Would you shoot a doe that’s going to bust you?

By Grant Woods,

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← Grant's Answers — Hunting Tactics
Question
Hello Grant, can’t thank you enough for so generously sharing your years of knowledge and experience. Would a shoot the first doe that would bust you by skirting downwind cause enough chaos to make the other traveling deer being aware of my presence. Now if so and I could get away with safely hunting unsuspecting deer would it be worth the knowledge gained by entering the woods early or should I sit on the property fringes and shoot the does bedding on the neighbors, Risking the intrusion on the main woods for closer to the rut?
How about a TSI corridor with a food plot road leading to your food plot staging area, next to a larger ag field of beans with cereal grains broadcasted into it. Doesn’t that sound like a fool proof travel route that just about anyone could create..
Is the military crest of a hill overlooking a bottom the ideal spot for a buck bed. It seems like if you even had a small hill on your property you could put buck beds with some hinge cuts around it with a bed for each of the main winds to have a relatively predictable buck bedding sanctuary.
Do smaller county drainage ditches allow for enough wind flow to sort of vacuum your sent right down it as long as the wind is paralleling to some degree. Last question, how far does the swirling are bubble effect inside the woods as a cross wind hits the woodlot. Sorry for such a large question, again thanks for all your time and efforts. Good luck this year

Chris,

I shoot does if there’s more deer than quality forage in the area.  I hope my stands are located so any deer passing isn’t alerted by my presence.  I doubt the strategy of shooting deer to keep them from alerting other deer will work well.

I select stands based on conditions that day.  The better the conditions and more likely deer are to be active the more confident I am to hunt my best stands!  The worst the conditions (calm wind, warm, etc.) the more likely I am to hunt the fringes or what I call scouting stands.

I have noticed bucks often bed just off the crest of hills.  The wind typically swirls in these locations and allows bucks to use their sense of smell to protect them from predators from all directions.  

Cold air is heavy and tends to go to the lowest spot in the area.  Using such ditches can provide good entry and exit strategies in flat country!

Enjoy creation,

grant