Such talk at Old Tamarack—Heberlein's hunting shack near Mellen, Wisconsin—was usually light-hearted. As Professor Heberlein knew too well, death isn’t something you order from menus or schedule on calendars. By the time I became an Old T regular 25 years ago, he had long before buried his father and all the camp’s founders, friends, family, and other originals.

Heberlein especially liked stories about hunters visiting their father, uncle, or friend on their deathbeds and requesting they send a big buck past them next deer season. He wondered why that was such a common bedside wish. Nothing he knew about Judeo-Christian beliefs suggests God grants the newly dead power over Earth’s creatures. And yet many hunters ask that favor during final visits with loved ones.

Then again, maybe they’re just making small talk to convey love and affection they otherwise struggle to share. It’s easier than speaking from the heart, especially when others might eavesdrop.

Heberlein knew one thing for certain, though: He did not want to die while hunting, especially from a heart attack, whether from excitement or while dragging a buck to camp. “Who’d want to die that way?” he’d ask skeptically. “Heart attacks hurt! And they aren’t always quick! And it would ruin everyone else’s hunt!”

Then he’d clutch his chest in mock agony, buckle his knees, and belt out his best death rattle.

The author (left) and Tom Heberlein at Old T hunting camp.

Honoring that theme, Heberlein sent me an email on March 6, 2019, after reading an obituary in the newspaper “Dagens Nyheter” in Stockholm, Sweden, where he lived much of the year. The obit told of a well-liked and respected 44-year-old man who worked hard helping vulnerable youths. The man had established a successful residential-care home and worked for the Swedish National Board of Institutional Care.

Heberlein respected all that, but that’s not why he sent the man’s obituary and translated its highlights. He liked the obit’s conclusion and knew it would make me smile, too:

“On November 11 last year his heart suddenly stopped during an otherwise successful hunt with his friends.”

And then Heberlein asked the question every hunter would ask: “What was he hunting?”

The obit never specified. I’d guess the poor guy’s “otherwise successful hunt” involved a deer species, either a moose, roe deer, fallow deer, or red deer.

After all, when we read about hunting-related deaths, it usually involves deer, and it’s usually more from heart attacks or treestand falls than accidental shootings. Sometimes it’s even someone you know, such as my late friend Tom Tilkens, who died Nov. 8, 2017, at age 72 when dragging out a buck he arrowed while crossbow hunting in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Plus, research in 1996 by Heberlein and his friend/colleague Rich Stedman found that deer hunters, more so than bird hunters, suffer more dramatically from “buck fever.” This instant and often convulsive adrenaline surge strikes hunters when they spot a deer and anticipate a shot.

Heberlein and Stedman weren’t just speculating from barstools at the Drop Tine Bar & Grill in Cayuga, just down the Conley Road from Old T. They had data proving it. They had hooked heart monitors on 10 hunters to measure their responses during 56 hunts for ducks, deer, geese, and upland birds (ruffed grouse and woodcock).

Their study found that deer hunters’ heart rates jumped an average of 33 beats per minute higher after spotting and shooting a deer. In contrast, heart rates jumped 28 beats for goose hunters, 22 for duck hunters, and 10 for upland-bird hunters.

But Heberlein and Stedman also conceded theirs wasn’t a huge sample size, and they explained how responses can vary by a hunter’s age, fitness, and experience. Wildlife managers, for instance, tend to be less excitable than their fellow hunters when spotting deer, waterfowl, or upland birds, given their training, fieldwork, and professional detachment.

Further, hunting has infinite variables. Duck hunters, for instance, regularly out-sweat the average deer hunter. Waterfowlers often must work hard to hurriedly set decoys before first light, especially if they’re slogging through soft muck and knee-high waters in heavy, clumsy chest waders.

The late Don L. Johnson, a longtime Milwaukee Sentinel outdoors writer, once told me a story about a duck-season opener he covered in the 1960s. Johnson said he was hanging out at a boat launch, interviewing hunters as they returned from nearby sloughs and marshes, probably along the Mississippi or lower Chippewa rivers. As each boat approached, Johnson took photos and helped tie their boats to the pier before retrieving his notebook and asking about their hunts.

After helping one crew tie off their duck boat and skiff, he was stunned when one of them said something like, "We had a great day, except Charlie died while we were setting up. We almost quit and brought him back, but then we talked about it. We agreed Charlie would have wanted us to stay and hunt. Either way, he wasn’t going anywhere. We’re glad we stayed. The ducks were really flying!”

What?! Johnson looked again at their boats but didn’t see a body.

Two of the hunters rolled back one of their hand-tied wire-grass blinds. There lay ol’ Charlie in the bottom of the boat among some decoys, his cased shotgun tucked beside him.

Heberlein loved that story when I shared it years ago during an Old T visit. Unfortunately, I never thought to ask Johnson if he had written about it for the Sentinel, and Don’s been gone since January 2006.

But I did think about all this a few weeks ago after clicking on an email from Heberlein’s wife, Betty. Her note included photos of Heberlein’s gravesite 200 yards south of his shack. The photos showed a newly engraved headstone, a flat-faced chunk of red granite that Old T’s caretaker, Al Conley, pulled from a nearby trail.

I hope Heberlein is pleased with his modest gravesite atop a knoll on Old T’s back 40. A heart attack didn’t put him there, and the site offers pretty views of each sunrise over the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. Plus, visitors can watch while standing at attention, or relaxing on a Leopold bench Heberlein provided.

Tom Heberlein’s humble gravesite on his 40 acres near Mellen, Wisconsin, rests about 200 yards south of his old shack known as Old T.

Just realize, of course, that Heberlein shoulders no obligation to send a big buck past any visitor, whether you’re there to hunt, cut firewood, or seek his silent counsel.

Heberlein cared most about hunting ruffed grouse. Woodcock and waterfowl, too. He never fancied himself a deer hunter, and it’s too late to start now.

Just after sunrise, I heard a combine start up from the property next door. I sat for another 45 minutes until the rumbling sounded like it was coming from my back pocket, climbed down, and called it a day.

Back at the truck, I could see the combine cutting through the corn, blowing up dust that billowed across the field to settle in a thick layer over my windshield. My carefully planned October morning had turned into an entirely different hunt, and I hadn’t done a darn thing wrong. That’s the reality of hunting in ag country. Your plans can change as fast as the farmers’ do, and you’ll need to adapt, just like the deer will.

When the Crop Comes Down

It’s easy to think about a field of corn, soybeans, peanuts, or other agricultural crops as a food source for whitetails, but they offer more than something to eat. They also provide cover and security. When that crop suddenly disappears, so does much of the cover, and the change can have an immediate impact on how deer move across the property.

A buck that might have felt comfortable crossing a field of standing corn during daylight hours may feel too exposed to make the same trip after the field is harvested. Even familiar field edges can turn into wide-open runways once the combine comes through.

But that doesn’t mean the deer have abandoned ship. Just because the field has been harvested doesn’t mean the food source is gone. Combines are efficient machines, but they aren’t perfect. Depending on the crop and how it was harvested, there could still be plenty of groceries sitting in that field. It can make for a pretty attractive dinner table, especially right after the combine comes through.

The problem is getting a deer to walk up to the table during legal shooting light. You might see plenty of tracks and sign along the field edge but never see a deer in the field during daylight. The deer may still be using the field like a highway. They're just waiting until you can't see them.

Hunt Staging Areas

Deer are understandably reluctant to step out into an open field during daylight. But they still know good food is out there, waiting for them. Instead of hunting the field, hunt where deer hang back in cover, waiting for darkness to fall before making a move toward the food. You probably have a better chance of getting a daylight shot there than in the field itself.

Staging areas can be subtle. If you can tell where the deer are entering the field, either with well-worn trails or trail camera evidence, start by working your way backward from there. Look for bends in the field edges, corners hidden from the road, and trails that dump into the field. Pay attention to fresh tracks, droppings, and browse that show deer are spending time in the area, not just rushing through it. The goal is to find places where deer can stand in cover and assess danger before stepping into a wide-open field.

If you have trail cameras, pay attention to the timestamps. A camera can tell you that deer are using a field entrance, but the timestamps can tell you when they're using it. If most of your photos show deer entering the field after dark, try moving the camera back into the cover to see where they're staging before sunset. Those photos can help you narrow down where to hang your stand and whether deer are moving through during legal shooting light.

Be careful not to charge into potential staging areas. Deer use them because they feel secure, and you don’t want to blow that with carelessness. Think about wind direction and access routes, and plan your entrance and exit strategies accordingly.

Food Beyond the Field

Once the crop is cut, you just have to reassess the property to see where the deer’s priorities have shifted. Dropping acorns, weedy edges around a cutover, browse along a creek bottom, or pockets of soft mast fruit are all potential deer magnets. It’s not that the field stopped being a food source; the deer just may have other options that feel more secure during daylight.

Look for fresh sign around those areas, and pay attention to how they connect to bedding cover. Trail cameras can show you if the deer have shifted their grocery runs to a new location. If their activity shifts to an oak flat or a brushy edge, that may be a better place to spend your time than watching an empty field.

That’s what happened on my oak flat. It took less than 12 hours for the does and yearlings to flood the oak flat, which is less than 400 yards from the cornfield. It took a little longer for the bucks to move in, but I had several show up on my trail cameras 36 hours later. The combine hadn’t chased the deer off the property. It just changed where they wanted to be.

Set Up Smart

Finding where the deer are moving during daylight after the combine comes through is only half the battle. You still have to be able to hunt those spots without blowing them up. Before setting up on an oak flat, a high-traffic trail, or a staging area, think about how your scent is going to travel.

A picture-perfect spot is easily ruined if the wind carries your scent across it. Set up so the wind carries your scent away from where deer are likely to be, and if the wind doesn’t play right, choose a different location.

