Maggie's Farm

Who says deer never look up?

A couple of seasons ago I was in my stand, which I had put up a month earlier. I've got a shooting rail with a camo skirt on it that flaps in the breeze, so I wanted the critters to get used to it being there.

Towards sunset three does walked out of the swamp into the clearing, one at a time. Each one paused at the edge, looked RIGHT UP at my stand (where I was motionless), and then stepped into the clearing.

I was about to pop the biggest of the three when I heard crunching back out in the swamp, so I waited. A nice 4-point buck stepped to the edge of the clearing, looked straight up at me, and then followed the does out into the clearing.

There's this persistent myth that deer don't look up. But my personal experience has been that they DO look up, but they're not sure what they're looking at. Normal woods activities (squirrels, chipmunks, birds) don't bother them, but large objects in motion tend to startle them pretty well. I'm guessing it's an evolutionary left-over from being stalked by things like cougars, but it now carries over to humans in tree stands as well.