Got drawn for 11/4-11/13 (archery - antlerless or buck). Does anyone have any experience here?

Bump. Anybody?

I found this on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VewQnSodHa0

I hunted it a couple years ago. A 4 wheeler is a must. You need a climber, lock on, or saddle type hunting. I would look for white oaks dropping. The year I went, I couldn’t find a single tree with acorns. I seen signs of good bucks but only seen one buck the whole time and it wasn’t a legal buck. Almost got a chance at a doe but ended up getting busted. Did kill a hog. You should see plenty of those out there.

This was very informative, thank you. Mostly what not to do

I was selected with a buddy for the 9/30-10/9 hunt and was there on 9/30-10/3 but can't make the rest of the days; this was my first bow hunt outing so don't take my experience too seriously
Campground is as basic as it gets, just a big parking lot but they did put 2 porta potties there; There are no compartments, hunt is the entire area as specified in the hunt area info (I read in some other blogs where in other years they had compartments), we had orientation at 12pm Friday and then off we went scouting and set up for Saturday. Some people had ATVs and/or tree stands.
Pretty strict requirements, 15 in spread for bucks. We don't have an ATV so we were walking, nor we have a ladder or tree stand, we put a ground blind as well as a camo fabric with some stakes against some brush nearby to be able to move between the two. Being that it was so dry there were no tracks on the ground except very old dry ones, nor we saw any droppings or rubs, but walking we could only cover so much.
Area is bone dry now, there is no driving in the unit except for ATVs; acorns were dropping all day long so there is plenty of food on the ground, we did not take any corn but I did put a small bag of feed/attractanc which remained untouched, not even pigs.
On the hunt days we drove to the main gate (blue square) then walked in; on Saturday we hunted the creek area at the end of the red trail in map but saw nothing all day; when walking back at the end of the day we saw a couple does around the yellow circle in the map, so we set up there in reparation for Sunday; we did see a small buck on Sunday but that's about it; Monday we did see 2-3 does in the green circle area but not close enough to shoot and when walkign back to camp at the end of our hunt we saw some 6 does or so where the red line meets the green circle. The orange line to the right is a powerline and the deeper green are is now part of Big Lake Bottom but does not show as such in some maps.
As I said, first bow hunt/learning experience so not much to offer in terms of strategy, but with our limited mobility/reach we saw the most action in the green circle, 8-9 does and a small buck. Hope it helps a little.

Thanks for the detailed report! That new area looks like it could be good.

Due to weather and work, I was able to hunt 4 FULL days at BLBWMA. Man, there are a lot of deer out there. I got so close so many times, but couldn’t seal the deal on a buck. I made an educated scouting guess, got some luck, and was on the “X”. A more experienced bow hunter definitely would’ve filled their tag. I hunted about a 30 acre area and saw at least 5 mature, shootable bucks, lots of young bucks, and a ton of does. Had some cool experiences watching some rut activity and getting a birds eye view of deer behavior. There are several moments that I wish I could have a do-over on. I learned lots of lessons and am a better hunter for it. That doesn’t take away the gut-wrenching regret of not being prepared to shoot a big public land buck a few times. Long story short, it was a blast. It’s a very cool area and I’ll definitely be putting in for the draw in the years to come. If anyone is headed out for any of the remaining hunts, shoot me a pm and maybe I can help out with some advice.