Fallow activity in winter, different than summer?

Got a newbie question about deer habits in winter. The usual story in summer I’ve heard is that deer start moving around to feed in the morning and in the evening, and they usually bed down in the afternoon. Does this general idea still apply in winter? Going to be looking for fallow in the bush and the weather is looking like there is going to be heavy rain , so not sure if it would be worth getting real wet by slogging around in the bush all afternoon, or if I should focus on evening/morning and keep comfortable/dry in the afternoon. If it is worth looking all day in the rain I am happy to go for it though.
Rain is great for keeping scent low and keeping steps quiet, but it is a real pain as someone with four eyes. Keeping those lenses clear is annoying. As a side question, anyone know of a good product for keeping eyeglasses and scope lenses fog and droplet free?

Peaked cap and poncho for the eye glasses and scope....deer are where you find them, keep moving around until you find them...wet or fine they are still there somewhere, unlike us they don't go home to a dry house at the end of the day.

Get in there and hunt them all day. If its drizzling they will be moving. If its pissing down then will be bedded under cover but they will still be there. Much more fun looking for them then sitting waiting to go look for them

Fallow can be easier to hunt in the rain than in the dry. What they don’t like is cold wind.

If it is raining hard, then meh, not much fun for the hunter or the hunted. Fallow go into thick cover in heavy rain (and very hot sun) and you’ll be hard pressed to find them without bumping them. But intermittent rain and showers, or steady light rain, they’ll be feeding on and off throughout the day in cool winter weather.

One of the things about starting out is to simply get out there and learn the deers’ habits. Time on the hill in different weather and seasons at different times of the day is always valuable. Fallow are totally different to reds in their habits, they can be harder or easier to hunt, depending on how you approach the problem. They don’t move around as much as reds and tend to stay within quite a well defined home range, which once you’ve worked that out, can make finding them relatively straightforward.

As fallow are primarily grazers they like to be near grass. If the country is gullys along streams with the grass above, they will often be just inside the top bush edge in the rain, depends on the country. Walk fast until you find sign then hunt.

In winter they love shelted places with no wind,lots of grass n sun.

they LOVE sunlight.....agree about hunting in rain,the deer dont have anywhere else to go,maybe have favourite leaning tree/log to stand under out of worst of it...but they will still be at home.
a warehouse widebrimmed hat like schoolkids have now will cost less than $20 and will also keep rain from dripping down your neck,rian on and off during day has always been good conditions for me.seems deer get wet so want to move into open to dry out,NZ bush is special when its raining but its plurry WET ,a light nylon rain jacket UNDER polarfleece isnt bad compromise,outer fleece gets wet,but you stay dry and its not noisy.
put your polarfleece long trousers on and pull them down OVER TOP of your gaiters n boots, that way water runs down fabric instead of down into your boots. take cooker or thermos and stop for hot cuppa it is amazing how much that will perk you up on cold wet day,more than one deer has been shot coming to investigate the noise of burner heating up a brew.

Ended up sucking it up and hunting in the morning rain. Ended up with a young little fallow. She and another girl were hunkered down in a dry twiggy area right beside a ridge with minimal feed around so i guess they wanted to rest dry that morning. they stood up and looked at me when I came into their view so took the shot then. Not used to animals not falling instantly so thought i missed when the deer ran off, but then found some gory splatter and so started the blood trail tracking, was about 75-100m away. The little thing was a fighter despite a lung shot. Also didn't know that fallow barked until today. Heard a loud weird bark quite close to me before i found the girls and it gave me a big fright.

I wore polyprop and fleece under a water resistant coat. Didnt want to use the coat because the coat is a bit noisy, but didn't want to get too wet. Figured the noise of the coat would be muffled by the rain on the vegetation. It has lost its waterproofing after a while so it got a bit waterlogged by the time I got back to the hut. The idea of putting rain jacket under fleece is great @Micky Duck, will try that at some point. I didnt have any water resistant trousers (despite getting caught in the rain all the time) so i bought a pair of manitoba wingshooter trousers right before i left to the blueys. Those kept me very dry but there was some noise friction between the different trouser layers when the outer layer got moist. I dont have gaiters, need to get a pair. Shoes get filled with moisture twigs, and dirt all the time

For glasses fog i bought an antifog gel from the scuba diving shop. Worked well enough. Had a small towel handy in pocket to wipe scope lens and glasses from water droplets.