If you’re hunting areas with any kind of elevation, you’ll also have to consider thermals and the time of day. As a general rule, thermals tend to drop in the evening toward sunset and rise in the morning as the sun does. Of course, there’s always an exception depending on the terrain, wind speed, and canopy cover. Just make sure you assess the wind before and during your setup.

Don’t forget access and egress. A route that was hidden when the corn was still standing could leave you totally exposed after the harvest. Avoid crossing fresh trails or traipsing through bedding cover to get to your stand.

Hunt the Property You Have, Not the One You Had

That combine didn’t ruin my October when it rumbled to life in the cornfield that morning. It just ruined the plan I had before it showed up to cut the field.

That’s one of the realities of hunting ag country. The property you scouted in September won’t be the property you hunt in October. It only takes the purr of a diesel engine to redraw the map. When that happens, don’t stubbornly keep hunting the property you remember. Instead, hunt the property you have in front of you.

Becca knows what it’s like being married to a hunter. She hunts, too, and the couple often scrolls through trail camera photos together and calls dibs on certain deer. She wasn’t exactly surprised that Tyler was getting antsy.

Tyler had a date with a buck he’d been watching since 2024. He had a couple of encounters since then, but didn’t realize until recently that it was the same deer he’d be thinking about at that ultrasound appointment.

By 2025, the buck had turned into a big-bodied bruiser with thick bases who pushed the other bucks on the property around like he owned the place. The buck didn’t just show up on trail cameras, either. Tyler watched him through rifle season and noticed there was a chunk missing out of the deer’s left ear.

“If I would have had my pistol with me, I probably would have taken him,” Tyler tells MeatEater. “Because that would have been pretty cool. But I don’t have a lot of fun hunting with a rifle anymore. It just doesn’t seem like enough of a challenge.”

This year, the buck showed up on Tyler’s trail cameras with a drop tine, and he decided it was time to go after the bully with his bow. After the ultrasound appointment, Tyler grabbed his Mathews VXR and headed to his hunting property in Bargersville. He climbed into his saddle around 5:15 p.m., overlooking a creek bed and a grove of burr and chinkapin oaks.

When the buck reappeared on Tyler's Trail Camera it was sporting a drop tine.

Tyler is a saddle hunter who likes to stay mobile instead of relying on preset stands. He knew the buck regularly traveled along a creek bed to reach the oaks from a bedding area, so Tyler picked a tree close to a narrow strip of CRP. The thermals would typically pull his scent toward the opening instead of down into the creek bed.

“I just wanted to get a good look at him,” Tyler says. “Cameras can be very deceiving. I think we sometimes put too much clout on what we think we’re seeing on a trail camera.”

The buck dropped into the creek bed around 6:30 p.m., and Tyler watched him for around 20 minutes as it fed through the bottom. When the deer moved toward the chinkapin oaks, Tyler spotted the drop tine and the buck’s massive bases. That’s when he knew the trail camera photos weren’t lying.

As he watched the buck feed along the creek bed, a button buck entered the scene, bleating and running everywhere except downwind of Tyler’s stand. Tyler was relieved when the youngster finally headed back the way he came. Then he came back, only this time with a doe.

As the drop-tine buck climbed out of the creek bed and worked toward the oaks, the doe walked to the base of Tyler’s tree.

“Right before I drew my bow, I looked down, and the doe was extending her head to sniff my step on the tree,” Tyler says.

Figuring the doe was about to blow things up, Tyler drew his bow and held his pin low toward the heart.

“I knew as soon as I let that arrow go, she was going to flinch, and he was going to drop,” Tyler says.

The buck stepped broadside at 20 yards. Tyler released the arrow, shooting a Rage Hypodermic NC broadhead. Tyler said the shot felt good, but he could see about 12 inches of arrow sticking out of the buck’s side as he jumped back into the creek bed and ran toward the bedding area.

“That’s not good,” he thought. Like most bow hunters, Tyler wanted a pass-through shot. He called a buddy to help him and bring a light, then gave the deer about 20 minutes before climbing down to look for blood. He didn’t have to go far to find it. He walked maybe 40 yards and found blood everywhere.

He also found his arrow. There was gut material on it, which confused Tyler. He had seen the arrow sticking out of the buck's side, just behind the front shoulder.

Tyler and his buddy caught up with the buck later that evening. The deer ran about 150 yards from where it was standing when Tyler shot. The arrow apparently struck the buck’s heart but somehow exited farther back.

Tyler had a tough drag out but he was all smiles after finding the deer.

“I don't know how he did this with where the arrow hit right behind his shoulder,” Tyler says.

He said it was surreal to walk up on a buck he’d been watching mature over multiple years. Tyler’s buck had massive bases that measured almost 7 inches around, and he tipped the scales at 208 pounds.

The buck nearly had 7-inch bases.

Getting him out of the woods took some effort. Between the creek, the briars, the burrs, and the stinging nettle, the drag was miserable. Tyler had biceps surgery in April 2025, and getting back to shooting his bow had already been a challenge. Hauling a buck that big through that mess didn’t make things any easier, but I’m sure he’d say it was worth it.

In doing so, Massachusetts joins a number of other states that have already banned or restricted natural deer urine and other deer-derived attractants over disease concerns.

Synthetic deer scents are still legal, meaning hunters can still freshen up a mock scrape or try to fool a rutting buck, but anything derived from an actual deer can’t come along for the hunt.

So why the sudden restriction? According to MassWildlife, the new regulation is intended to prevent the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD), a fatal neurological disease affecting deer, elk, moose, and other members of the deer family. The disease is caused by infectious proteins called prions, which can be shed through an infected animal's urine, saliva, and feces. These prions can contaminate the environment and remain infectious for years, raising concerns about the use of deer-derived scent attractants.

However, Massachusetts has never recorded a confirmed case of CWD within its borders. That makes the new regulation a precautionary measure rather than a response to an active outbreak. State wildlife officials hope that eliminating deer-derived attractants will reduce the chances of introducing the disease into Massachusetts, where it has so far remained undetected.

But can a bottle of deer urine really spread CWD?

Research has shown that infected deer can shed infectious prions through their urine, sometimes months before showing any symptoms. Since many commercial deer urine attractants are collected from captive deer, there is concern that contaminated products could introduce the disease into areas where it hasn't been detected.

However, according to a 2025 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the role of commercial urine attractants in spreading CWD remains undocumented. While the potential risk exists, researchers have yet to establish how much these products actually contribute to the spread of the disease.

So will this new restriction actually make a difference? When MassWildlife proposed the regulation in June 2025, officials shared results from a survey of Massachusetts hunters showing that 16% reported using deer urine as an attractant. The survey results presented did not specify whether those hunters were using natural deer urine or synthetic alternatives. With such a small percentage of hunters reporting urine use and no documented cases of commercial deer urine spreading CWD, it's difficult to determine how much of an impact the ban will have.

For now, Massachusetts is taking a precautionary approach to keeping CWD out of the state, and only time will tell whether the new restriction makes a measurable difference.

He wasn’t the only one to tell me that, and it became clear that Hollywood had inadvertently made archery popular with the youth of our nation. It was one of those moments that showed me that pop culture can influence consumer behavior in a huge way.

While that might seem obvious now, there’s a reality hidden in there that a lot of us probably don’t pay attention to. Consider the hunting industry. How many people do you know who say they can accurately age bucks on the hoof? Maybe you do, too. This came straight from the outdoor television world, where we had to stop shooting “trophy” bucks because the optics of trophy hunting aren’t so great.

We pivoted to “mature” bucks, and suddenly everyone could age deer easily. The vernacular associated with a lot of popular platforms certainly bled through the hunting masses, as well.

And of course, we all now mrrp to stop our bucks before we shoot. That came from folks filming, and it’s pervasive amongst deer hunters. But that doesn’t always make it a good option.

The Speed of Sound

Sound travels at 1125 feet-per-second. Even the fastest crossbows on the market will only hit about a third of that speed. What this means is that the moment you bleat or mrrp to get your buck to stop, you’ve made audio contact with him. Not only does this put him on red alert, but it also primes him to do what deer do very well, which is run away from danger.

The instant that you trigger your release, or maybe touch off a shot with your crossbow, you make audio contact again. But this time, he’s very likely to drop to load his legs and get the hell out of Dodge. Does he have enough time to fully get out of the way? That depends entirely on the shot distance and the speed of your arrow or bolt.

After filming a lot of deer getting shot with both vertical bows and crossbows, I can tell you one thing—they almost all start to drop at the shot. Our brains don’t quite register it on most encounters, but the camera does. Even deer that I don’t stop with some sound, all drop to some extent.

Now, that doesn’t mean they get away every time. They don’t, but it does beg the question: is it a good idea to stop them every time?

No, but not just for the obvious reasons.

Panic Time

Buck fever is simply fight or flight, panic time. You want that deer more than anything, and your brain tells you that you better get it over with before he walks out of your life forever. What ramps up buck fever?

Well, when you go from having a deer completely unaware of your presence to intentionally letting him know something is there. If you watch our 12 in ’26 film from Nebraska last year, watch Steve when he shoots his buck. He mrrps, and almost instantly rushes his shot.

You might think that is a telltale sign of a whitetail newbie, but it’s not so simple. Go out to your backyard range if you get the chance and draw your bow. Aim at your target, and just mouth bleat like you would to stop a buck. You will probably feel an instant change come over you. We have almost conditioned ourselves to at least lightly panic when we make that sound, because we only make that sound in one type of scenario.

Read the Room

A buck that has his head down and is snuffling through the leaf litter for acorns is a buck that probably doesn’t need to be stopped. A buck that is hellbent on finding a girlfriend and is cruising along a fenceline between two woodlots is a different story.

