East Texas Hunters: Advice Needed

I’m looking for clues on how to hunt these deer....I’ve been running corn for several months inside feed pens and I’m seeing good activity....problem is it seems to be mostly nocturnal. The does are especially tough to find, most of my pics are of ~3-4 year old bucks with a few ~1-2 year olds mixed in. Quality is good.

Lease members (some of whom have been there 50 years) are telling me just to wait and let them get more comfortable with my 2 spots. Our place is MLD III so I’ve got 2 more months, but I’ve got to get a deer year 1.

Any ideas on how to attract E. Texas bucks?

Also, interesting development, our bucks are starting to drop antlers already.

Try hunting mid day. Deer normally eat about 4 times a day. I found the 10:00-2:00 time frame was a good time to hunt as most hunters go early and go home and return late afternoon.

I've been hunting East Texas for more than 30 years and it's always the same, the deer seem to disappear after the first two or three weeks of the season. It doesn't take them very long to catch on that so many are after them. And even during the initial two or three weeks, you're likely to see a gradual decline in daylight sightings. I hunt a small, somewhat isolated lease and despite having no neighbors who hunt, the deer seem to act just like those on other leases that I hunted that saw a lot of pressure. You might see a small bump in the action in early December when does that were missed during the late October/early November rut come into estrus again. Your game cameras will no doubt prove to you the deer are still in the area but have learned to only move at night.

As stated earlier, mid-day hunting and hunting during the middle of the week can pay off once the deer have adjusted to hunter pressure.

So you are getting good activity and TC sightings at night. They are probably well fed and responding to the dinner bell. You may need to create some competition. Cut off your feed times except dawn with just a small amount. May take a couple weeks to recondition the herd.

Hunt the weather systems. I hunted one all season that I had zero daylight pics of until the front last wed/thurs. I got a dusk picture of him Wednesday in the rain. It rained all day Thursday and quit about an hour before dark. He and his 4 buddies came strolling out at 5:15. I shot him at 5:20.

And try alfalfa. I feed usually a bale a week. It has to be spread out, they don't particularly like it in bale form. Try to keep it dry if possible.

The alfalfa suggestion is spot on, even in the Hill Country. Worth a try!

Late December and January is when the big bucks seem to show up at the feeders in east tx. The rut is over and they’re beat down looking for food now that the natural vegetation has finally been killed off by winter.

Some good advice here. I’ve been hunting East TX for almost 50 years and wish I had the secret. I don’t. The best I can do is tell you to put your time in. They are just a different breed - especially the mature bucks. Over all the time I’ve hunted them I can only recall one or two mature bucks that were actually patternable.

Now is the second best time to get a big buck behind the peak of the rut because things are quiet and they are hungry. They may slip up.

I hunted east Texas during my college years. To me, east Texas deer seem to respond the least to supplemental feeding of any other part of the state I have hunted. Id say put in your time during off hours and try different areas. The deer don't disappear during the day they just don't come to the feeders then.

Now would be a time to start looking for the well worn trails to and from your feeders- follow them back to thickets where they are most likely bedding and locate you some ambush points for next year. Once it starts to green up they will be harder to find. Also, try just corning a few areas away from the feeders and put a camera on it. I have two cuts that I can watch thru the woods from one stand- one cut leads to a feeder and the other cut I just hand corn when I go out. I have seen more deer, especially does, in the hand corned cut than I have at my feeder. I personally have not had much luck putting out alfalfa- I even tried chafhay one time and it just rotted. That is one thing about east Texas- the bucks will start dropping their antlers in late January so you have to really have to checked their heads close before pulling the trigger. You can also end up taking a nubbin' buck thinking it is a doe it you don't look close. That is one reason why I have made it a personal habit of never shooting a solitary "doe"- there is nothing to compare size without another deer standing by it and could be a this year fawn, either doe or buck.

I tried alfalfa one season in OK, they never touched it.

Just to say... 2019, the deer disappeared during the day after week 1. 2020, I'm still getting twice a day visits. The acorn crop, IMHO, will have more impact on how many come in to your feeder than anything else.

If you have food available all of the time, you'll probably get mostly nocturnal traffic as that's when they're likely most comfortable coming in to eat.

Give some thought to timing your feeding to line up more with a daytime appearance. Don't feed alot in the afternoon as it's probably on the ground for the night. Feed more just before sunup.

Good luck!
Charlie

Mr. T will have some good info

Thanks for all of the advice so far. I come from a Central & S. Texas deer hunting background....much easier there. My feeders throw at 7:00 am & 4:00 pm....seems like that might part of my problem. I like the advice of switching to just early AM. What do y’all think about at first light then 10:00-ish?

I know another issue is hogs, I need to get them under control. Keeping the pens hog-proof is an every trip challenge.

I’ll also look at following the game trails back into the thickets,

East TX is a different ball game, than most areas. It is not as simple as "Feed them, and they will come." The key is not to count on a feeder so much. The feeders work great for hogs, not so much for deer. I am on a lease in Morris County. Most of the deer I have shot have not came to a feeder, but all of the hogs harvested have. Hunt hard the first several days of the season. Some good tips have been given about hunting midday. I suggest finding some good trails, or feeding areas. I have seen more deer at dusk, than in the morning. Between the acorns, and the deer going nocturnal, it is a challenge. East TX had taught me to hunt deer, instead of just shooting deer.