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Originally Posted by Trout

In winter they love shelted places with no wind,lots of grass n sun.

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Yep, sheltered place is where i found them this time.
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Bloody awesome.

absolutely STOKED you got one...enjoy the venison you surely have EARNED IT.......
YOU GO GIRL!!!!!!!
had funny encounter with a fallow deer today...was walking along quietly looking for wallabies,had shot 4 already and nearly back to wagon,look ahead and see what looks like fat wallaby behing light vegetation screen,but Im not 100% sure as cant quite make out outline,or head or tail,move slightly to get better view and fallow stands up and takes off...I was looking at its bum as it was bedded down.... was quite happy to just see it there.
enjoy that venison,dont eat any for 48 hours unless you eating today...or it will be tough.

@Micky Duck has a good idea re polar fleece over waterproof gear, years ago I got a deer while wearing an old jersey over an oilskin parka to stop the scratchy noise when pushing through scrub, deer was totally unaware of my presence. (Polarfleece and Goretex wasn’t invented back then!)

Oh that's awesome, happy for you mate. Well done. [emoji106]
It proves one thing for certain...you don't get them sitting in the hut !!! [emoji41]

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Congratulations, great effort.

Thanks for sharing that trip report...

:thumbsup:

Well done.
Highlights the importance of following up your shot, thats an impressive blood spatter.....often there can be little or no blood at the site and the blood trail may not start for 30m or so. So yes always follow up the shot.

Good stuff Jessica. Well and truely earned. Have shot fallow in a howling southerly before.


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Man youre keen, it was bloody miserable here today. Went for a wander up behind the farm the other night with Bow, and Bo (Pup) didnt come across much in the bush but dog was keen as, was walking back down through the bush towards a steep paddock where I had my truck parked at the bottom. Could see the paddock come into view through the trees but couldnt see any deer out on it and dint really expect them to be there anyhow since my truck was parked at the bottom in plain view. Was just about to pop out from behind the last wee bit of bush and hop the fence then holy hell there was a buck out in full view in the open, how I hadnt seen him I dont know, wind was wrong for the dog to pick up on him also. I sat down and told dog to lay down also and just watched him for a bit, he knew something was up as spent about 10 minutes just staring straight at the spot we were hiding. Eventually he went back to feeding so I ranged him, 43 yards, sweet, had been practising heaps with the compound at 40 so thought it was a done deal. I slowly stood up and came to full draw, settled the 40yd pin high just behind the shoulder and released.... TWANG!!! Shit!! Shit!! Shit!! my line of sight made it seem I was shooting over the fence in front of me but I had collected the top wire! Deer definately knew something was up then and he bounded away. Bo looked at me as if to say "you daft bastard" and that was that. Was getting pretty dark by that stage but managed to find my arrow stuck in the ground nowhere near where the deer was and bent broadhead confirmed I had hit the fence. Bugger, would have been first deer with the compound. Lesson learnt
I dont read into the whole "they will be sitting in the sun/shelter" thing too much, I see them heaps daily and they are where they are. Fallow will duck out for a feed at any time of the day, even if a quick 10 minute graze and then back to bed again. Definitely more active morning/evening as with most game but they can be down in a shaded frosty gut on a miserably cold day if theres something to chew on down there. We have a resident group that we could watch from our house at our other farm and they would be bedded up in frosty cold shady faces quite often and spend the whole day in there getting up to browse several times throughout the day and not necessarily headed for sunny spots either. I reckon they are very smart little deer, yes heaps of them get shot on farms etc but the very fact that they can continue a thriving population whilst surviving on raiding paddocks and crops etc if near farmland tells you they definitely arent stupid by any stretch of the imagination. Ive watched them from a distance using contour to travel vast distances out in the open without being noticed by people working on farm, watched them move around a small gully totally avoiding a team of working dogs mustering sheep out of the same gully etc. Very cool little deer.
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Yeah nah maybe @Ryan_Songhurst.

Totally get what you’re saying, but I reckon there’s a reason they appear to survive on busy farms.

