# Warwoman Bear Firearm Opener AAR: I've got questions



## ChidJ (Sep 27, 2020)

So I went up for the Warwoman bear hunt that started yesterday. I could only go up for the first day of the hunt but I got up there the 24th. I'll provide a rundown of what me and my posse did and I'd like some feedback and hopefully some answers to a few questions.

We set off the morning of the 24th from the Augusta area and arrived in Clayton at about 9am. We picked up some provisions, downloaded some maps while we still had cell service and headed up to the mountains. We entered the WMA via the Sarah's Creek Road and camped near a waterfall at one of the campground (11, I think). Wow, super great spot for camping. 10 bucks a night and we got to sleep next to a waterfall and had access to trash cans and a toilet. Pretty great.

After setting up our camps and about by 2pm, we started driving some roads to get a lay of the land and to check elevations. We found it difficult to correlate what we were seeing on the map with what we were driving but eventually got our bearings. Most of the roads are well maintained gravel with a few whoopdies and washboards here and there. We did, however encounter some open trails that were quite difficult to navigate. I have Ram 1500 4x4 with 33in BFG KM3s for reference. We also ran into a few that we didn't even try. Not so much an issue of traction, but of approach and departure angles as well as clearance.

It rained and rained and rained. From when we arrived on the 24th until about 3pm on the 25th it was constant rain. We predicted this and it wasn't really a big deal and, at the time, I believed it would play to our advantage. The rain broke a little earlier than I expected though. I was anticipating it continuing on until the 26th.

On the 25th, we went up and scouted around what I believe was the Walnut Fork area of the WMA. I found what I thought was a prime spot. Acorns, tracks, obvious game trails; you name it, this spot had it. I staged my stand at the tree I designed to sit in at about 3pm on the 25th along with my compatriots.

Everything to this point had gone exactly as planned and we had gotten all our business done without running into any other hunters or trail hikers or 4wheelers or whatever else. It was shaping up to be excellent. No stones left unturned. Clothes had been aired out in the mountain air, packs were packed with all the stuff necessary for a LONG sit, guns were checked and double checked. Somebody was definitely going to score.

430am on the morning of the 26th, we packed up the trucks and hit the road. I got up into my stand by about 545. Pitch dark, perfect. It had been pitch dark every night we'd been there which I hoped would encourage animals to move in the daylight.

And I sat and sat and sat and sat. I was up in that tree for over 12 hours. Acorns, red and white, were falling down almost as hard as the rain from the night before. I had decent visibility of about an acre of space where I could take a decent shot. I had my new Slumper Supreme (I think thats what its called) seat cover so I was sitting back, still, comfy, cool as a cucumber.

I'll start by saying the other two guys I was with saw absolutely nothing in the way of large mammals. Nothing. Just squirrels and birds. They sat probably 9-10 hours and left. This to me is crazy. Early season, I can't recall a long sit where I saw NOTHING. I also saw nothing until about 2pm. I heard some crashing in the brush that wasn't like a limb falling or squirrel jumping. So I followed the sound with my eyes and ears and boom, a smallish bear bumbles out of the brush down into a ravine off to my left about 60 yards from my position. I pull the gun up and had him in the reticle for a second but not enough time for me to take a confident shot. The brush was thick and there were a lot of trees obscuring my line of sight. I lost him.

I sat and sat and sat hoping he would circle back around closer to my spot later in the evening but he never did. Oh well. Even though I had to make the long drive home that night alone and without an animal in the cooler, I had a great time.

What did I do wrong? I'm not a very experienced hunter but I don't know what I or anyone else in my group could have done to increase our odds of success.

Where are the animals? I came up to Warwoman a few months ago to scout and hike with my sons. We came across several animals despite my sons being very noisy and us not covering a ton of ground. During our trip, in the vehicle, we probably drove 20-30 miles of trails and walked another 5 miles between the bunch of us. A ton of ground and one guy in our spooked up a hog on the 25th and we saw a turkey cross the road on the 24th.

