Overhunting?

I’ve always been interest in what hunting pressure can do to deer.  I wonder if it’s possible to have so much hunting pressure in an area that the deer become nocturnal.  To have deer become purely nocturnal during rut is very improbable but is there an extent to which they keep themselves concealed until the safety of the night?

I recently spent some time at a state park in Illinois for a few days of deer hunting.  I’ve been hunting the area for the past five years and the pressure is most certainly increasing.  Even though the number of hunters in the area had increased, I did see a fair amount of deer.  That included a close encounter with a 120 class and a 130 class eight pointer along with several does.  The bucks were both younger bucks and not ones I would shoot but they were nice to see all the same.  But what interested me was when I hunted along field edges

The field edges I hunt have been places I’ve seen deer routinely come out to all times of the year.  The field was one of the only ones in the area that still had a soy bean crop in it.  Every time I hunted the field in a different tree every time, I was sure that the wind was right and that there was no one hunting close by.  I never once saw a deer walking out into the field like they had in the past. 

I had a few hypotheses for this.  One possibility is the deer simply didn’t need to go into the field to eat.  They may have had enough food in the woods or were happy with feeding in the turned over dirt of the nearby corn fields.  Another possibility is that they just weren’t in the area those nights to come out to the field.  Just because there are woods their and deer are in the area doesn’t mean they have to come out to the field.  Another option is that the hunting pressure in the area has the deer in a nocturnal mode.

I don’t like the final option as a reason but it is a possibility.  There are simply too many variables that could attribute to what I noticed and to what the other hunters have noticed this season.  One of the evidences for this option was that my father was able to get a glimpse of two does entering the bean field on our last evening there.  The does entered the field right at sunset but once they entered the field, they ran across it to the other side and into the other stretch of woods.  They seemed to be afraid of spending too much time in the open.  In the heat of deer hunting season with so much pressure it’s not hard to see why.  If they can tell the pressure is on, they could be avoiding areas they know people tend to visit. 

Unfortunately, increased hunting pressure doesn’t just extend to hunters; there are others who can increase the pressure.  Poachers could be the unseen variable.  If deer are afraid to come into the open it could be a sign of poaching.  It’s an unfortunate part of hunting for those of us who abide by the laws but as long as people see an opportunity it will more than likely continue.  Either way, the pressures put on by hunters may be a reason that deer are not coming in as frequently.  If you’re hunting an area where the deer seem to have vanished, then the plague of overhunting could be upon you.