It’s cos they don’t get shot.

For years fallow have been kind of “managed” in a semi protection type of way, by many cockies. On numerous properties you can go and sit in a particular spot and pretty much guarantee that you’re going to see them. And often you’ll be told to either not shoot them at all, or to be very particular about what you do take, at certain times of the year only. This kind of relatively gentle pressure (if any) will produce a population that will tolerate humans and dogs within sight and earshot on a pretty much continual basis.

Everything changes the minute the order is given to shoot a resident fallow population. Pretty much overnight they become as skittish as hell and it only takes a couple of days of action for them to disappear altogether. Then they become really tough quarry to hunt.

I think back to a time recently on a property where I was given the instruction to go and hunt multiple fallow does from a resident farm population that had been left to breed up for this specific purpose. (For a large family feast.) As usual, I was able to run up and down the main race on the bike and watch the fallow moving gently across the face about 300-350m away. Once I got upwind and above them, I stalked back down and caught them in a gully about 100m opposite, and shot three fat does. These would’ve been the first fallow shot on that block for probably 4 or 5 years. Over the next several days, every time I went out for my afternoon fallow hunt I had to work really hard to find them, and boy were they skittish. I think on day 5 or thereabouts I gave up due to rapidly diminished returns, because we were pretty sure they’d buggered off next door and beyond.

I wrote up a hunt in the southern Taranaki on here a while ago, targeting fallow on a redeveloped farm where they are public enemy number one. If those fallow see or hear any evidence of an approaching human from 800-900m away, even further, they’re gone. Like… vanishing act.

That’s just my experience of them and as usual YMMV. I think it’s got everything to do with how much pressure they get, which oftentimes isn’t much, if any.

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Originally Posted by Flyblown

Yeah nah maybe @Ryan_Songhurst.

Totally get what you’re saying, but I reckon there’s a reason they appear to survive on busy farms.

It’s cos they don’t get shot.

For years fallow have been kind of “managed” in a semi protection type of way, by many cockies. On numerous properties you can go and sit in a particular spot and pretty much guarantee that you’re going to see them. And often you’ll be told to either not shoot them at all, or to be very particular about what you do take, at certain times of the year only. This kind of relatively gentle pressure (if any) will produce a population that will tolerate humans and dogs within sight and earshot on a pretty much continual basis.

Everything changes the minute the order is given to shoot a resident fallow population. Pretty much overnight they become as skittish as hell and it only takes a couple of days of action for them to disappear altogether. Then they become really tough quarry to hunt.

I think back to a time recently on a property where I was given the instruction to go and hunt multiple fallow does from a resident farm population that had been left to breed up for this specific purpose. (For a large family feast.) As usual, I was able to run up and down the main race on the bike and watch the fallow moving gently across the face about 300-350m away. Once I got upwind and above them, I stalked back down and caught them in a gully about 100m opposite, and shot three fat does. These would’ve been the first fallow shot on that block for probably 4 or 5 years. Over the next several days, every time I went out for my afternoon fallow hunt I had to work really hard to find them, and boy were they skittish. I think on day 5 or thereabouts I gave up due to rapidly diminished returns, because we were pretty sure they’d buggered off next door and beyond.

I wrote up a hunt in the southern Taranaki on here a while ago, targeting fallow on a redeveloped farm where they are public enemy number one. If those fallow see or hear any evidence of an approaching human from 800-900m away, even further, they’re gone. Like… vanishing act.

That’s just my experience of them and as usual YMMV. I think it’s got everything to do with how much pressure they get, which oftentimes isn’t much, if any.

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They get plenty of pressure round here, unfortunately more often than not its from "unlawful hunting" but you are right that they are managed in a way, on our new place one of my staff and her boyfriend also hunt so we have drawn up a set of unofficial rules where if a deer is shot then its the next persons turn and no hunting for 7 days after an animal is harvested, no spotlighting, and no thermals, will see how it goes. They definitely go shy for a bit when one of their mates cops a bullet, but they also get brave pretty quickly again also. Neighbor at our other place has bought the chopper in on them a few times and theyre still there.