Does nobody else hunt this spot? Last year zero bears were reported harvested from Warwoman and during the 26th I heard absolutely zero gunshots. I know they've got bears up here. Some really really big ones.

If y'all have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Part of the fun of hunting for me is developing skills. Thanks for stopping by and reading!

Edit: left out that stands were 15-20 feet up


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## jbogg (Sep 27, 2020)

It doesn’t sound like you did anything wrong.  That’s just Mountain Hunting.  When you do score it’s very rewarding.  I sat Yesterday For 6 hrs on NF on some of the best bear sign I have found in a couple of years but the bears forgot to show up.  That’s often the way it goes.  Be careful, it’s addictive.


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## GAbullHunter (Sep 27, 2020)

Good place harder to hunt. Just takes boots on the grounds. I probably would have shimmied outta my stand and started stalking that bear. That cause it looks like it will be a rough season.. give it another go on another weekend. I wanted to make it up this time for the hunt but was unable to set up sitters for the kids. Hope to get in during firearm season.


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## Thunder Head (Sep 27, 2020)

I explain it this way.

If you have a 100 deer per square mile. The deer are forced too use every part of the square mile. If you have 5 deer per square mile. Those 5 will only use the best habitat. they will rarely use the marginal habitat. It works the same for bears. And to some degree with hogs.

There is very little food in a mature forest. So when the acorns are dropping. What do you do. You take in as much food as possible while expending as little energy as possible. There best chance to pack on fat for winter. They dont move much when the acorns first start hitting the ground. If you can find alot of fresh sign. Your in business. If you cant. Your probably going to have long uneventful sits.


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## ChidJ (Sep 27, 2020)

@GAbullHunter Unfortunately, with it being 2.5 hours from my house and my wife being due in 2 weeks with twins, I probably will not be able to give it another go this year. Next year though!

I argued with myself for a while about getting down and stalking. In the end I decided to try the sit and be patient route. Obviously didn't pay off in a bear in the cooler. Oh well. Next time

@Thunder Head Thanks for this insight. When I was talking with my buddies about why nothing showed up we hypothesized that the abundance of acorns might have resulted in less movement than normal. Our conclusion was solely on reasoning though so thank you for adding that


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## Joe Brandon (Sep 27, 2020)

That's the way it is up there. If you saw a bear you did good, if you were able to put the scope on him you had the wind and your concealment to your advantage. Warwoman may be the most unforgiving WMA terrain wise that  Ga has to offer. Keep up the hunting and maybe check out Chattahoochee or Cohutta next time. They are both much more expansive and you may have a little bit more luck.


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## GAbullHunter (Sep 27, 2020)

ChidJ said:


> @GAbullHunter Unfortunately, with it being 2.5 hours from my house and my wife being due in 2 weeks with twins, I probably will not be able to give it another go this year. Next year though!
> 
> CONGRATS!
> 
> ...


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## BrokenPaddle (Sep 27, 2020)

Good job!  Keep hammering


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## GSPEED (Sep 30, 2020)

Sounds like you went above and beyond but no suggestions as I haven’t hunted Warwoman in years because of what you described, I can watch trees grow from the house. To give you a little perspective on what you were up against I looked at Game check yesterday and 9 deer had been checked in Rabun which is about 60% Forest service,20% Georgia power and the rest private. Doubt there’s a county in Georgia that checked fewer deer. Habersham the county below us had checked 92. Remember when Warwoman could check 9 deer opening weekend of archery season. Pretty place if you just want to get out and see some country. Not that this has anything to do with bears as they are tough to still hunt anywhere.


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## bany (Oct 1, 2020)

Some folks do lots of wrong stuff. On Warwomen y’all may have done one of two things wrong.
picked the wrong spots on the right day or
picked the right spots on the wrong day
sounds like ya had a pretty good hunting trip.


