Reading this thread got me to thinking about if my successful hunts have been more in the morning or the evening. Now I know most of you are bowhunters primarily and I gun hunt only, but I've never shot (nor do I want to) a deer off of a deer drive. I can think of one or two deer that I am pretty sure got "pushed" to me inadvertently but all the rest appeared to be moving naturally.
This year I shot my 11th deer. Of those 11, 6 were shot in the morning and 5 were shot in the evening. Of the 6 successful morning hunts, only one deer was shot prior to 9am. The other 5 were shot between 9am and 11:45am. One of the deer I shot at 9am was inadvertently pushed to me by my husband who had to leave the woods early. He never saw the deer but when it walked in front of me, the deer was coming from over where my husband had been sitting. All the others had at least the appearance of moving naturally through the woods. All of my morning sets were well within the woods themselves (as opposed to at the edge of a crop field).
Of the 5 that were shot in the evening, two were shot a couple hours before the end of the shooting time. One was in a group of 9 that I'm pretty sure were pushed over to my farm. The other was in a group of five that came into the field naturally to feed. The other three were all shot much closer to the end of shooting time (the last 30 minutes). All five sets were on the edge of crop fields waiting for deer to come out into the field to feed at night.
For some reason, I always think I am more successful in the evening but I guess that is not really the case. I think maybe it is because I always see more deer in the evening as they come into the fields to feed. They aren't always close enough to shoot though.
Anyone else keep stats like this? I have a friend that has been hunting turkeys for 40 years and hunts multiple states. I don't even remember how many turkeys he has shot, but he has statistics for date and time of day on every turkey. It was fascinating to look it his numbers.