Maryland’s Eastern Shore Deer Hunting Trip 12/16/2012 – 12/20/2012

Well a good friend of mine and I decided to head down to Maryland's eastern shore to try to do a little late season muzzleloader hunting on public land.  I talked to several people about where to go and went and scouted back in June and even went down on Sunday to do a little more scouting before hunting Monday Morning.

We found some areas that looked  like they had no deer, and others that looked like they held good numbers of deer.  So Monday morning we were hitting the woods, ( even in all that fog and mists).  We ended up hunting from the ground Monday morning on a fire trail because we hadn't really picked out trees on Sunday and it was also getting late.  We didn't see anything Monday morning but the fog rolled in thicker than pee soup and it started raining some so we went and did some midday scouting and then called it a day because it was just plain nasty out and would have been hard to hunt in the afternoon.

Tuesday:

Tuesday we headed out into the woods in the morning into another area we scouted Monday midday, promising area with some thick woods, swamp, and a newly planted winter wheat field out in front of us.  Very pretty morning  but a little windy so we sat in our trees for a couple hours and didn't see anything.  Decided to get down and do a little more walking and hoped we jumped something.  Found a much larger winter wheat field new by and found good sign deer were coming and going out of the field so we backed out.

Headed back to the area we hunted Monday morning in the afternoon on Tuesday got in nice and early and were right off what looked like a pretty well used trail with lots of rubs along it.  Needless to say, we got in nice and early and it was a very nice day, but we didn't see a single deer or even hear one.  Nothing was moving.  Got down at dark and headed home frustrated and getting discouraged, its hard hunting when you aren't seeing anything at all.

Wednesday:

Headed back out to the big winter wheat field in the morning sat along the side of the field glassing all the edges hoping to see even a little movement after several hours of no movement in the whole field which was a lot of area we decided maybe the deer just weren't coming into this field during daylight hours.

Wednesday midday - afternoon we did some still hunting along a long fire trail and probably covered 10 miles of walking.. Man I was tired after that one.. Well again this was a new area and we were mostly hoping to jump something or see something feeding.  Nothing we walked and walked and really didn't even see much sign of deer being in that area at all, found one or two rubs that were old and no real fresh tracts after the rain.

By this point we decided that seeing no deer at all that maybe it was time to call it quits on this trip and head back home. So we did just that headed home Thursday morning.  I was encouraged when I got home I checked the trail cams and finally saw does! haha.

It took me coming home and looking at trail cam photos to see deer. BLAH!

I will have another post coming soon about why I think we didn't see deer and what we learned while on this trip to the eastern shore of Maryland.

Heading out to private land this afternoon with the muzzleloader and then it will be back to bow hunting next week!

I hear around central Maryland people have been seeing some rutting activity from younger deer and even some bigger boys, so looking forward to maybe seeing some of that!

Good luck everyone!

2 Responses

  1. Henry
    Just wanted to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and your family. Thank you for having this site. I always enjoy your posts. This year has been slow and I've had a few dissapointments along with some good lessons learned. With a month to go I will be working hard to fill the rest of my freezer and possibly a good wall hanger. God Bless you and best wishes for a great 2013!!
    • admin
      Henry, Great to hear from you. We all have years that are more for learning, it makes us better hunters and people. We wish you the very best luck in the last 5 weeks of the season and a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Keep us posted and good luck and Happy Holidays!

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