Please give a general location as East Texas is a very big area and what works up north might not work in the souther portion. I hunt in North East Texas on the west side of Harrison county but have had places all over the county and up in Upshur County. As for the bigger bucks, try to locate their trails on the upwind and downwind sides of you feeders. Over the years I have seen most of my big bucks come in down wind to sent check the does at the feeder. I have multiple bow stands on each side of the feeders to play the wind, plus the one near the feeder for does and hogs. Also the amount of acorns this year really played a big part in not seeing does at the feeder during daylight.
Good luck.

Best advice so far. Very much mirrors my experience and tactics used (successfully) for the last 35 years (Deep East Texas) Nac county.

find the funnels and pinch points that have relatively fresh deer trails and hang a trail camera......hand corn the area with a bag of corn.....move them around until you find the bucks that start using the hand corn areas......they move during the day as well, you just have to find out where and when....

I want to meet Russ79 some day cause I am always telling folks he really knows ETx. Lots of other good advice on here but always listen to Russ when its ETx.

Hunt when the wind in your favor got my target deer this year only by hunting this one stand with a north wind. Hunt every time you can dur ing the rut and learned the other day while sitting in the stand I decided to go get card from camera I need to get serious with scent control. 30 minutes after walking to camera a decent buck walks out and headed to feeder feeding along the way when he gets to where I walked he suddenly puts on the air brakes and starts looking around he follows both ways for 10 yards or so then turns and goes back the way he came from. Got one a few years ago that I walked to the stand instead of driving to it. Had pictures daily so I snuck in early walking no light and no drinking coffee in stand when daybreak broke he was standing in edge of woods one shot with the blk out and he was down so don't be afraid of doing things different than you normally do.

Just got in today from my place in East Texas and boy was I glad to see this thread. This is my second season of owning the land and I had the same questions as the original poster. I've talked to a few locals about what works best with these East Texas bucks but had no success so far. For one thing , the bigger bucks seemed to have either disappeared or gone nocturnal the minute the season started.

Several of the comments gave me a new perspective on changes I have to do to get these bucks. They are making me more determined. I think I've realized that when I hunted in Victoria County for all those years I just shot bucks, I didn't have to really HUNT them. It was nothing for me to see thirty or forty deer in one sitting in Victoria on Coleto Creek and have shots up to 300 yards whereas in Houston county you have to be right in among the deer without them knowing you are there. I have never seen does that are as wary as some of the ones I see in East Texas and they take off the second they see me. In East Texas it seems that scent eradication is extremely important when back at my old lease I would be dumping corn on the ground on my way to the blind and the deer would already be crunching it.

I plan on trying some of these techniques in this thread next year as last year I just blamed the acorn crop for my failures and I actually had a couple of opportunities but passed. This year convinced me that I need to change some things because I was totally shut out on bucks and yall have provided some great advice here!

I grew up in South East Texas hunting the Big Thicket and timber leases, and what we found to be successful is finding good trails (especially if you can find one going to/ coming from water) and then get some elevation. Get above the understory growth and clutter, yaupon is damn near impossible to see thru on the ground.

Also, learn what the different oak trees look like. If there is a hardwood bottom where you hunt locate the white oaks. Then, in late August/first part of September use your binoculars to check for acorns. Mark those trees as potential places to hunt. Check the areas when the acorns start falling and look for feeding sign- split hulls, pawing spots, etc. Not all white oaks will have acorns every years. You can be sure the deer will know where they are. If all you see is red oak species then keep them in mind as a back up- the deer will eat them but prefer white oak acorns. When I am doing some preseason scouting just before season (I am talking bow season) I will look for cedars (bucks love to rub cedars) and holly trees (bucks love to scrape under their overhanging branches) to locate areas to key on.

Good advice

Not even corn can beat a White Oak tree for drawing deer. But as Russ79 said, they usually only drop acorns every other year.

Thank you all for the great advice. Sounds like I need to get out of the stand and find these deer, not a “feed them and they’ll come” situation.

Hey Dove Hunter,

What do your spots look like?

Are they logging trails, clear cuts, pipeline what are we looking at?

Feeder pens are great, but for my pens it took some time for the deer to hit it during the day, im talking i set it up last season and this December now having good action.

At my spot i got 2 feeders about a 100 yards apart, 1 penned up and the other not. when i first put the pen in the deer only hit the open feeder and 1 young deer hit the pen. at that time i only had the camera at the penned up feeder and was worried deer weren't coming. moved the camera to the open feeder and had a good amount of deer coming in and last month now they are going to both feeders so not sure if i did something right or it just took time.

I would also recommend putting your camera away from the pen and corn the area, we will have some big bucks hit feeders other just check them out from a distance but will hit hand thrown corn away from feeders. if you can get a spreader and corn a good sized area and see how that works, ive had really good luck corning a good distance from feeders and deer come out and seem more comfortable with it. just got to stay on top of it since it will go fast

Invest in a camera that sends you pictures as well, it helped me see if the things i was trying was working or not and i could be prepared to fix it next time i went up to the lease instead of getting up there checking the camera and try to find the fix in the small town we are in.

If all else fails, 1 thing thing i keep seeing work, is be the last person to fill your feeder. i have no idea why but for the last 3 years we always have 1 guy who sets up a new spot during hunting season or like we can have 2 spots on our lease and someone will wait to fill their second spot till mid October or later and those spots will pull in more deer then spots that have been feeding all year. they will even pull the in the big bucks too. i dont know why this is but it always happens and if i had to guess its something to do with the pigs. Even with the pens i still got pigs in the area and they travel a good distance to hit all the feeders in their travel route. We will have to same group travel to 4 different stands and just make a habit of always hitting them but its like they wont hit new spots for awhile since they arent on their normal travel route.