The more encounters you have with deer, the more you start to understand the nuance of the whole thing. If a buck is headed right for a scrape and you’re waiting on him, you know he’s probably going to stop naturally and pose up (all while being distracted). A buck that is grunting his head off and practically running a sidehill trail is a different story.

There is also the reality of calm deer versus keyed-up deer. I shot a buck on that same Nebraska hunt last year that was so rutted up he was almost oblivious. I shot him three times and missed him once, and every time it was like he was just waking from a coma. A few years ago I shot at a different buck that dropped so far on my shot that he left a belly print in the snow (and a sadly clean arrow buried into the ground).

A calm or rutted-up buck is a prime candidate for a mrrp. A deer that has caught a whiff of you or has otherwise shown you he isn’t feeling really comfortable is a buck that will take that audio contact and use it as a reason to flee the scene.

Choose wisely, and remember, you don’t need to stop all of them.

Vermont’s no-doe hiatus, which began after the 1987 gun-deer season, will end at dawn Nov. 14 when roughly 77,000 deer hunters hit the woods for opening day of the gun-deer season. The state’s Fish and Wildlife Board voted 7-5 in July 2025 to reopen antlerless hunting during firearms season this year. The delay allowed the Department of Fish and Wildlife to assess antlerless quotas and success rates for the state’s 21 deer-management units and publicize the changes early to reduce confusion.

Although other states occasionally restrict their annual rifle/shotgun deer seasons to buck-only in some regions, only Vermont imposed a statewide doe ban for nearly four decades. Vermont, however, has offered either-sex bowhunting during archery season since 1955, and it has issued antlerless tags during its muzzleloading deer seasons since 1993.

Nick Fortin, Vermont’s deer and moose project leader, said he’s pushed for antlerless hunting during gun season since taking the job 11 years ago. Fortin said milder winters, declining hunter numbers, changing land practices, and less hunting access made it increasingly difficult to control deer herds in some areas with arrows and muzzleloaders.

“We’ve struggled to harvest enough antlerless deer in our more productive areas,” Fortin told MeatEater. “Most of our board members saw the old system not working the past few years, and that message is getting through. It’s been a long, slow process changing the program, but we think we can better apply hunting pressure where it’s most needed by issuing antlerless tags to gun-hunters.”

In fact, since Vermont first regulated deer hunting in 1912 with a three-week firearms season, only three times—1979, 1980, and 1981—has its statewide antlerless harvest exceeded the buck kill. That happened after Vermont’s Legislature surrendered its regulation-setting authority to the DFW in 1978 after the state’s herd boomed during the 1970s.

From 1971 through 1978, Vermont’s growing deer herd generated an average kill of 9,515 bucks and 1,073 antlerless deer, a 9-1 buck/doe ratio. Further, the annual buck kill ranged from six to 16 times larger than the antlerless kill. The 1971 tally was 7,871 bucks, and 480 antlerless deer (16-1); while the 1978 total was 7,430 bucks, and 1,336 antlerless deer (6-1).

Controversial Change

When the DFW took charge of the antlerless quotas and regulations after 1978, the buck kill increased even further but finally fell short of the antlerless deer kill for the first time in modern deer hunting’s history. Even then, the combined archery/firearms deer kills weren’t lopsided:

1979: 6,921 antlered bucks and 9,591 antlerless deer (1-1.4) 1980: 10,219 bucks and 15,708 antlerless deer (1-1.5) 1981: 8,601 bucks and 11,636 antlerless deer (1-1.4)

But after a brutal winter in 1977-78 and other harsh winters in the 1980s hit the herd hard, the Vermont Legislature rescinded the DFW’s deer-regulations authority after the 1987 hunting season. Deer numbers had declined in the mid-1980s, and hunters blamed the DFW—not harsh winters—for killing too many deer. Lawmakers sided with hunters, even though the annual antlerless kill from 1982 through 1987 never exceeded the buck kill, averaging 6,641 bucks and 4,240 antlerless deer annually.

Even so, Vermont lawmakers reclaimed control of antlerless quotas in 1988. The Legislature also forbid the DFW from issuing antlerless tags during November’s 16-day firearms season, a hunt that generates 93% participation rates by the state’s deer hunters.

From 1988 through 2025, Vermont relied entirely on bowhunters and muzzleloader hunters to shoot antlerless deer. The state’s archery season attracts 43% of Vermont’s deer hunters, while December’s muzzleloader season attracts 39%, and October’s muzzleloader season draws 24%. But not once in the past 39 years did Vermont’s antlerless kill exceed the buck kill statewide, and nothing in the data suggested that system would ever manage the state’s deer herds.

Still, Vermont’s bowhunters and muzzleloaders tried to make it work. Harvest data for the past 20 seasons (2006-2025) show muzzleloaders shot 4.4 antlerless deer for every buck they harvested, including a high of 5,059 antlerless deer and 1,146 bucks (6,205) in 2018. Likewise, Vermont bowhunters arrowed three antlerless deer for every buck they killed from 2006 to 2025, including a high of 4,877 antlerless deer and 1,292 bucks (6,169) in 2020, a 3.8-1 ratio.

Unfortunately, muzzleloading hunters typically filled only 14% of the available antlerless tags each year. Further, few Vermont deer hunters (all weapons) shoot more than one deer annually. In 2025, for example, 80% of all successful hunters (11,241) shot only one deer, while 15% of them (2,185) shot two deer, 4% (528) shot three deer, and 1% (152) shot four deer.

Fortin said the Vermont DFW will take a cautious approach with its restored authority to regulate the deer harvest. He said his predecessors in the late 1970s used an aggressive plan to reduce deer numbers, which “possibly worked too well.” Though smaller herds in the late 1970s and early 1980s helped habitats and browse conditions improve, and bucks produced phenomenal antler growth and body measurements, the biological data didn’t convince hunters to stay the course. And thus began Vermont’s nearly 40-year run of buck-only gun seasons.

Conservative Quotas

Meanwhile, as the new century unfolds, Vermont is seeing fewer severe winters to control the herds, and deer-license sales have tumbled 30% from 174,281 in 2000 to 121,961 in 2025. License sales have stabilized a bit, but the DFW thinks it isn’t enough to control herds in many areas without help from gun-hunters filling antlerless permits.

Fortin said the DFW will keep permit levels conservative this year, gauge the state’s new harvest rates, and adjust accordingly in 2027. “We’re easing back into it,” he said. “We’re trying not to repeat the early 1980s.”

Fortin also said the DFW will monitor how hunters respond to a new regulation that allows them to “earn” a second buck tag in some areas by killing an antlerless deer and a buck with at least three points on one side. The second buck, however, must be taken in a different, later season than the first buck.

Fortin expects more hunters to support the DFW’s new opportunities for increasing antlerless kills, but he knows it won’t be unanimous. “Most of our younger hunters are aware of the importance of hunting antlerless deer,” he said. “But among our hunters over 60, there’s still a big chunk who are dead-set against antlerless harvests. In general, if they can remember the mid-1980s, they adamantly oppose these changes no matter what we show them.”

A researcher who studied Vermont’s deer hunters 20 years ago understands that opposition. In his 2009 book, “A Matter of Life and Death: Hunting in Contemporary Vermont,” Marc Boglioli, an anthropology professor at Drew University in New Jersey, discussed his visits with hunters at several Vermont deer camps. Boglioli wrote that weather and deer regulations dominated all discussions about the deer herd’s size and health.

What topic seldom arose? Boglioli wrote, "What always surprised me was the extent to which habitat does not come up in these conversations. Indeed, the hunter who describes habitat as a key determinant of the health of the deer herd is a truly noteworthy informant. On the other hand, in my conversations with Fish and Wildlife personnel, habitat conversion and fragmentation are considered the most important factors influencing the deer herd.”

Boglioli thinks little has changed in the 17 years since his book’s release. “I checked in with my brother (who lives and hunts in Vermont), and his feeling was that people still don’t think the state knows what it’s doing,” he told MeatEater.

And when Boglioli contacted a local hunter he knows for his thoughts on the new regulations, the hunter responded, "We're still blaming Fish and Wildlife, lol. I improved my habitat a lot, though. The deer hunting was just starting to get good, it seemed, and they’re now going to allow doe hunting. Gonna wipe them out again.”

Boglioli wasn’t surprised by those responses. “This is what I was hearing 25 years ago,” he said. “Even when people see how better habitat improves their own area, their ‘big picture’ thinking is that doe seasons are a bad idea.”

Conclusion

DFW commissioner Jason Batchelder acknowledges that antlerless hunting with rifles and shotguns remains contentious, but he sees no way to avoid it. “The Board’s vote (7-5) to approve these changes was a nail-biter,” he said. “But ultimately, they supported Nick Fortin’s position. Nick’s a thinker and a pragmatist, and he has a goal for the herd that we won’t reach without modern firearms.

“Wildlife managers don’t have it easy,” Batchelder continued. “Theirs is the only profession where you go to work every day knowing someone will say you’re wrong. If you’re a mechanic and you tell customers their car’s struts are shot, they don’t say, ‘No, it’s the brakes.’ People typically trust their professionals in everything except deer management.”

I watched three does saunter past right at shooting light. About an hour after sunrise, as the fog burned off the swampy road, I saw one of the biggest bucks I have ever laid eyes on. Only instead of crossing the road, he was walking head-on toward my blind, nose out, antlers shining in the early morning light.

I raised my rifle, steadied my breathing, and waited. There was no way I was going to blow a shot on such a heart-stopping bruiser, and I didn’t want to ruin it with an iffy forward-facing shot. So I stared down my iron sights as he came another thirty yards straight down the logging road. My trigger finger was getting itchy, but I held steady.

