Pretty good video on thermals. The fog timelapse shows how they can be a finicky bitch.
Ehhhh, smoke up and hunt!
Ehhhh, smoke up and hunt!
Hahaha! That was my first thought.Damn flatlanders!
Yep , you got it !For the most part I completely agree. In the last several years I have done just that and had decent success having a real good buck within range at some point during each season. The last couple of years and last year in particular I started paying more attention to those odd direction winds. Two years ago I had set up on a good trail that led into/out of a bottom. Wind was in my face out of the SW while there and as it got closer to dark I had a deer start blowing from what I considered upwind. Was thinking it must have been spooked by something until I released a milk weed and it slowly drifted right in the direction of the blowing. I never did see the deer which I thought was good as it didn't turn tail and bound off tail raised but I can't help but think was it HIM (whoever him woulda been ) ?! Did the smoke cover up my stank and HE walked away un-alarmed?!
This past season I stumbled onto and spent some time watching The Hunting Public and thought it was cool they used milkweed too LOL! Well they used it a lot more than I did and soon I started releasing those little tale tellers into the air very often from every stand I sat. What surprised me was how often that swirl you thought you felt on the back of your neck was really the real deal, a thermal that went right back into where you were looking. Some stands you would feel that, release your milkweed and sure enough it starts heading toward the trail you were watching but then suddenly change and come back in your direction and keep going. Other stands I found those thermals took the milkweed directly where I didn't want them to go and in one situation was stronger than the prevailing wind I felt 20 ft up. I have abandoned a couple stands this year because of that, also based on deer becoming alert as they passed by. Days when the wind was a few MPH or more were the most consistent. It was when things were still or the wind would suddenly quit is when things changed. Frosty mornings with no wind it often seemed you could hunt anywhere as those thermals seemed to climb and go up from every stand I sat. Once it started warming, say after 9-10 am, is when you would notice they would begin to fall sooner. Later in the day is when the prevailing wind seemed to take over.
I hunt the swamps and oak/pine flats here in south jersey (flat land) and never had to worry about thermals until I started hunting Ohio (Vinton, Athens and Hocking counties). After one season of getting snorted at from the opposite wind direction, I got one of those wind checker bottles with the talc...hard lesson learned! The wind was going out about 20 feet, then circling around and going right down the hollow...where the deer were snorting from.Damn flatlanders!
I hunt the swamps and oak/pine flats here in south jersey (flat land) and never had to worry about thermals until I started hunting Ohio (Vinton, Athens and Hocking counties). After one season of getting snorted at from the opposite wind direction, I got one of those wind checker bottles with the talc...hard lesson learned! The wind was going out about 20 feet, then circling around and going right down the hollow...where the deer were snorting from.
Sounds like a spot that you could get by with other winds on sunny mornings.I wanted to report back on the last 60 days of hunting as I paid particularly close attention to the thermals this year. Hunting the thermals has always been a tool in my toolbelt, but more so at the macro level. I knew certain spots had certain consistencies and certain nuances, but with all the attention on thermals these days, I gathered more data at the micro level this year. What I learned is simply this: Not all thermals are created equal. Here's what I mean by that.
I have a stand we call The Maple Set. It's about 30 yards off a ridge top field, but 30' in elevation below the field. Another 25 yards away, and 25' in elevation below, is a shelf that sees a lot of E/W travel. With bedding nearby and the shelf below, it's too risky to hunt in the afternoon, so it's strictly a morning set. With the field being eye-level with the stand, I hung the stand knowing we'd hunt a N wind (field to stand) and the rising thermals would protect you from deer on the shelf below. But... that's only true on sunny mornings when that spot sees the sun. On a blue bird morning, that's one of the first spots to see sun and your scent rises out of there like someone turned on an exhaust fan. But hunt it on an overcast, "heavy air" morning and your scent sinks towards the bottom like an evening hunt.
It's one thing to understand thermals at a high-level, but it's critical to understand how the nuances impact your best stands. Not all thermals are created equal.
Sounds like a spot that you could get by with other winds on sunny mornings.