I am purchasing some property in Throckmorton county that's 160 acres. There is a 5 acre lake and a 2 acre wetland that hold a fair amount of ducks. They are pretty close to what appears to be a bedding area for deer. My boys like duck hunting, but to this point I've felt like the property is too small to be blasting away out there with shot guns. We will be bowhunting only just me and my family. So my question is... Do you think duck hunting out there 5-6 times a season is gonna run my deer off?

No

The bigger bucks may avoid the area. What we do is duck hunt after deer season.

This...i dont believe it will run off all deer, but it will have an effect on them and their movements

Yea. Guess I should have rephrased. I know it won't run em off completely, but wondering if it would make em more likely to go nocturnal, which I'm guess is yes.

Just my .02, I think it will depend on the terrain.

One of my stands is about 300 yards from the duck pond on my FIL's place, and from what I've seen, the deer are used to the WWIII shooting going on at the duck pond. BUT its fairly wooded between that stand and the pond, so the sound is slightly suppressed as opposed to being an open field. It's pretty common on a early morning hunt to hear lots of shooting and it doesn't seem to affect the deer.

meh... keep feeding hard and they will get use to it... especially if your 100% bow hunting.

the deer feed the deer heavy not the ducks

Hunted a lease in Llano with a 10 acre pond/lake on it. Had a stand at the upper end of one of the feeder creeks. Guys would duck hunt about 200 yards away. Deer still came to the feeder.

In Indiana, I hunted on a friend's place near Linton that had a good-sized lake on it. We usually hunted some fingers that stretched into the lake ending in some small islands. The duck hunters never bothered the deer until they motored back. As they would pass those islands the deer would bail out and head towards us. There were days that it was almost like dove hunting, the deer were coming by in such numbers. Some big bucks were taken off that place during and after, the duck hunters were there.

I think the deer will get used to the occasional duck hunt.

I shot ducks after the morning hunts all season, didn't seem to bother the deer much.

I would much rather have the place for Ducks than deer if it's got a 5 acre lake

we don't have any ducks on our property. or not many anyways. but we have a lot of dove and quail. we had traditionally avoided them to some extent so as to not bother the deer. we've slowly given in to it though. our place is a little over 300ac. what we've done is isolated to some extent a spot around the camp and up toward the front gate of the property where there are no deer stands and we do our bird hunting there. it does not seem to bother the deer much so far. hunting up in the front is probably not the prime bird hunting spots on the property, but it puts birds in the bag and keeps us away from the deer stands.