Then he just stepped off the road and disappeared into the brambles and switch cane. I never fired a shot, but it took a good while for my heart rate to get back down to normal. My encounter with that buck drove home an important point. Just because there’s a deer lined up in your crosshairs doesn’t mean you should squeeze the trigger. It can be hard to remember that when you’re staring down the kind of buck dreams are made of. But sometimes the best thing you can do is let that deer walk.

You Have a Bad Angle

That buck was well within shooting range, and I had a steady rest. But none of that mattered since he only gave me a frontal shot. A lot of hunters feel confident taking a frontal shot, but I personally don’t like the risk. If I had taken that frontal shot, there’s a chance I would have killed him. But I knew there was minimal margin for error, and there were so many things that could go wrong. I could strike bone instead of vitals or end up with an injured deer and a crappy blood trail. My bullet could ruin meat. I wanted that buck enough to let him walk and hunt him another day.

Frontal, straight-away, or a steep quartering angle are all solid reasons to keep your finger off the trigger. If you don’t have a clear path to vitals, it’s best not to shoot.

You’re in a Bad Position

Last archery season, my target buck came from an unexpected direction. I heard soft footfalls to my left (my weak side), almost behind me. He stood broadside at 30 yards, nibbling acorns like he had nowhere to be.

It should have been the perfect shot, but getting into a good shooting position would have required some serious gymnastics on my part. I would have had to twist my torso into a pretzel and lean way out of the treestand to get the shot. I spent several minutes quietly hoping and praying he would come around to a spot where I could make a better shot, but it never happened. It’s tempting to make awkward shooting positions work. But if you’re twisted, off-balance, reaching, or almost hanging out of your treestand, it can make a chip shot almost impossible.

Forcing a shot from an awkward position makes it hard to control your weapon. If you’re shooting a bow, it can make it hard to get a good anchor or even break down your form. If you’re shooting a rifle, it turns a steady shot into a shaky one. The deer might be within your range, but your form might fall to pieces.

There’s Something Behind Your Deer

“Know your target and what lies beyond” is a cardinal rule of firearms safety. What if you have a solid rest and you’re staring at a broadside deer, but there’s a doe standing behind it? Or another buck is moving through the same opening? Or maybe a few cattle are happily grazing in the pasture just beyond your target? The shot is no good.

When your target buck lines up perfectly in your sights, it’s hard not to get tunnel vision. But every shot has a destination beyond your target, and you're responsible for all the damage that shot does once your finger squeezes the trigger.

If there’s another deer tangling up your shot, it may only take a few moments of patience for it to work itself out. If there’s a road, a house, livestock, or anything else you can’t afford to accidentally hit, there shouldn’t be any internal debate. Wait for a clear shot or let the deer walk. Ideally, you shouldn’t put yourself in a shooting situation where those other factors present a risk.

You Feel Rushed

The pair had appeared almost out of nowhere. I saw the doe first and then the buck hot on her tail. I got my gun up and tried to line up the crosshairs on a buck still on the move. Then that doe crossed my scent line and put on the brakes. She threw up her nose, turned her head straight toward me, and stomped the ground twice. The buck was still oblivious, but he was closing the distance between them fast. I was running out of time before she blew the whole thing.

At that moment, it was hard not to panic. I was playing against the clock in my head. That’s when a perfectly fine shot can turn into a bad one. Maybe a deer is about to catch your scent, disappear into thick brush, or it’s just continually moving.

Your heart rate spikes, breathing quickens, and brain narrows focus. When buck fever kicks in, it’s usually a good time to slow yourself down. Give yourself a second to breathe, settle your weapon, and decide whether it’s a shot you can confidently make. Sure, you might miss an opportunity, but that’s a lot easier to live with than making a bad shot because you convinced yourself you were running out of time.

Final Thoughts

Sometimes the hardest part of hunting is knowing when not to shoot. While a missed opportunity might make you replay that scene over and over, a botched shot stays with you. There’s no shame in passing on a deer when the shot isn’t optimal. It’s okay to let him walk so you can hunt him under better circumstances another day.

This article covers shooting situations to pass on, but if you need a good resource for where to shoot a deer, check out this article from Tony Peterson.

Whether you learn from a parent, mentor, mishap, or the deer themselves, there’s always a lesson to be learned if you’re listening. Here are a few deer hunting nuggets from the MeatEater Crew to remember when you hit the woods this fall.

Tony Peterson: Hunt the Bucks Where They’re At

Most hunters don't try hard enough to truly learn where big bucks like to walk. This might seem simple, but we often hunt deer where we want to hunt them, and not where they want to be. To compensate, we call and use scents to try to convince a buck to orbit into our world. A better bet is to scout deer sign, employ some type of mobile setup, and go to the deer. This is especially true for anyone hunting pressured bucks.

Mark Kenyon: Sweat the Small Stuff, But Also, Don’t

One of the most common traits of consistently successful deer hunters is that they get the details right. They pay attention to the little things that ultimately stack up to something meaningful. It’s the reason why some people almost always fill their tags and why some only do when it’s their lucky day.

At the same time, it's important not to let this go too far or overthink it. You can become so obsessed with getting every little thing that you sabotage yourself. So keep this balance in mind. Work hard, do as many of the little things right as you can, but remember that deer hunting is supposed to be fun. Sweat the small stuff, but not at the expense of your deer hunting joy.

Janis Putelis: Learn to be a Woodsman

One of my oldest hunting mentors told me, “move your eyes first, and then your head, when scanning the woods for a deer.” This is an exercise in stillness I still practice today. My advice now is to learn to be a woodsman. Know the tracks and scat of all the animals. Learn how to read and interpret the sign. Listen to all the calls. Identify the plants deer eat. Not only will this make you a better hunter, but your experience in the woods will be so much richer.

Spencer Neuharth: Avoid the Crowds

My best advice is to hunt when and where others ain't. The most basic form of that is hiking further than everyone else or crossing a stream that nobody wants to cross. But it can also be hunting on a weekday when the woods are quieter. Or pushing your "rutcation" up to late October instead of early November. Or getting out there when the weather is the bad-kind-of-good, like a 70-degree bluebird day. The deer will still be there, but most hunters won’t.

Clay Newcomb: Just Hunt More

If you’re not a very good deer hunter or you don’t have great spots, there is a way to beat the odds by sheer will. Just hunt a lot. Spend more time in the stand. Volume hunt the heck out of your hunt days. I learned early on that I wasn’t a better deer hunter than most people, I just hunted more than them. Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, but all the hunting turned me into a competent whitetail hunter, and spending a ton of time in the woods is never a bad thing.

Brent Reaves: Just Because the Rut’s Over Doesn’t Mean Your Season Is

Everyone loves to hunt whitetails during the rut. It can certainly be one of the most exciting times in the deer woods. But for me, while I love seeing bucks chasing does, the post rut is my favorite. This is the time I feel more confident in being able to pattern a big buck when they ease up their chasing and start feeding again.

Sure, it might be hard to do if you only have a couple acres, but small(ish) properties of around five acres or more can still feel like a hunting camp even if you don’t have thousands of acres outside your backdoor. Luckily, these three improvements can make your property feel more like a hunting camp.

Build a Skinning Rack

You can always skin a deer on the ground or your tailgate, but a simple skinning rack can give you more room to work and even keep you out of the conditions. You can make your skinning rack as basic or as extravagant as you wish. Some require little more than three 4x4s and an inexpensive winch. Others might include a sink, covered roof, concrete slab, butchering table, etc., but that all depends on your budget and access to utilities.

Regardless, having a skinning rack makes it easy to quickly clean your deer when it’s on the same property. If you have a good drive from your hunting property to home, getting your deer cleaned and on ice before you get home saves a lot of time and work.

Aside from the convenience that skinning racks offer, they provide a natural gathering place after someone’s killed a deer. You can hang your deer, chum it up with your hunting buddies or family members, and revel in the fact that you harvested a deer on your own property.

Hang Some “Permanent” Stands

You should always reevaluate your stand locations to make sure you aren’t trying to relive successful hunts. However, there are some locations that naturally funnel deer every year all throughout the season. If you have such a spot on your hunting property, you should put a permanent stand in that location.

That permanent stand might be a lock-on or a comfortable two-man ladder stand. It should be something you can access quickly and quietly. This is the type of stand location that usually gets named after a family member who killed a big buck there, defining terrain feature, or even the most famous buck that fell in that spot.

Of course, you’ll want to make sure you aren’t just blowing out this stand by disregarding the wind or overhunting it. The goal isn’t to beat it to death. Instead, it’s good to look at it as a reliable spot when you don’t have a specific game plan, or maybe you have a friend joining you and you don’t want to gar-hole them.

These permanent spots aren’t meant to limit you, and they shouldn’t be viewed as the only places you can hunt; they’re meant to give you and others options. In essence, they’re sort of like pin-out spots in a hunting camp. Naming them will certainly make it feel that way.

Install a Small Cabin or Shed

The most obvious way to make your hunting property feel more like a hunting camp is to, well, set up camp. I know folks who simply park their camper at their property, but adding an affordable cabin or shed feels more established than a camper or RV, even on small properties.

You can build your own cabin if you’re handy enough, but if you don’t have the skills or time, you could go with something like a Stor-Mor portable shed, specifically their cabin-style sheds. If you’re wanting to make your property feel like a true hunting camp. You can go with one of their bare-bones models or customize your own to fit your needs.

They’re not huge, which makes them ideal for smaller properties. Their compact footprint gives you plenty of options when it comes to placement, and while it can certainly be a permanent fixture, you can always have it moved if you wish.

The Stor-Mor cabins offer plenty of space to get out of the rain, warm up, and have a hot meal between or after hunts. Those simple things can feel like a luxury after a long day of hunting.

Start Your Own Tradition

You might not have grown up around hunting camps, or maybe you experienced a few bad ones. Starting your own, even a small one, can give you, your family, and friends a deer camp experience that leads to good times, cool experiences, and a lifetime of hunting.