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## greg_n_clayton (Oct 3, 2020)

GSPEED said:


> Sounds like you went above and beyond but no suggestions as I haven’t hunted Warwoman in years because of what you described, I can watch trees grow from the house. To give you a little perspective on what you were up against I looked at Game check yesterday and 9 deer had been checked in Rabun which is about 60% Forest service,20% Georgia power and the rest private. Doubt there’s a county in Georgia that checked fewer deer. Habersham the county below us had checked 92. Remember when Warwoman could check 9 deer opening weekend of archery season. Pretty place if you just want to get out and see some country. Not that this has anything to do with bears as they are tough to still hunt anywhere.


It is probably the toughest WMA in Ga to hunt ! There is plenty of game there ! I believe most of it is close though to the perimeter.....where it is hard to access unless you know somebody that is willing to let you access via their property. Deer, bear, coons and such like vegetables !!


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## GSPEED (Oct 3, 2020)

greg_n_clayton said:


> It is probably the toughest WMA in Ga to hunt ! There is plenty of game there ! I believe most of it is close though to the perimeter.....where it is hard to access unless you know somebody that is willing to let you access via their property. Deer, bear, coons and such like vegetables !!


Not what there Game harvest reports say.


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## greg_n_clayton (Oct 3, 2020)

GSPEED said:


> Not what there Game harvest reports say.


Game harvest report ?


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## greg_n_clayton (Oct 3, 2020)

GSPEED said:


> Not what there Game harvest reports say.


I think I know where you are coming from ! But....look at the access to the refuge . Only access to the South is the road through by Walnut Fork. I have never checked it....but will...but how far is it from grass patch at Walnut Fork and on up away from Apple Valley is it to Warwoman Rd the way the crow flys ? It is a ways from Maw's house !


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## GSPEED (Oct 3, 2020)

greg_n_clayton said:


> I think I know where you are coming from ! But....look at the access to the refuge . Only access to the South is the road through by Walnut Fork. I have never checked it....but will...but how far is it from grass patch at Walnut Fork and on up away from Apple Valley is it to Warwoman Rd the way the crow flys ? It is a ways from Maw's house !


At one time you could ride up Apple Valley by Walnut Fork and back down Tuckaluge in late summer and see 30-40 deer, now if you did this 30-40 times you might see one deer. Probably not! And there’s no more game by the road than there is anywhere else. So how many bears were killed on this hunt that they take up archery season for. DNR will do these hunts for a little while till people figure it out like the January hunt when over 1100 people checked in on the first hunt and checked less than 10 deer.


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## greg_n_clayton (Oct 3, 2020)

GSPEED said:


> At one time you could ride up Apple Valley by Walnut Fork and back down Tuckaluge in late summer and see 30-40 deer, now if you did this 30-40 times you might see one deer. Probably not! And there’s no more game by the road than there is anywhere else. So how many bears were killed on this hunt that they take up archery season for. DNR will do these hunts for a little while till people figure it out like the January hunt when over 1100 people checked in on the first hunt and checked less than 10 deer.


Hmm....I do know bear are a problem in the gardens...and deer are plentiful...along the road. But you are correct about the deer being all over there back in the Bradley Brown days ! The shining of lights has took its toll in there over the years !


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## GSPEED (Oct 7, 2020)

Was there any bears checked on the Warwoman hunt?


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## tree cutter 08 (Oct 8, 2020)

0 bears or hogs checked out.


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## GSPEED (Oct 10, 2020)

greg_n_clayton said:


> Hmm....I do know bear are a problem in the gardens...and deer are plentiful...along the road. But you are correct about the deer being all over there back in the Bradley Brown days ! The shining of lights has took its toll in there over the years !


16 deer have been checked in Rabun as of this morning, still think they’re plentiful? Bet you can’t find a county with less.


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## ChidJ (Oct 13, 2020)

Interesting. I wonder why. Seems like a great habitat. Seems like there is plenty of water, food, shelter, and human density seems low.


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## GSPEED (Oct 13, 2020)

ChidJ said:


> Interesting. I wonder why. Seems like a great habitat. Seems like there is plenty of water, food, shelter, and human density seems low.


