and all the hunting we do is on the fringes so we rarely see them. Long winded way of say it has a ton of potential I just need to put in some sweat equity and make it more huntable, especially for bow. I'm hoping TSI and a few small food plots in the staging areas next year are the ticket.

[TheHornHunter]

17 hours ago, dbHunterNY said:

activity seen by those hunting the farm definitely picked up when it warmed up a tad. that said i'm sure people movement must have had an effect too as more were out. regardless of people pressure i'm with ya.

People pressure is another great catalyst for movement, but unfortunately that's a tough one to predict

[TheHornHunter]

17 hours ago, dbHunterNY said:

it also shows sunrise and sunset times along with a guess on first and last light. i like weather underground too. the format is all that info overlayed over each other. no switching back and forth between screens or pages.

It's my favorite by far. I also like it has the historical weather so I can go back and check weather conditions for when I see a ton of activity on trail cams. I love the charting on it and being able to see the temp, what it actually feels like, barometric pressure, wind speed / direction and cloud cover all on one screen (below is an image of my set up). I have a much easier time being able to look at charts and interpret the data rather than reading forecasts or looking at temperature tables. The fact it is all on one screen makes it even better. The Drury bro's app called DeerCast basically copies the wunderground format (and actually uses wunderground data I believe) and overlays their own proprietary movement forecast on top, but I find it harder to read than wunderground's because they put the wind on the same chart as the temperature one. That said I still find the app useful so if you haven't checked it out I'd highly suggest it. Their forecast's aren't perfect and I don't pay much attention to them because they are driven by the same things I focus on, but whenever the app says great conditions and I've been in the woods it has been a great hunt. 

Edited November 28, 2018 by TheHornHunter
Forgot to attach image

[moog5050]

44 minutes ago, TheHornHunter said:

The front we are dealing with today is a low pressure front - I find these typically have more rain/snow while the high pressure ones typically bring more cold. One day I will do some research into meteorology and try to better understand the science behind it

I noticed that.  Checked this morning due to your thread.  29.5ish

[Arcade Hunter]

Great thread.  I will be watching cold fronts closely from now on... Thanks for the insight.

[The_Field_Ager]

Excellent HH. I have made some similar but much more informal observations in recent years regarding the cold = movement myth. I will definitely be taking a more formal approach now and see if real predictive patterns can be extrapolated. 

[dbHunterNY]

1 hour ago, TheHornHunter said:

They barely touched our big ag during the coldest temps, but they hammered our neighbor's small tucked away brassica plot and I saw quite a bit of foraging in one of our creekbeds. Thanks for the input on the TSI! Have you used it to try and direct movement? That's the primary reason I want to do it and of course have the added benefit of additional browse. We have a maybe 50 acre square shaped timber plot surrounded by pretty good staging areas of tall grass / brush and then like 400 acres of ag (only 175 of which is ours, but all of the 50 acres and most of the staging stuff is ours too). The issue we have is deer bed mostly in the timber and come out all over the staging and ag so it's tough to hunt them because there's no natural pinch points or funnels. We see tons of deer and deer sign there, but it's tough to get them in range or to get in close without having deer get downwind because the travel is so unpredictable. I was thinking if we did some TSI in the timber we could create our own funnels and essentially force them to certain exits.

I killed a nice 120 class 8 point there last year (he was only two unfortunately, i screwed up and misaged him on the hoof), found sheds from three deer this spring were 130"+ (we didn't run any cams) and the neighbor killed a beautiful 3 year old 140 class 8 pointer this year that we were hoping to keep around for another year. I have a few cams on it this year and we have several more 130-140 class bucks and I know there are bigger ones there but all the cameras and all the hunting we do is on the fringes so we rarely see them. Long winded way of say it has a ton of potential I just need to put in some sweat equity and make it more huntable, especially for bow. I'm hoping TSI and a few small food plots in the staging areas next year are the ticket.

it depends on your situation. if it's all hard mast trees it'll be tough to draw them in any particular spot without natural pinch points or terrain features they'll wonder in there in no predictable manner other than where they find acorns on the ground or say white oaks over more bitter red oaks. if it's fairly mature woods though you won't have much browse which is mostly what deer eat. when you do TSI there intentionally sand bag the effort in some spots. you can open up the canopy or release trees to almost create a path of browse and heavy hard mast drops from releasing trees so that deer will prefer spots in there more than others. leave tree tops for horizontal cover to add to the browse whether for bedding or more protected travel route for the deer. then after it breaks down and you get a higher density of young saplings hinge over some that make sense to keep horizontal cover. pick spots that fall in line with winds for your fronts you've mentioned. enhance deer patterns don't try so much to change them. my opinion anyway.

[dbHunterNY]

DEC and other resources have info on tree species preference for deer if you don't already have an idea. they can be perfect candidate for dropping or hinging depending on species to give just cover and not food, which would be better suited to give you access cover. 50 acres isn't a ton and while mature woods are wide open and don't have deer loitering for too long to bust your access, it also allows them to see you from a long ways off.

[dbHunterNY]

1 hour ago, TheHornHunter said:

It's my favorite by far. I also like it has the historical weather so I can go back and check weather conditions for when I see a ton of activity on trail cams. I love the charting on it and being able to see the temp, what it actually feels like, barometric pressure, wind speed / direction and cloud cover all on one screen (below is an image of my set up). I have a much easier time being able to look at charts and interpret the data rather than reading forecasts or looking at temperature tables. The fact it is all on one screen makes it even better. The Drury bro's app called DeerCast basically copies the wunderground format (and actually uses wunderground data I believe) and overlays their own proprietary movement forecast on top, but I find it harder to read than wunderground's because they put the wind on the same chart as the temperature one. That said I still find the app useful so if you haven't checked it out I'd highly suggest it. Their forecast's aren't perfect and I don't pay much attention to them because they are driven by the same things I focus on, but whenever the app says great conditions and I've been in the woods it has been a great hunt. 

don't have a lot of time to hunt so i have to do homework more so than not. i live out in the country and when i see lots of deer out on the way home from work i use the history tab to see what conditions were like. i admit i don't write them down though. not sure what the purpose of the weekly or monthly portion if for. just daily seems to load.