But, I never know if they are asking me what his personality is like, if he’s a good hunter, if he tells amazing stories around the campfire every night, if he’s a considerate cuddler in a tent, or what. I’m not going to address all of those, but I’ll say this—he has some deeply engrained attributes that all of the best hunters have, even whitetail hunters.

Allow me to explain.

Curiosity Killed the Cat (And Anything Else You Can Get a Tag For)

In whitetail hunting, we strive to take the mystery out of the game as much as possible. The primary method you’ll see portrayed in a hell of a lot of whitetail hunting content all involves taking the what-ifs off the table. Plant a food plot to make them come to you, or put out an automatic feeder that spins a cupful of corn onto the ground at exactly the same time every day.

Make a mock scrape and hang a cell camera on it. Whatever we can do to reduce the unknowns, we will do. Look, you do you, Boo, but the truth is that if you want to be a good hunter, you have to not only be curious, but foster curiosity in yourself.

I’ve had the good fortune of getting to ghost-write for a couple of extremely successful guys in the outdoor space who are self-made millionaires a few times over. They are both crazy curious people, and so is Rinella. If you aren’t asking yourself questions and then trying to answer them, you’re at a huge disadvantage. When it comes to whitetail hunting, asking yourself why a buck did this and not that, or why they always use that trail and not another one, or why this camera is dead but that one is just full of activity, you’re not growing as a hunter.

Think about the folks who just always get it done on public land, and ask yourself if you view them as generally curious people. They are, and it’s one of the main ingredients in being a successful hunter, but it’s not the only one.

Go with the Flow

This week you’ll have the chance to watch the film Steve and I made with his buddy, Pat Hoffman, down on Pat’s family ranch in Nebraska. I was tasked with being the setup guy for that hunt, so I had to scout it and develop a rut plan. After e-scouting it, then walking the property for a couple of days in July, I knew one thing—we were all about to decoy in big bucks during the rut.

When I went back in August to hang stands and put up blinds, I felt even more sure that the doe decoy factor would be huge. The ground on that working cattle ranch is mostly open, and that visibility paired with cruising bucks, would seal the decoy deal.

We ended up shooting three great bucks in four days, and never once took a decoy out. What I was so sure of, was just dead wrong. This happens to me a lot when it comes to whitetails, and it’s always a moment where my ego is forced to wrestle reality, and if I’m lucky, reality wins. The best hunters out there learn to develop a plan, but to also go with the flow. Hunt with conviction, but also be very open to new information, and how that can alter the best strategies.

This mindset works, but only when it gets paired with more and more experience. This is the key to finding the balance between trying something for enough time, but pivoting if it doesn’t work instead of riding a dead program right into another buck-less season. It’s not easy, but that’s why it works.

Trust the Process

If you watch that Nebraska film, you’ll see Steve out setting traps, during the first week of November, while Pat and I find ourselves in bow-range of great bucks. I’ve written a ton about patience in the whitetail woods, so I won’t go too deep here, but I’ll say this: If you aren’t patient, you’ll never be good at this stuff.

It is, without question, the most crucial skill to develop as a hunter. Second guessing is the enemy, and time on stand is your friend. No one talks about how hard it is to do dark-to-dark sits, or spend hours on a spot with no deer activity because you believe one will show up, but it is truly difficult. I hunt a lot of public land, and I often see parking lots clear long before the morning is done. There’s a good lesson in patience there.

If you learn to trust the process and put in enough time to see a plan through from day to day, you’ll string together something that will lead to success. This is something Rinella is really good at, and I have no doubt it at least partially comes from his penchant for trapping. There is a process to it that involves reading the land, putting in the physical work, checking the lines, and deciding if you made the right moves.

Almost all of hunting follows a similar path, and I know whitetail hunting does. Scout enough to build a plan, implement it, and then listen to what the deer tell you. Be patient with them and the process of finding them, and eventually you’ll start to encounter big bucks on a regular enough basis to make those long dead sits completely tolerable because you know eventually something is going to happen.

Click here to watch Steve and Tony’s Nebraska whitetail hunt.

I heard the reason for the scene before I spotted it as a few bur oak acorns tumbled to the ground. One massive tree was dropping hard and had seemingly pulled every whitetail in the county into its orbit. My months of summer scouting became obsolete in an instant, and I filled my buck tag under that tree two days later.

There are dozens of physiological and environmental factors that turn clockwork summer patterns into a pile of question marks by October, but acorns are arguably the most important for an early-season deer hunter to understand.

Perfect Timing

There’s a lot of protein propaganda in the whitetail world, and not without good reason. Protein is a necessary macronutrient for all living things, and it’s especially critical for summer whitetails in the midst of antler production, lactation, and regular body growth.

Crops such as soybeans and alfalfa are a hot commodity while protein needs are high, which create the pre-season trail camera and glassing opportunities that deer hunters drool over. However, once antlers harden and fawns are weaned, the looming energy demands of fall and winter push protein to the backseat. That happens to also be when acorns hit the ground.

Acorns can’t compete with most destination food sources for protein content, but they wipe the floor on the energy front. Nothing allows a whitetail to rapidly pack on fat like a hearty acorn crop, and they know it. A 1975 study in Virginia discovered that acorns accounted for over two-thirds of the diet volume of monitored deer in years of high abundance.

Another Virginia study found that deer expanded their home ranges to include acorn-rich areas and spent half of their foraging time on acorns alone during peak mast-fall, which conveniently straddles archery opener and pre-rut across much of North America. Acorns are a prime suspect when early-season deer suddenly vanish into the timber, but their influence varies by year and by species.

All In The Macros

Sadly, deer hunting is not as simple as finding acorns. Not all acorns are equal in the eyes of a whitetail. North American oaks are divided into two main subgroups: red and white. Acorns of the red oak subgroup are generally higher in protein and fat than white oak acorns while being comparably high in carbs, but they’re also significantly higher in tannins and fiber. That makes them both less palatable and less digestible for deer despite appearing to have a better nutritional profile.

White oak acorns also germinate almost immediately after falling, which spurs whitetails to gorge on them as much as possible while they’re fresh. Bitter red oak acorns, on the other hand, overwinter as a nut and germinate in the spring. In areas where both subgroups are dropping, red oak acorns can be almost completely irrelevant until most of the white oak acorns are off the table, either due to consumption or germination.

To successfully target acorns, you need to know which kind you’re looking at. A white oak crop is highly valuable for a short period of time in the early season, but red oak acorns often take the lead by November and only increase in worth until closing day.

The influence of a good acorn crop on whitetail behavior is consistent. Unfortunately, annual acorn abundance is not, and it changes everything.

Boom or Bust

The whitetail-acorn dynamic mirrors a typical predator-prey relationship. Oaks, like cottontails, have boom and bust years, and whitetails, like coyotes or bobcats, respond in kind. The same Virginia study that found deer spent 50% of foraging time on acorns in years of above-average acorn production put that number at less than 5% during below-average years.

Likewise, a nearby study in Georgia showed that the observed home-range expansion of boom years did not occur in bust years. Instead, deer seem to stick to local row crops, food plots, and standard natural browse and forage when acorns are scarce.

Science still hasn’t found a reliable way to predict how many acorns will drop each year, and production can vary not only regionally, but also from ridge to ridge and even amongst individual trees of any given species. If you don’t want to miss out on some of the hottest action a whitetail hunter can get, you better be prepared for some in-season scouting. And if your oak ID isn’t the best, don’t sweat it. Fresh sign and a few sits in a nearby tree will tell you if deer are actively interested in the little brown nuts you found.

“I was like, oh, I didn’t kill the biggest deer up here,” Kufahl told MeatEater.

Kufahl was running trail cameras in three counties and had never seen this buck before. Ten days later, it showed up again. Kufahl decided his season wasn’t over after all.

“I had a gun tag,” Kufahl said. “I decided that was the only deer I was going to hunt. If I found him during gun season, I was going to hunt him.”

Kufahl's 2025 buck.

Kufahl spent the next several weeks relocating cameras, trying to find the big buck’s core area. Then two days after the season closed, he had it. The buck showed up in the same spot for three days in a row and made several daylight appearances. That’s when Kufahl moved all of his cameras into the area, just to keep an eye on him in the off-season. The buck even dropped his sheds right next to one of his cameras. Kufahl has those sheds from last year, which he estimates would have scored around 188 inches. Kufahl’s target buck disappeared for much of the summer, only showing up on camera about once a month. It was enough for Kufahl to track antler growth. But people in the area were already talking. Hunters were swapping stories about the buck at the local bar and flashing their own pictures of him.

The giant buck dropped his sheds within feet of Kufahl's trail camera.

“I figured there would be people crawling all over there this year. They know he’s big,” Kufahl said.

But Kufahl already knew roughly where the big buck was bedding, and he had a plan. Unfortunately, the wind didn’t cooperate with that plan. On opening day, September 12, the wind was coming out of the northwest, blowing almost directly from Kufahl’s stand to the buck’s bedroom.

“But I thought I could beat him,” Kufahl said. “I got in there and I sat and didn’t see anything.”

When the buck disappeared from his cameras for three days after that first sit, Kufahl figured he blew it. Rain kept the deer from moving much on Monday, Sept. 14, but Kufahl figured they would be up and moving again following the storm. They did. The big buck turned up on his trail cameras again on Tuesday evening, but Kufahl was at his daughter’s volleyball game and not in the woods.

Wednesday’s forecast called for more rain after dark, so Kufahl hit the woods early. He figured the deer would move before the front, so he slipped into the woods early in the afternoon.

“It was dead calm that day,” Kufahl said. “I know big bucks usually don’t like the dead calm. They like a little bit of breeze to move. But I knew it was early season, and anything could happen.”