Rabun was 16,Habersham was 118 and Hall was over 300. Rabun is mostly public land between Forest service and Georgia power, probably around 80%, so the farther from public land the more game. Warwoman was a great place to hunt but between coyotes, bears, habitat and all the doe days years ago it’s done. Bad part is it’s still one of the better WMAs in North Georgia if you look at the harvest records.


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## ddd-shooter (Oct 13, 2020)

ChidJ said:


> Interesting. I wonder why. Seems like a great habitat. Seems like there is plenty of water, food, shelter, and human density seems low.


Strike out the food and shelter part. 
Old growth hardwood stands provide little of either, except acorns part of the year. 
Nothing on the forest floor for browse or cover. This leads to tough years when the acorn crop is weak, and bad fawn recruitment all the time because there is poor fawning cover.


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## GSPEED (Oct 23, 2020)

ddd-shooter said:


> Strike out the food and shelter part.
> Old growth hardwood stands provide little of either, except acorns part of the year.
> Nothing on the forest floor for browse or cover. This leads to tough years when the acorn crop is weak, and bad fawn recruitment all the time because there is poor fawning cover.


Sorry but you’ve been listening to the DNR. Deer are herbivores and can eat a lot of different vegetation and no we don’t have habitat like we did 25-30 years ago because of no clear cutting but it’s not all habitat. If it’s habitat and predators like they say then why do we still have 4 months of deer season and 12 tags on public land.  Stopping doe days after we’ve killed everything isn’t going to do anything. We have ivy and larual thickets along where it’s been burn for several years for cover. Fawn survival study was 20% so if there’s 10 deer that’s 2 but if we had 10,000 that’s 2000 so maybe we should have stopped doe days a long time ago. I live here and can see deer in subdivisions or golf courses that’s private land but the farther you get away from them the less you’ll see. Go on Game check and look at northern county’s and look at the difference between public and private as 30 deer has been checked in Rabun with 12 on public and 18 on private with public being about 80% of the county. Towns county has 63 with only 3 on public and Union has 254 with only 10 on public. See a trend?


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## ddd-shooter (Oct 23, 2020)

GSPEED said:


> Sorry but you’ve been listening to the DNR. Deer are herbivores and can eat a lot of different vegetation and no we don’t have habitat like we did 25-30 years ago because of no clear cutting but it’s not all habitat. If it’s habitat and predators like they say then why do we still have 4 months of deer season and 12 tags on public land.  Stopping doe days after we’ve killed everything isn’t going to do anything. We have ivy and larual thickets along where it’s been burn for several years for cover. Fawn survival study was 20% so if there’s 10 deer that’s 2 but if we had 10,000 that’s 2000 so maybe we should have stopped doe days a long time ago. I live here and can see deer in subdivisions or golf courses that’s private land but the farther you get away from them the less you’ll see. Go on Game check and look at northern county’s and look at the difference between public and private as 30 deer has been checked in Rabun with 12 on public and 18 on private with public being about 80% of the county. Towns county has 63 with only 3 on public and Union has 254 with only 10 on public. See a trend?


I’m pretty sure we agree. Except I am glad we’ve stopped doe days. It will help. It was too late. I don’t think that’s arguable.


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## GSPEED (Oct 25, 2020)

Went to Warwoman today and walked around for a few hours started thinking about open canopy in North Georgia that everyone has mentioned so here’s some pics of where I went. Yes there’s open hardwoods but ride down any Forest service road and pick a spot and try walking for one mile in a straight line and see if you still think it’s open hardwoods. When we had fires up here a few years ago talked with some of the fire fighters that was from out west and they said this was the toughest country they had ever worked. We’ve got fawning cover just nothing to use it.


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## tree cutter 08 (Oct 25, 2020)

GSPEED said:


> Went to Warwoman today and walked around for a few hours started thinking about open canopy in North Georgia that everyone has mentioned so here’s some pics of where I went. Yes there’s open hardwoods but ride down any Forest service road and pick a spot and try walking for one mile in a straight line and see if you still think it’s open hardwoods. When we had fires up here a few years ago talked with some of the fire fighters that was from out west and they said this was the toughest country they had ever worked. We’ve got fawning cover just nothing to use it.


