On my first semi-guided whitetail hunt, the outfitter strapped the buck I’d killed onto the back of his four-wheeler and hauled it back to the truck. Whole. Not gutted.
As someone who grew up hunting public land, it seemed more than strange to not field dress an animal on the spot immediately after recovery. I didn’t ask the outfitter about it then, but every now and then I wonder, do gut piles spook deer?
The Evidence
A few years ago, I found a dead deer in an area I’d planned to hunt. It was also an area with a good population of bobcats, so I set up a trail camera on the deer in hopes of getting photos of one of these secretive furbearers looking for a free meal. I got plenty of bobcat photos, but I also got a surprising number of deer photos.
In fact, the dead deer didn’t seem to bother the live deer at all, even as the days wore on and numerous birds of prey, coyotes, and other predators picked away at the carcass until it was completely gone.
Every day, I had photos of the same group of does passing through about 10-15 yards beyond the carcass, sometimes stopping to feed, and sometimes even coming up to sniff the remains.
The biggest surprise was that it didn’t seem to bother the bucks, either. This was mid- to late-October, so perhaps the thought of breeding made them less cautious, but I don’t think so. Most of the bucks were 1.5 year olds.
Only one was a mature 10-point, and although I got numerous photos of many of the younger deer visiting the site on different days, I got just a single shot of the big guy passing through once.
Was this experience coincidence, or did the mature buck not return because of the dead deer? It’s possible, given the time of year, with rut approaching, this buck was just cruising through the area anyway. Of course, a whole dead deer is a lot more intrusive than simply a gut pile, so maybe this observation is moot.
The video below shows a scenario in December where Chad Hall Outdoors left a trail cam watching over a fresh gut pile. The video shows him leaving the scene on his quad around noon.
Just after 10:00pm that night, a photo is captured of a nice buck that is pretty much standing over the gut pile as he checks out the area. He clearly doesn’t appear to be spooked by the fresh gut pile.
Check out the video below…
The Facts
As hunters, we have a tendency to overthink things, and we often assume that what might bother us might also bother other living creatures. Truth is, in nature, death is everywhere. The predator-prey relationship insists that something must die in order for another species to survive.
If deer avoided every area where they ever encountered something associated with death, there wouldn’t be many places left for them to go.
So do I think that a gut pile spooks deer? No. I’ve personally observed deer pay absolutely no attention whatsoever to a nearby gut pile on more than one occasion.
But here’s where it gets tricky. Although a gut pile might not spook deer, it does attract the attention of predators. Bears and coyotes will often feed on gut piles, and depending on how quickly the pile is gone, these predators may visit it several times.
It’s possible that the concentration of scent from these predators could spook deer, at least until the gut pile was completely cleaned up.
I’ve talked with hunters who point out that the extra human scent put down during the time of field dressing could also be a factor. I don’t give this one as much credence because a deer’s sense of smell is so acute that they can “age” smells, knowing exactly how long ago a human was there or if someone is there now.
This is also why I believe that even if the presence of other predators at a gut site is keeping deer away, then those deer will resume normal patterns as soon as the gut pile is gone and the predators disperse again. Depending on the part of the country and the abundance of predators, that could be as quickly as a few hours to as long as a few days.
The Disclaimer
As a hunter, writer, and even just a curious human being, I always seek definitive answers to questions. Unfortunately, the question of whether or not gut piles spook deer is one that has no definitive answer.
The main reason is because every animal is an individual. What spooks one deer may mean nothing to another. We witness this all the time in the deer woods, in fact, as each deer reacts differently to getting our wind.
But I will say this: when it comes to whitetails, a mature buck may as well be a whole different species than a doe or even a yearling buck. By almost every measure, a mature buck is its own master.
Even if a gut pile doesn’t spook deer, I’m not willing to take the chance that it will spook that one buck I’m after. Heck, I’m so cautious about it that I don’t even like to shoot a doe from a stand where I’m expecting to encounter a mature buck.
If you’re the only hunter on a property and kill only one or two deer a year, or if you hunt primarily public land, you probably don’t even think twice about gutting a deer at the recovery site.
However, if you’re part of a group of hunters who harvest a number of animals from the same stands throughout the course of a season, such as the outfitter I mentioned at the beginning, then it’s definitely something to consider, regardless of whether or not those gut piles actually spook deer.