And it did. Right at dusk, just as Kufahl was about to throw in the towel for the day, he heard footsteps. They sounded really close. He slolwy cut his eyes toward the sound and saw his target buck standing in bow range and staring right at him. The buck snuck in and Kufahl never heard him coming.

“I was like, holy smokes!” Kufahl said. “Stay calm. Just don’t look at his rack.”

The buck finally took a step, putting a big oak tree between the two of them. Kufahl took that opportunity to draw his Mathews Helon 6. When the buck stepped out on the other side of that oak, it was almost broadside, quartering slightly toward him. Kufahl released, sending a Carbon Express arrow tipped with a QAD Exodus broadhead right in front of the buck’s shoulder. It pierced the animal’s heart on its way out the other side.

Kufahl knew the shot was good, but the buck ran toward private land after the shot. He didn’t want to bump the buck, so he collected his gear, headed back to his truck, and called a buddy for help. It was almost 9 p.m. when the two returned to the area to look for it. Luckily, it didn’t take them long to find him.

“I had my little flashlight, and it was getting kind of hard to see, so my buddy turned on his floodlight,” Kufahl said. “It looked like a blood bath going over the hill.”

When they crested the hill, Kufahl’s buddy spotted the buck first.

“He was piled up on the edge of the brush, and there was just this massive rack sticking up.”

Kufahl with his 2026 buck.

They managed to snap a few photos with their cellphones before the rain started pouring. Kufahl knew he had a big buck on his hands, but he wasn’t fully prepared for just how big.

“He was probably 10 inches bigger than I thought he was,” Kufahl said. “The spread is 22 ¾ inches inside. Last year he was a perfect 12. This year, he was 11. If he had matching G5s like he did last year, he probably would have pushed 200 inches.”

Kufahl and his buddy were able to snap a few pictures of the deer before a rainstorm hit.

Kufahl has a shoulder mount planned for the buck, but with his taxidermist on an elk hunt, he had to scramble to find a freezer big enough to hold the rack until he gets back.

“He called around and found somebody with a big chest freezer that was empty,” Kufahl said. “I drove it down there on Friday and put it in there.”

Luckily, that was the hardest track job of this hunt for Kufahl.

Photos courtesy of Matthew Kufahl.

Answer: Like all good questions, it depends. Generally, the faster you can break down an animal and get it cold, the better. In hot weather, you should prepare ahead of time so you don’t risk meat spoilage. While “hot” might be relative to your geographical location, anything above 40 degrees requires special care. Temps above 70 demand expediency. Anything above 90, every minute counts.

If you can quickly retrieve your deer in a truck, cart, or side-by-side, you don’t have to stress too much, especially if you can get to the processor within the hour. A lot of folks don’t want to process a deer in these conditions. However, if you want the least amount of spoilage, I would suggest field dressing your deer before dropping it at the processor if the temps are above 40 degrees. Also, consider that your processor might not get to your deer right away. They could be backed up or short-staffed, and it could be even longer before they’re able to break down your animal. A good processor will do away with any spoilage. A less thoughtful one will throw it in your grindpile. If you want to avoid either, just take an extra 5 to 10 minutes and gut your deer.

You might not always be a hop and a skip from the processor. In these cases, you definitely want to field dress your deer or even debone it in the field (where legal). Let’s say you don’t have far to drag your deer, but you won’t be able to drop it at the processor for at least a few hours, and the temps are above 70 degrees. First, field dress your deer. If you’re transporting it, buy a bag or two of ice and stuff it in the cavity to help keep it cool. This will give you plenty of time to get your deer to the processor without exposing it to warm, bacteria-forming temps (anything above 40 degrees) for an extended period of time.

On the other hand, you might find yourself miles from the trailhead. In temps above 70 degrees, I’m deboning a deer. One, because it’s just not feasible to drag a deer in some of these scenarios. Second, it’s crucial to start cooling meat when the mercury rises. In hot, humid environments, this is especially important. Besides, there’s nothing better than knowing you don’t have to clean a deer after a long walk back to the truck.

Make sure you have a solid set of game bags and a hunting pack that allows your deer meat to breathe. Contractor bags are a cheap way to go, but they don’t allow your meat to cool adequately. When you make it back to the truck, get your meat in the cooler and ice it fast. The meat will still be dissipating heat, so try to separate it as best you can in your cooler. Don’t just pack it tight.

Still, other factors like the recovery time and whether or not you gut shot your deer also factor into meat spoilage. Rupturing the intestines and exposing the bacteria that live in there to the rest of the deer doesn’t bode well for warm temperatures. If you gut shot a deer and have to leave it overnight in temperatures above 40 degrees, you’ll want to check the deer as you clean it. For instance, if you smell stomach bile on the meat as you’re breaking it down, you’ll have to consider whether or not it’s worth the risk of eating it. I’m not proposing that you flippantly waste meat, but it might help you determine whether or not you should take a questionable shot in warm temps.

Have a whitetail related question? Send it to wiredtohunt@themeateater.com and check back to see if we cover it.

Early season deer hunting in the South is a special kind of misery. It’s hot and humid, and you sweat in places you didn’t know you could sweat. Plus, the bugs are still partying like it’s midsummer. Somewhere around the tenth mosquito bite, it’s easy to start questioning all of your life choices.

Mosquitos suck, and swatting at them in the treestand can blow your cover fast. But slathering yourself in bug spray can create its own set of problems, especially when you’re trying to keep a low scent profile. Thankfully, there are some solid strategies to keep the bugs at bay without ruining every early-season sit.

Change Your Location

Avoiding the kinds of spots mosquitoes love is one of the easiest ways to skirt them. The boogers love stagnant water and thick, damp cover. Yes, big bucks like those kinds of places, too. But moving your stand 100 yards uphill can take you out of the swarms without taking you completely out of the action. Higher, drier ground often has fewer mosquitoes than a dank, stale bottom.

Getting up out of a low stand location can also get you into some moving air. Even a mild breeze can make a big difference when you’re trying to sit still in an oak tree. It probably won’t drive off every bug in the county, but it may help keep them from hovering around your face and ears the whole time.

Treat Your Clothes

It’s impossible to completely outrun mosquitoes in the South. They’re still pretty much everywhere in September, and deer seem to like the kinds of wet, nasty places where they thrive. Sit outside long enough, and the mosquitoes will find you. Luckily, permethrin can make it tolerable even in the buggiest conditions.

Permethrin is a synthetic form of pyrethrin, the chrysanthemum’s natural insecticide. You can buy pre-treated hunting clothing or spritz your favorite pieces down with a 0.5% permethrin product like Sawyer. Once it’s dry, it bonds to the fabric and offers long-lasting protection that even lasts multiple washes. It is also odorless once it dries. If you decide to go with pre-treated clothing, just know it will eventually wear off after so many washes. You can always treat it again after it fades.

I treat lightweight, breathable layers before the season starts. Then, I don’t have to reapply in the stand, even when I’m sweating through everything. Permethrin only goes on your clothes, not your skin. That means any exposed skin is still hanging out there, tempting mosquitoes.

Protect Your Skin

So what do you do to keep exposed skin from becoming a mosquito buffet? Picaridin is one solid solution. It’s an effective mosquito repellent without the material-damage concerns or strong chemical stench that DEET carries. DEET works extremely well against mosquitoes, but it’s also a strong solvent that can damage synthetic coatings, rubber, vinyl, and plastic on everything from binoculars and GPS screens to rain gear.

DEET also has a pungent chemical smell that just isn’t welcome in a deer stand. A fragrance-free picaridin formula is a good alternative to DEET. Smear it on exposed skin before you climb in the stand. Your face, ears, and neck are obvious targets, but don’t overlook your hands and fingers, especially if you don’t wear gloves. Mosquito bites on fingers are a unique form of torture, especially when you’re trying to sit still with a bow in hand.

Make Your Stand a Bug-Free Zone

When I’m hunting early-season heat, I consider a Thermacell an essential piece of hunting gear. I’m a total Thermacell fangirl. I’ve used them for years. They are a simple way to make something close to a mosquito-free bubble around a deer stand.

These handy little devices use a butane cartridge to heat a repellent-treated mat. It takes a little time to warm up (about fifteen minutes), but once it gets going, it makes mosquitoes rethink buzzing in to snack on your skin.

But what do the deer think? The standard Thermacell mats do produce a distinctive odor, and a deer’s keen sense of smell is more than capable of picking it up. But the jury is still out on whether or not that odor will spook deer. I haven’t been busted with a Thermacell, but I play the wind religiously. In fact, the faint plume they emit can actually help me pick up slight shifts in air movement. You can also swap out the standard-issue Thermacell mat for an earth scent refill and use it as a cover scent.

Cover Your Extremities

Mosquitoes seem to have a knack for finding even the smallest patches of bare skin. Your fingers, ears, and the back of your neck are like rare delicacies to them. All three are also tough places to scratch when you’re trying hard to be a statue in a treestand.

A lightweight pair of gloves can keep your fingers and hands from being eaten alive. But make sure you practice shooting with them before opening day. If you aren’t used to handling a bow and manipulating a release while wearing gloves, it can take some getting used to.

A mesh face mask like the kind spring turkey hunters love can really help keep mosquitoes from attacking your face and ears. However, loose netting can get in the way of your bowstring and anchor point. It can also potentially catch on the string during the shot.

You can also cover your face, ears, and neck with a lightweight neck gaiter. They’re not as bulky as a mesh mask and still keep mosquitoes off those tender spots. You can even use a permethrin-treated gaiter to really deter those bloodsuckers.

Final Thoughts

Early-season bowhunting is a hot, sweaty ordeal across much of the country. There’s no reason to make it worse by donating a pint of blood to the local mosquito population. With a little thought and preparation, you can keep the swatting to a minimum and spend your sit listening for deer instead of the buzz of mosquitoes swarming around your ears.