Thousands upon thousands of acres of hot fires in northeast ga has created prime whitetail habitat across the board. Fawning cover and browse everywhere. Does were just killed out to the point where they can't return on there own because of the bears and yotes. If we could get some brought in just to try. If it worked one time it would work again. We need a ranger woody to take action and get something done. We've got the best habitat we've had in years. No it's not like that everywhere but the places it is take advantage of the opportunity at hand to try.


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## mallardsx2 (Nov 18, 2020)

I hunted Chestatee last year and found it to be pretty much void of game. I did see a several year old "Rub line" that would have potentially been worth sitting but it was on a side hill and the wind what swirling everywhere (Which was probably why the deer were using it...)


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## jrmcc (Nov 19, 2020)

.


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## ChidJ (Nov 19, 2020)

thats fair. Certainly seems to be plenty of the type of habitat you are describing in that region haha

That being said, I'm still going back next year. Its too cool of an area not to go up and get an extra week of early gun hunting in


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## GSPEED (Nov 19, 2020)

jrmcc said:


> Great habitat can be deceiving. what you picture as prime habit may be mature oaks, laurel thickets, and waterfalls.
> 
> What the deer/bear up here see as great habitat is a subdivision full of out of state retirees that let them pick in their gardens, flowers, back yards, and get fed year round while be fully protected by 20 sets of eyes and posted signs.
> 
> ...


First I agree with everything you said. But WMAs have signs on them same as posted signs, what we don’t have is eyes on them anymore. Warwoman hasn’t had a doe day in 10 years and there’s fewer now than 10 years ago because of all the doe days years ago as tree cutter said. Looks like only 1 deer was checked on last weeks rifle hunt. If you could hunt in those subdivisions same as public land or WMAs there wouldn’t be any there either.  No we don’t have great habitat but it’s not like it’s a desert either.


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## Doug B. (Nov 19, 2020)

I told the game warden that was over Warwoman when they started the doe days that having the doe days was going to wipe out our deer herd.  He said "no, it won't hurt the population at all". I grew up on Warwoman.  I've never seen the deer population as low as it is right now and I blame it on the doe days.   I know there are other factors, but, if you kill does you won't have bucks!


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## deermaster13 (Nov 20, 2020)

Very interesting thread. We used to stay at Sarahs creek almost every other weekend back in the mid 90's. Always seen deer in there. It got to be too crowded so it's been almost 10 years since I've been in there.


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## chrislibby88 (Nov 21, 2020)

mallardsx2 said:


> I hunted Chestatee last year and found it to be pretty much void of game. I did see a several year old "Rub line" that would have potentially been worth sitting but it was on a side hill and the wind what swirling everywhere (Which was probably why the deer were using it...)


90% of Chestatee or any mountain WMA  is void of game 90% of the time. There’s those 10% pockets that hold deer though. I see deer or bump deer every time I’m up there, but it took me several years and dozens of steep miles to figure out where they were. I think between my brother and I we saw 6 does and 2 bucks last year on the December hunt. The does I saw were all mature. My brother saw a nanny and yearling though. I’ve seen 4 bucks in 4 years hunting up there. 3 were 3.5 or way older, and only one spike. The mountains are awesome if you wanna watch squirrels and maybe get a brief opportunity at a very old deer, the mountains are terrible if you wanna see lots of deer doing deer stuff.


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## mallardsx2 (Nov 23, 2020)

I hunt the Chattahoochee a lot. I am well aware. lol

Its pretty. Pretty void of game. lol Lots of hogs though.


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## Robust Redhorse (Nov 23, 2020)

Warwoman is better for deer than hogs or bears.  Much better WMA's if your goal is bear.


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## Doug B. (Nov 24, 2020)

Robust Redhorse said:


> Warwoman is better for deer than hogs or bears.  Much better WMA's if your goal is bear.


Warwoman is better for hogs than deer or bear!


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