It happens every year. The seemingly short whitetail deer season turns into a marathon that you did not plan on running. You trained hard all year long for the 100 yard dash, and now you are trucking along near mile marker 13 with no finish line in sight. It is a struggle grinding through late season. And one you didn’t prepare yourself for mentally or physically.
Tell me if this sounds familiar:
Early October I found myself in a light sweatshirt, surrounded by the soft melody of birds chirping and squirrels rustling in the leaves. The soft breeze shook through the autumn colored trees as I was perched in a familiar place 20ft high. Does and yearling fawns scampered by to feed in the nearby fields, and I quickly gave them a pass on the young season.
By mid-October the deer stopped frequenting the open fields and found food deeper into the timber. I took a few days to find the oak flats and the adjacent bedding areas that they had moved into. I moved trail cameras and tree stands into highly traveled pinch points and funnels, and set up on predominate swamps that had scrapes within the staging areas.
Late October rejuvenates my enthusiasm as wishful thinking adolescent bucks begin chasing around doe family groups giving the appearance that the woods are constantly on the move. One of my target bucks shows up on trail camera just after dark, giving me the false sense of hope that its just a matter of time.
We turn the calendar to November and I find myself in the middle of my rut vacation. Evening sits turn to all day sits, as I bounce around from one stand to the next, and from one property to another, paying precise attention to wind direction, thermals and hunting pressure. It doesn’t seem to help as I seemingly can’t quite get the timing in sync with the mature bucks. I continuously pass on does that I fear would turn and run back into bedding areas that are holding the mature bucks.
Firearm deer season kicks off in the middle of November and I grab my trusty old 30-30 Winchester and done the blaze orange in hopes of just filling the freezer. The all day sits continue, as I found myself gutting out two days of driving rain in sub freezing conditions while listening to the muzzles blast away from fellow hunters. I begin to assume that the mature bucks are locked down with does as the only deer I continuously see are lone yearlings. Judging from the firing squad on the ridge over, the likelihood that the yearlings are the only deer left in the woods, seems more realistic. The sounds and sights of the squirrels that I had enjoyed in early October are beginning to remind me of the latest Taylor Swift song that gets over played in just a few short weeks, and I begin to wonder what a 30-30 would do to a squirrel.
The first days of December I return to my favorite bow hunting properties, only to find matted down paths from eager firearm hunters, and a few splotches of fur along their path, indicating someone elses success. Trail camera photos reveal mostly other hunters, black bear, and a lot of nocturnal bucks. The cold December weather has begun to question my longevity of hunting the final month of the season.
If you are facing the possibility of eating tag soup, don’t give up, keep grinding, and try these 6 strategies to propel you through the last few weeks of the hunting season:
1. Reflect– When things that you love to do feel more like work, than they do a passion, it is often time to sit and reflect on why you enjoyed it to begin with. It doesn’t matter if your favorite food in the world is steak, if you eat it everyday for 60 straight days, the next steak you look at seems more like and adversary than it does a special treat. Hunting is no different. Take the time and reflect on the aspects of the hunt that you enjoy; the communion with nature, the challenge, the success, the adrenaline and the comradery with other hunters. Focus you mind on the positive and distance yourself from the struggles.
2. Take time off– As the old saying goes “when I am home I dream of adventure and when I am having an adventure I dream of home.” There is nothing that fuels your fire more than absence. Take a few days off from hunting, spend time with your family, work on projects around the house, catch up at work, find time to relax, and be sure to acknowledge your spouse for their sacrifice as you pursue your passion (thank you Jessica!). A few days away will have you itching for another all day sit. If you don’t think it works, think of how you feel mid January when you start counting down to opening day.
3. Think outside the box– It is human nature to find ourselves in a rut. It is often the path we travel when comfort meets complacency. If your hunting season is not going the way you had hoped, its time to try something different. If you are a treestand hunter, find an advantage you can have on the ground. Instead of focusing on an ambush site where you plan for deer to come to you, maybe you should try still hunting, and bring the yourself to the deer. Push in closer to bedding areas or food sources, maybe even join together with other hunters and plan a deer drive. Expanding your arsenal of tactics will help you focus on the task at hand, and help you create new skills moving forward.
4. Hunt a new property- Sometimes simply changing your surroundings, has a lasting affect on your ability to stay alert. Not knowing which direction the deer might travel will have your head on a swivel, and allow hunting to feel fresh. We all have that one property that is circled on our map, that we have just never found the time to check out. There is no better time to scout your way in, and set up on the hottest sign you find.
5. Scout– Surprisingly, deer are easier to pattern during the late season then they are at any other time of the hunting season. After the rut dwindles down, deer immediately go into survival mode, creating a feed to bed pattern. To conserve energy they often bed closer to the food source then they would in early fall. Take the time to scout, and find those pockets of food sources that the deer are heavily using, and locate the nearby bedding. The movement is more predictable, and so will be your success rate.
6. Teach– there is hardly anything more exciting than the opportunity to share your passion for the outdoors with someone else. Bring a child, a co-worker, or even your spouse, and impart your knowledge onto them. Allow them to help make decisions, allow them to fail, and watch as the same passion begins to build within them. Take the time to guide them, teach them, and allow their fresh perspective to reinvigorate your own spirit for learning. Nothing breaks up grinding through late season like having a fresh perspective.
The fun part about hunting is that no matter how bad your season has been going, everything can change in the matter of moments. You have just one job, to be there when it happens.