Unfortunately, they hadn’t discussed who got the shot on this one. The buck wasn’t a complete stranger to Logan. He had one close encounter with it last November at eight yards on the ground. His trail cameras picked it up sporadically since then, and neighbors as far as two miles away shared trail camera photos of the buck as well.

“He’s super nomadic for a whitetail,” Logan told MeatEater. “He wasn’t sure where he fit in. He just knew he needed to move around.”

Logan only picked up the buck twice this year on his trail cameras. The first picture came in on August 8 in the middle of the day. The second at 1 a.m., 16 days before he waltzed between the couple’s treestands. This wasn’t a buck Logan or Kaylin had on their radar. But, shortly after 6:30 p.m., Logan heard a sneeze from down the ridge that changed those initial plans. He scanned the direction of the sneeze and saw a little six-pointer. Then he saw the nomadic buck following behind him.

One of the few pictures Logan had of the deer on camera.

“I caught a glimpse of him, just the main frame, and I thought, ‘That’s a decent deer,’” Logan said. As the deer came closer, he recognized the buck from the trail cameras. “My first thought was, ‘I can’t believe he’s here,’ Logan said. “My second thought was that we didn’t have a plan for who’s shooting this one.”

The buck fed up the ridge, traveling with two smaller bucks, a four-pointer and the sneezing six-pointer. The Beachs were hunting a crosswind, and the trio was coming straight for their treestands. The big buck got within a few feet of picking up their scent before stopping. He pulled up nine yards between the hunters, but on both their weak sides, so neither could get a clean shot. It waited there for a few minutes, unaware of how much marital trouble he was causing, before heading toward a pile of corn.

That’s when Logan started trying to figure out what Kaylin was thinking. From his tree, the buck was wide open, but his wife hadn’t taken a shot. “She hadn’t shot, so maybe she’s thinking I’m going to shoot,” Logan said. He drew on the buck while it fed on the corn pile, but he let down when it turned to face him. He drew a second time when the buck turned broadside at 30 yards, but hesitated, wondering if Kaylin might still shoot.

“I drew back and anchored in and kind of waited 10 or 15 seconds,” he said. “Then I was like, I can’t let him sit here no more.” He settled his pin and released, sending a G5 Mega Meat broadhead straight through both lungs.

“He didn’t jump or buck or anything,” Logan said. “It was right there in the money.” He watched as the buck ran about 25 yards and then piled up. “We were both ecstatic,” Logan said. “Both our trees were wiggling. We were air high-fiving and everything.”

Once the excitement calmed down a little, Logan climbed down and walked over to Kaylin’s tree. His wife had a few things to say to her husband.

“The first thing she said was, ‘That deer’s a lot bigger than you think he is,’” Then she asked a question Logan wasn’t expecting. “You couldn’t have given me one more step?”

“I thought you couldn’t shoot,” Logan told his wife. “From my angle, it didn’t look like you were doing much.” But Kaylin had her camera running the whole time, and footage wasn’t exactly going to help Logan’s case.

Kaylin likes to shoot her recurve at 18 yards or closer. The buck had been standing just 22 yards from Kaylin’s stand. But just before Logan released his arrow, it had stepped right into her shooting lane. The video from Kaylin’s camera shows her raising her bow and putting tension on the string. “Then you see a lighted nock come from somewhere in outer space and tear up the party,” Logan said.

The Beach's didn't realize how much mass the buck had until they found it.

When the couple first approached Logan’s velvet buck, they immediately noticed the buck’s mass, which looked like a “cactus.” The buck’s rack wasn’t particularly wide, but he had 42 2/8 inches of mass and 22 scorable points. It grossed 164 1/8 inches in Buckmasters scoring. Fortunately for Logan, Kaylin has been a good sport about the whole thing.

“She was excited for me,” Logan said. “There hasn’t been any couch sleeping or divorce papers or anything.”

Photos courtesy of Logan Beach.

Both bucks and their environments become increasingly dynamic as August draws to a close, with nearly every key component of deer movement changing all at once. The most evident, and often most frustrating, is their diet. If your camera intel happens to go dry, don’t panic. A brief understanding of what’s going on with whitetail food should calm your nerves.

The Mast Effect

Destination food sources are obvious throughout the summer when bucks prioritize high-protein forage to support rapid antler growth. Soybeans, alfalfa fields, and clover plots are great places to catalog resident bachelor groups, but they tend to give hunters a false sense of confidence about their early-fall prospects.

As summer wanes, forage quality drops, and protein needs dry up along with velvet. Fats and carbs take the lead in a whitetail’s fall diet to prepare for the energy demands of the rut and impending winter. Perhaps not coincidentally, this transition almost perfectly aligns with the acorn drop.

While oak species and mast-fall timelines vary from region to region, the presence of energy-rich acorns in any capacity can have a huge impact on early-season deer feeding patterns. A Virginia study published in 1993 found that whitetails dedicated a staggering 50% of their foraging time to acorns during peak mast and were solely responsible for 70% of acorn consumption during that timeframe.

With that monumental level of preference, it’s not surprising that the same study observed collared deer altering their home ranges specifically to incorporate hot oak stands into their daily rounds. None of that bodes well for a September bean field that looked like deer mecca a month ago. And, to make matters worse for your summertime hotspots, consider that sugary soft masts like persimmons and apples can be as big of a draw as acorns and have roughly the same seasonal timing. If your food plot cameras have become purely ornamental, mast is a likely culprit. But it’s not the only one.

Shifting Bedrooms and Growing Neighborhoods

One of the most popular deer hunting strategies is to get between a buck’s preferred feeding and bedding areas. Changing feed and bed patterns make this strategy tricky.

While research has shown that bedding bucks prioritize thermal cover in close proximity to high-quality forage throughout the summer, their tastes switch with the onset of fall. In addition to forage becoming less of a draw, cooler temperatures mean bucks no longer need to tuck away in scarce microhabitats that offer slightly cooler temperatures and some respite from the bugs. They have more options to spread out and not a moment too soon.

As with diet, shifts in fall bedding are largely tied to physiological changes. Bachelor groups that shared a grassy swale in early August are suddenly not so stoked to be roommates by early September, and a camera targeting that swale might go from 100 to zero in a week as the band breaks up. Solitary bedding sites become key in the early season. In the summer, deer bed for comfort. In the fall, they bed for survival.

The abandonment of summer bedding also coincides with range expansion. All of the hormones that lead a buck into his reckless November scramble start to ramp up in August. That means you’re more likely to have random new bucks show up on early-season trail cameras, but you also might not see resident bucks as often as you did while their antlers were growing.

The whole program has changed in the last couple of weeks. Clinging to dried-up cameras and planning to hunt on summertime memories is a good way to doom yourself to a slow and painful opener. Luckily, it’s not too late to get back on track.

A Little Sign Goes a Long Way

Whitetail hunters have long been conditioned to be ultra-cautious with early-season bucks. The overwhelming message is to minimize your presence in the woods to avoid educating deer to your presence ahead of the pre-rut.

The thing is, there are weeks between most archery openers and the pre-rut, and the key to filling tags in that time period is to scout. Scout with trail cameras where you can, but you should also use onX, binoculars, and a good pair of boots. Trail cameras are a convenient method to passively gather intel, which makes it easy to forget that they’re only one piece of the puzzle and an especially fickle one this time of year.

Early-season bucks don’t leave as much sign in the woods as they will around Halloween, but they’re also not covering nearly as much ground. September marks a unique time when fresh rubs and scrapes can tell you exactly where to intercept your target. If your trail cameras are dead, pull a few and take a hike.

Combine some old-fashioned grunt work with cutting-edge technology. You’ll find bucks somewhere. And when you do, you better hunt them, because the season of consistency is over. Until next summer, every week will be different in the whitetail woods.

After a day of pheasant hunting in LaSalle County, Illinois, in 1991, Sam Aiuppa decided to spend the remainder of the evening in a deer stand, he told Rack Magazine in an interview. Aiuppa swapped his birdshot for a slug in his Remington 870, and after just 40 minutes in his stand, he spotted the massive buck approaching. Once the buck stepped into range, Aiuppa dropped it in its tracks. But it would be over three decades before the buck made it into the record books.

Once word spread about the giant rack hanging in Aiuppa’s basement, antler collector James Martin drove to Illinois, bought the rack from Aiuppa, and started the process for official Boone and Crockett scoring. Officially, the buck scored 207 ⅞, still shy of the Hanson Buck (213 5/8), but enough to propel it all the way to the no. 2 spot for the biggest whitetail ever killed.

Images via Boone and Crockett.

He made it home to Watertown, scarfed down something to eat, grabbed his Mathews Traverse bow, and by 3:30 p.m. was settled into his treestand.

Owen got the first glimpse of his target buck last summer, when it showed up on a trail camera overlooking a clover food plot. But the buck disappeared as quickly as he’d shown up. “Last year, he looked the exact same frame-wise and had the exact same tine curvature, but he had none of the junk. He was a completely perfect 9-pointer last year,” Owen told MeatEater.

He wouldn’t see that buck again until it reappeared in June on that same food plot. “All he had was a little bit of his main beam, a little bit of his brow tines, and I could just tell he was going to throw something weird on that one side. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was going to be, but I could tell he was going to be a little bit odd for sure,” Owen said.

But the buck only made rare appearances, sometimes going more than two weeks at a time without showing up on the trail camera. Owen figured that buck wasn’t living near that food plot, just occasionally passing through.

Owen got a few photos of the buck passing through before making an adjustment to his trail camera.

Owen moved his trail camera further up the mountain the last week of July to a small oak flat smack dab in the middle of thick cover. That’s where he hit pay dirt. Within two days, the buck was making near-daily daylight appearances.

