Advice for mule deer hunting in north Texas

[Captain C]

I am headed to north Texas this weekend and will be hunting for 5 days for both mule deer and whitetail. I am fairly new to north Texas hunting and the way the land is up there it can be overwhelming. The area I will be hunting has a lot of canyons and some open fields. With no feeders or known travel routes how would you game plan? I know where we saw deer last year and so that is where I will start but if that is a bust how do you hunt all those canyons without knowing anything about them? Just pick an area and glass and move if you don't see anything? It seems like I could hunt for a month up there and still not have enough time. ha ha

[Captain C]

Anyone?

[aggie2000tx]

Lots of glassing.

[Coacheddy]

^^^^

I am no expert, but been a few times. They tend to "lay" alot during the day. I've seen them up against rocks, under trees / bushes. I prefer to be up high...glassing down as opposed to looking up.

Plan your morning & evening hunts based on the sun...so you aren't glassing into it.

That's my two cents.

Good luck.

[Codie]

The way we hunted them was to set up on a points of the canyon in the mornings where we knew we would be able to see a lot of country and would spot/stalk them. If nothing was there then we would move on down to the next point and glass the bottoms from there. After the peak deer movement times were over we spent our time walking the edge of the canyons for as long as we could stand to walk and just kick small golfball-baseball sized rocks over the edge and let them run down the canyon walls. This would spook up any animals that were bedded in the bottom of the canyons where you could get a look at them and a shot if they were something you liked. We killed 2 coyotes and 2 bucks this way.

[Captain C]

Thanks a bunch.

[.243 WSSM]

North Texas is a pretty loose term. Where abouts are you hunting

[docmay]

With what you are describing I would get to high ground with the wind right and glass. Try to pick apart every inch before moving. Try to figure out food and water sources. You hunting with bow or rifle? If rifle you may be able to kick some rocks as above or do gentle pushes/drives in the canyon areas.

[az2tx]

With what you are describing I would get to high ground with the wind right and glass. Try to pick apart every inch before moving. Try to figure out food and water sources. You hunting with bow or rifle? If rifle you may be able to kick some rocks as above or do gentle pushes/drives in the canyon areas.

This plus if you are not seeing anything, you can blow a fawn in distress call a cpl of times. Sometimes nothing happens and sometimes it is like you kicked an ant hill. Sometimes the will run right at you and sometimes over the next ridge. Good Luck