The opening first few days of the 2009 shotgun season was, needless to say, pleasantly warm. In fact an old friend texted me as I was going to haul out a client's doe and asked me if I had sunscreen. And boy, was he correct. As the sun climbed in the afternoon sky, so did the temperature. It was not an average late November hunt.
While the temperatures were above average for opening weekend and comfortable enough to sit on stand all day, it wasn't the best for deer movement. Notice I said deer movement and not deer hunting.
It's been a while since I have experienced daytime highs like we experienced last weekend for an opener.
It was unlike last season's first few days when we saw a mixture of rain and snow all weekend and then woke up on Monday morning to 6 inches of fresh snow. If memory serves me, that first snow didn't stop until February.
Whatever the weather is, as sportsmen we only have so many days in the season to hunt and we need to make the best of each hour in the field. The age-old question of what happens to wildlife when the temperature climbs to unseasonable degrees or drops to unbearable lows has been debated since man invented gunpowder.
Ask 10 different sportsmen and you'll get as many different answers as to how the weather affects wildlife. Some say the colder it is the more deer move while others insist a snowstorm keeps deer bedded down and a few believe the warmer the better. Whatever your opinion is, we need to hunt the conditions and the deer we have at any given time.
When a front moves into an area, whether cold or warm, fall or spring, summer or winter; wildlife is affected. The question is how do we as sportsmen figure this out and it determines how much game we see and how light our bag tag gets.
The thing I know for sure is after the first hour of opening day has passed, the majority of the mature deer have headed for cover. Now depending on the area you hunt, that could be a pine grove, red brush or field edges. Whatever it is it'll be thick. When deer are pressured they go to the place they feel the safest, which is generally their bedding area.
Bedding areas that haven't been beaten up are safe zones for the whitetail deer, much like your mom's kitchen on Thanksgiving morning. They feel comfortable; comfortable enough to put down their guard.
The key to putting your name on a deer tag is getting in a place where deer are and they don't think you have found. This is no easy task, but can be done.
I am not saying that we all should work our way into bedding areas, which can be difficult at best. But it's a good idea to get as close as possible to where they spend the majority of their daylight hours.
Again this is where your preseason scouting pays off. From the information you have gathered by doing your homework, one should have a good idea where the deer you are hunting are bedded down for the day. Hunting as close to these areas possible is very important.
This is why I have stands set up just for these mid- to late-season hunts. There can be several problems with hunting too close to bedding areas. Much like working your way too close to roosting turkeys in the spring, once deer have been bumped out of a bedding area, the chances of them returning to the same bedding area anytime soon area aren't good.
Generally, you'll get one or, maybe if your lucky, two hunts out a of bedding-area stand. After deer have been shot at or spooked they don't feel comfortable and won't return for some time.
This is why I have a couple different routes I take into these set-ups and never hunt them when the wind isn't just right. In fact, I prefer to hunt bedding-area stands with little or no wind. I also make an extra-special effort to get into my stand or set-up long before sun-up and I especially like these set-ups on overcast days.
No matter what time of the year it is or what the weather conditions are, deer have to move about to feed sometime. That is why the more time one can sit on a stand the better.
Case in point - with the warm weather this past opening week a visiting outdoor writer sat on a stand all day and he shot his buck at 12:30 in the afternoon. While the other hunters were enjoying some fresh apple pie, their buddy was filling out a deer tag.
Whether it's cold, windy or warm, deer have to move sometime and Grandpa Robbins was fond of saying, "If you're not in it you're not going to be skinning it."