Owen figured he found that buck’s living room. But there was just one small problem—getting to that oak flat would require hiking almost the entire length of the property and risk bumping the buck on his way to the stand. So he talked to a neighbor and got permission to access through their property, where he could get to his treestand by simply walking down a fence line.

With access figured out, Owen had one more detail to dial in. A few days before the velvet opener, he went in and moved his stand to get a better angle on the oak flat. The wind on top of the mountain was hard to predict, so Owen was counting on the thermals to carry his scent down and away from where he expected his target buck to come from.

By the time Owen climbed into his treestand the afternoon of opening day, he had another reason to feel good about his odds. The buck hadn’t shown up on camera for two days, which was unusual. But it made him confident that the buck was due for an appearance.

It was brutally hot, with temperatures in the 90s that afternoon, and Owen had heat and mosquitoes to contend with. He wasn’t in the stand for an hour when he heard something moving behind him.

A smaller 8-pointer that he described as the deer’s running buddy appeared. He had several trail camera photos of those two bucks traveling together all summer.

“That deer came up and worked directly underneath me. I heard something behind him, and then I could see legs coming through the trees. I would have bet you money it was going to be him,” Owen said. But it wasn’t. Another smaller buck was trailing the 8-pointer. For the next 25 minutes, he watched those two bucks feed under his stand before they split up and went in different directions.

“I was glad when they got out from underneath me because the bugs were bad. I wanted to swat the mosquitoes,” Owen said, laughing. Despite the relief, Owen thought it was strange that the bucks had split up. It was the end of August, when bucks were still traveling together in bachelor groups. He didn’t have much time to ponder it, however.

Around 6:30 p.m., Owen caught movement in the direction one of the smaller bucks had gone. The deer he’d been thinking about all summer was working a small tree with his antlers at about 80 yards from his stand. Owen watched him work the tree for about 10 minutes before making a beeline for his stand.

As the big buck closed the distance, Owen saw the two smaller bucks coming in behind him. “I guess he had sent his scouts in and determined that the coast was clear.”

The buck seemed to check up a bit at 30 yards, which made Owen nervous. He even considered going ahead and sending an arrow, even though the buck was still standing partially in thick cover.

The buck only ran 70 yards before toppling over.

Then the other two bucks passed the big one and waltzed right through Owen’s shooting lane. That seemed to be all the encouragement the big buck needed. As soon as he stepped toward the gap, Owen drew his bow. The buck reached the gap and stopped broadside, and Owen released.

“The shot was just a hair high,” Owen said. “But I had hung that treestand really high because I was worried about my scent. It was high enough that the exit went out perfectly.”

The buck spun around and headed back the way he came. Owen watched him run about 70 yards, almost to the exact spot where he’d been working his antlers on that small tree. Then the buck fell.

“My first phone call was to my dad,” Owen said. “I don’t know who had wanted me to kill that deer more. Me or him.”

Then came the hard part. The buck was too far back and the terrain too steep to drag him back up the mountain the way Owen hiked in. So Owen, his dad Jim, and his friend Levi McPeak spent hours dragging the buck around the base of the mountain. It was 11:00 p.m. before they finally got him out.

Owen with his buck before taking it to the taxidermist.

The buck is now at the taxidermist, waiting for a shoulder mount. It’s the biggest buck Owen has killed to date, with a rough score of 160 7/8 inches in velvet. “All them drop tines as a cluster were over 18 inches,” Owen said. “That was what really made him impressive.”

I’ve always looked for food and bedding and then found their paths in between. However, where I am in the UP, there are no significant mast crops or ag. The deer primarily feed on browse in the cedar swamps and maple stands that exist in this area. Therefore, everything around them is a potential food source and they don’t have to travel to get a meal.

My question is, with the absence of a destination food source, what is the best way to pattern deer?

Answer: Deciphering movement in the big woods is a different game from farm country. I think it’s the hardest deer hunting out there, but it’s also some of the most rewarding. I spend more time each season working on this problem than anything else, so I have some ideas for you. But first, I’m going to address something that holds a lot of hunters back.

You might think that the deer have food everywhere in the big woods and that they don’t need to travel, but that thought isn’t going to set you up for success. Even in the absence of ag and mast, there are food sources that come and go at certain points of the season. The deer feeding in those maple stands will key on that food source when the leaves are really dropping. Cold mornings with stiff wind will bring those deer to that food source.

The lack of mast crops can actually be an advantage, too. In northern Wisconsin, where I spend much of my fall, I’m always looking for oak trees. A single tree can be a difference maker, and you can bet that the bucks know when that tree is dropping.

They generally won’t bed right in those food sources, either. Which means they have to go from one spot to another. The main problem I tend to encounter in the big woods isn’t that they don’t travel, it’s that the low deer density makes pinning down travel really difficult.

Winter scouting to find rublines has been a huge advantage for me when hunting deer in vast swaths of timber. Where bucks walk consistently, they leave sign. That sign is there for me to see in March and shows up throughout the season. Even if I can’t pin deer down on a soft edge, or a swamp edge, or some maple stand, I can use rubs to see where bucks are likely to travel. Those rublines tell me how they get around low areas, how they leave their ridgetop beds, and generally, how they navigate that mono-habitat.

Now, owning land up there in the north country gives you a unique opportunity to learn how they use terrain. I leave trail cameras out year round on my property in Wisconsin, which teaches me a lot. Camera intel shows me that the best funnels might have a couple of deer pass through them during any given week. That ramps up some during the rut, but it’s never like it is in higher deer density regions.

That does give me confidence to wait them out, and I think that’s maybe the hardest part of this whole thing. All whitetail hunting requires patience to be successful, but it’s a different thing entirely in the big woods. We are conditioned to want to make something happen when the deer activity is slow, but you can blind call all season long in some of those areas and never get a positive response.

The game is won by doing your best to predict some deer movement, and then putting in a lot of time to prove whether you’re right or not. That’s the biggest test I face each season in all of my hunting. You have to scout enough, run cameras if you can, and then observe as much as possible while you’re hunting. It takes a big buy-in with effort, but it’s also just the best way to encounter bucks where there just aren’t very many of them, and they have a lot of habitat with which to work.

Over enough seasons, you will start to flatten that learning curve and begin to figure out that they actually do give you a chance to pattern them (somewhat) and that they do have preferred food sources at certain points of the season.

It’s a lot of work, but when it all comes together, it’s as rewarding as anything you can do with a bow in your hands.

Good luck this fall!

Have a whitetail related question? Send it to wiredtohunt@themeateater.com and check back weekly to see if we cover it.

Hot weather hunting isn’t easy, and it definitely isn’t always fun. It has a way of perpetuating common deer hunting myths that makes many hunters feel better about sitting out the early season. If you’re not careful, you might fall prey to those same misconceptions.

Deer Only Move Early or Late

While this myth could probably apply to the entire season, it’s a common one a lot of hunters believe to avoid sitting in hot conditions. It’s true that deer are crepuscular animals and that they move mostly near dawn and dusk, but that doesn’t mean they don’t move throughout the rest of the day.

On one of the hottest opening weeks I can remember, I killed a doe while still hunting just before 11 am as she slipped down to a creek bottom to get a drink. It hadn’t rained in weeks, and the temps that week hung out in the mid-90s. I also saw multiple deer that week doing the same thing, including a mature buck, at different times of the day—not just the golden hour.

For the sake of not relying on anecdata too heavily, a study out of Mississippi State University’s Deer Lab shows that deer movement isn’t non-existent outside of prime shooting hours. You might not expect to see deer moving freely in the middle of a bean field around noon, but that doesn’t mean they won’t use edge cover to browse, eat acorns, or, in the case of that doe, find a cool drink of water.

You Have to Hunt Water

You should certainly consider hunting water in the early season, especially if the conditions say as much. Hot, arid, or drought-like conditions mean that deer probably factor water into their daily rhythms, and you should too. But that doesn't necessarily apply to every situation. If you hunt a place that gets plenty of rainfall or typically holds water, like a lot of southern states, you probably should look for another limited resource.

If you aren’t hunting dry or drought conditions (good for you), you can probably focus on natural browse or hard mast in cool, shaded areas. These can be good target areas any time of the day, especially if you’re hunting close to bedding or natural edges that get a lot of traffic. At this point of the year deer have more cover options, so while they might not move a ton, they do have plenty of bedding and browsing options.

You might not have to sit over a water hole or a specific section of creek to find deer, but riparian areas can offer a lot more than just water. If you don’t have access to lush bean or alfalfa fields, fear not. There’s a lot of natural browse that hunters tend to overlook. Creeks, river bottoms, and other areas that tend to hold moisture in the soil will have green shoots this time of year that deer will browse. You can also find early dropping acorns, persimmons, or even apples, depending on your location.

Bucks Don’t Move During the Day

A lot of hunters believe that bucks, especially mature ones, don’t move during the day when it’s hot. This is factually untrue. If that were the case, they’d die of starvation down in my home state of Mississippi. You can also watch them mill around in open country if you’ve spent time behind a spotter in the Plains states. Again, they might not cross a country mile, but they will move, despite long-perpetuated myths.

For the past few years, I’ve gotten a bachelor group of bucks on camera in the same spot in September. Not only do they move at various times throughout the day, but they also bed in a cutover that gets sun all day. They get up from their beds, mosey into the timber to munch on acorns, make a few rubs, and bed back down. The deer might not cover an entire creek system in a day, but you don’t need them to if you can gather such intel.

On the flipside, if your trail camera isn’t in the right location, you might assume that the deer aren’t moving. This errant way of thinking has kept a lot of deer alive. Sure, it’s hard to persuade yourself to hunt when you have to replenish your electrolytes and bug spray, but consistent pictures of big velvet bucks might just convince you otherwise.