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Originally Posted by Ryan_Songhurst

Man youre keen, it was bloody miserable here today. Went for a wander up behind the farm the other night with Bow, and Bo (Pup) didnt come across much in the bush but dog was keen as, was walking back down through the bush towards a steep paddock where I had my truck parked at the bottom. Could see the paddock come into view through the trees but couldnt see any deer out on it and dint really expect them to be there anyhow since my truck was parked at the bottom in plain view. Was just about to pop out from behind the last wee bit of bush and hop the fence then holy hell there was a buck out in full view in the open, how I hadnt seen him I dont know, wind was wrong for the dog to pick up on him also. I sat down and told dog to lay down also and just watched him for a bit, he knew something was up as spent about 10 minutes just staring straight at the spot we were hiding. Eventually he went back to feeding so I ranged him, 43 yards, sweet, had been practising heaps with the compound at 40 so thought it was a done deal. I slowly stood up and came to full draw, settled the 40yd pin high just behind the shoulder and released.... TWANG!!! Shit!! Shit!! Shit!! my line of sight made it seem I was shooting over the fence in front of me but I had collected the top wire! Deer definately knew something was up then and he bounded away. Bo looked at me as if to say "you daft bastard" and that was that. Was getting pretty dark by that stage but managed to find my arrow stuck in the ground nowhere near where the deer was and bent broadhead confirmed I had hit the fence. Bugger, would have been first deer with the compound. Lesson learnt
I dont read into the whole "they will be sitting in the sun/shelter" thing too much, I see them heaps daily and they are where they are. Fallow will duck out for a feed at any time of the day, even if a quick 10 minute graze and then back to bed again. Definitely more active morning/evening as with most game but they can be down in a shaded frosty gut on a miserably cold day if theres something to chew on down there. We have a resident group that we could watch from our house at our other farm and they would be bedded up in frosty cold shady faces quite often and spend the whole day in there getting up to browse several times throughout the day and not necessarily headed for sunny spots either. I reckon they are very smart little deer, yes heaps of them get shot on farms etc but the very fact that they can continue a thriving population whilst surviving on raiding paddocks and crops etc if near farmland tells you they definitely arent stupid by any stretch of the imagination. Ive watched them from a distance using contour to travel vast distances out in the open without being noticed by people working on farm, watched them move around a small gully totally avoiding a team of working dogs mustering sheep out of the same gully etc. Very cool little deer.
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Ryan did your dad or grandad farm anywhere near Cullens gully,just over the ridge from the Dish?

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Originally Posted by doinit

Ryan did your dad or grandad farm anywhere near Cullens gully,just over the ridge from the Dish?

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Nope, my dad was born on Waiheke, raised on Great Barrier, and spent most his farming life in the Waikato, now "retired" to Otago but has a pest control company contracting to Doc and farmers etc

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Originally Posted by Ryan_Songhurst

Nope, my dad was born on Waiheke, raised on Great Barrier, and spent most his farming life in the Waikato, now "retired" to Otago but has a pest control company contracting to Doc and farmers etc

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Ok..cheers for that.

Well done Jessica!!

Well done Jessica,enjoy yr venison.Deer hate wind,always seek shelter.

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Originally Posted by Trout

Well done Jessica,enjoy yr venison.Deer hate wind,always seek shelter.

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Yes Trout ..deer hate wind under certain conditions for sure but as we know wind is also there main friend...
Well done lass on your efforts...excellent choice of meat there.

Well done, Jessica
You Deserve getting a deer, you ask good questions and you take in what has been replied to you.
learning all the time, and you don't let anything stop you from going out.
I think that there will be a lot of other young hunters also learning from the questions that you ask.
you are an inspiration to young and old. ( i didn't go the other day because of the weather)

Well done Jessica, you are an inspiration to myself and others, in fact you make me appear slack!
Keep up the efforts and keep us posted with your results.:thumbsup:

Thank you so much for the feedback and kind replies everyone. This is just my second deer but feels like I am still learning a lot from the limited experience, particularly with how to move about more quietly and to pay attention as the animals will appear at any moment extremely quietly, big contrast to the noisier goats I am used to. The information the experienced folk share here and through private messages have helped immensely.

Well done Jess; the very fact you went out in that type of weather shows how keen you are. Great result for the effort you are putting in.