I went deer hunting the fringe of the BWCA last year, spent seven days in all. I hardly saw any other hunters. The last day of the season I saw 2 other trucks with some orange in them. I was really surprised by the lack of people hunting in the area, south of parent lake. I had a great time but no deer, in fact the only one I saw while actually hunting my girlfriend shot! I saw plenty of sign and deer every night driving back to camp but nothing when I had a rifle ready. I was wondering what everybody else's experiences were like.

Hunting deer in the big woods is challenging but can be very rewarding. I consider it a good day when I have a chance to shoot a deer, whether I take the shot or not.

Just like with fishing, focus on edges. If you spend your time hunting edges you will see a few deer. The edge of an alder or cedar swamp, the bottom of a little ridge, the edge of a pond, a transition in the forest, etc.

I saw way more people than I wanted to last year. It was comparable to pressure in Northwest Ontario if you ask me. This was only my second year of hunting the BWCA fringe, but the traffic on the roads was quite high for me. I also saw four hunters while in the woods; two were .60 miles from the road, one was .36 miles in and another was close to the road at the end of a hunt. I had to boogie every morning to get way back in. We got snow one night and the following morning I didn't start seeing deer tracks until I was over .75 miles from the road....talk about pressure.

For me, it was too busy and I'll probably be seeking a new area to explore, but still in or on the fringe of the BWCA.

The group I hunted with two years back had guys walk in 1 1/2 miles to their hunting locaction. In the past 8 years, they had never seen another hunter in there, or even sign of one. They also said they saw more canoes this past season than any year before. We compared notes every other night and it seemed like the NR hunter numbers were up too. There were some very large camps on top of that. One camp close to mine consisted of over 30 hunters.

I showed up on the Thursday before the firearms opener and had three campsites picked out before arriving. All three were taken when I checked them. I ended up sharing a mediocre gravel pit site with another small camp. At least they were nice enough to allow it.

I'm not complaining, just stating what my experience was. It was my first year hunting the area on my own and a learning experience at that.

Where we went,one night we cruised all the campgrounds in the area, just to see who was around. We drove down quite a few roads as well and only saw 2 other groups in the area, only one small camper in each. Only heard three shots opening weekend through Tuesday. We were close to the closure line for the fire though so that may have had something to do with it.

Usually most hunters will not hunt more than 100 yards from some kind of trail.