I was out turkey hunting for a little while this morning, i couldn't stay out long so i just went from place to place trying to get one to gobble. At the third spot that happens to be right behind my house i heard one gobble once. I went up into the woods set up my Double Bull put out my decoy that happens to be a bearded hen that i had mounted many years ago. The turkey never responded again but after awhile two deer started to approach me. Turns out they are both bucks, they are just feeding along at first and pay no attention to the blind even though i don't have the netting down it doesn't bother them. At this point i was wishing it were deer season because the nicer of the two is at 10 paces standing there, you couldn't ask for a better shot. He now approaches the mounted hen that spent the last 10 or so years in my daughter room and has been dressed up and even had perfume applied to it several times. Now take the fact that i have been handling this thing all season and the fact that my blind is fairly new I'm certain the area stinks to high heaven. But the deer don't seem to mind one bit, they are just as relaxed as they can be. The one buck decides to take a closer inspection of the hen i can actually hear him sniffing, at this point he also checks out the ground around it were i have walked. He then circles the hen and takes in another nose full, at this point he must get a good whiff because he springs streight up in the air and lands almost on top of the hen. He even removed a few feathers from the hen, i figured that they would take off running, not the case they went about feeding like nothing happened, i could have taken several more shots at either one of them had it been season. Being new to the blind thing I'm curious on how effective they will be this fall, i will probably do quite a bit more blind hunting and less tree stand sitting.
My experience with deer and blinds has been just the opposite. The deer are very spooked by the blind and don't come anywhere near it. I did hunt from a well brushed in blind in Texas once that the deer didn't seem to pay any attention to.
I've had comical encounters with deer and turkey decoys like you've mentioned Stone Knife. Observing the curiosity of deer and coyotes is one of the big fringe benefits of turkey hunting for me.
I'm wondering if the deer around my house have not had much experience with them, and the fact that they seem a little dumber this time of year.
The mentality of a deer in spring vs fall is so different! My daughter and I had 3 new growth bucks approach us yesterday while were setting our blind up! Scattered on the ground were both of us without camo on, my daughters yellow book bag(she had homework but still wanted to hunt), a couple of colored bagged chairs all in plain view. 2 of the three noticed us but weren't too spooky and hung around a couple minutes browsing before moving off. I had to explain to her that if deer aren't EXPECTING to see people in the woods there demeanor is different than in the fall when there hormone level is different and they've smelled people in the woods. Deer in velvet act very diffently than the same animal a week later out of velvet, the only thing I can think of is it relates to hormones?