by Jesse St. Andre |
Conditioning deer using decoys can lead a greater sense of calmness, which in return may lead to a successful hunt.
Classic conditioning plays an important role in deer behavior, deer hunting, and the tactics you take to be successful going forward. Deer will establish and evolve their habits and behaviors around both negative and positive stimuli, i.e. conditioning. So what is conditioning?
To simplify conditioning: whitetails are presented with a stimulus or a “situation.” Once presented with this situation, they begin to form a behavior towards it. They will be especially alert and show hesitation at first. If the experience goes well, they will be a little more relaxed during the next interaction. Eventually they will write the situation off as normal, posing no threat. Should it go bad, they will form negative associations with that stimulus—So goes the process of conditioning.
Similar to theories on confidence baiting for deer or coyote (in states where it is legal), the application of multiple feed sites, instead of just one, makes the situation more natural to the wildlife, and thus more likely they will use the sites without perception of human intervention.
This conditioning results in a natural environment and a greater sense of calmness. So, similar to making the feeding experience more natural, the same effect can be had by using deer decoys.
Visual confirmation is often a fast and affirmative stimulus for deer. Deer are a fairly social animal, and one thing they are positively conditioned to is the presence of other deer.Conditioned behavior favors the response to this visual stimulus because deer decoy use is far less prevalent in the hunting world than baiting, so most deer have never had negative associations with motionless deer. To them, they are just another deer, which to the hunter holds invaluable amounts of positive associations.
The logic is quite simple. If there’s other deer (decoy) at the bait site or in the field, more than likely the scene is relatively safe, and to a certain extent, the deer can essentially drop its guard. Start to add in decoys in feeding positions to display even more relaxed body language, and the effects of conditioning start to sway in our favor.
One look at the Masters Series decoys, from Flambeau Outdoors, and a hunter can see how this element of conditioning applies in the field. The decoys, which are the most life-like deer decoy available, are molded from the amazing realism created by the award-winning sculptor, Chris Schiller. Deploy the Boss Buck and the Grazing Doe, and a strategic hunter could entice a territorial trophy buck to come running. www.flambeauoutdoors.com/Hunting/Big-Game/Decoys
While there is no silver bullet when it comes to hunting, there are certainly some simple ways to stack the odds in your favor and a good decoy will do just that.