Gunner Quinn
I’m starting to believe that the reason whitetail hunters leave so many tags unfilled every season is that we expect hunting to be easy, but it almost never is. There is a fuzzy but important delineation between the reality in which we actually hunt and our notion of how a hunt is going to go.
This happens a lot in the early season. We expect the summertime bachelor groups to stick to their schedules and walk by us on opening night. When they don’t, we dig in our heels and double down during the next sit. If you go into the season with a plan that hinges on sitting a single food source, you’re likely to be disappointed. There’s more to early-season hunting than posting up on a kill plot or an alfalfa field, but it takes an open mind and a flexible strategy.
There’s Nothing Wrong With Being Wrong
When we build hitlists during the summer and then craft an early season plan, we tend to ignore one crucial issue–July deer aren’t September deer. They can be, and when they stick to the program, it’s wonderful. They mostly don’t, and there are a litany of reasons why.
Human presence in the woods is a big factor. The changing of food sources is another. Bachelor groups breaking up and going from friends to enemies have a huge influence on September hunting. All of this is to say that early-season deer hunting is a far more dynamic situation than we think.
The time to pick a spot and volume hunt it is during the rut. The time to abandon a program for something new is September. If the deer don’t do what you expect them to, that’s okay. Acknowledge that, and accept the fact that you’re going to have to go find them and make a new play.
Where They Are Now
I hunt near my house in central Minnesota quite a bit in the early season, but I also hunt a couple hours east of here in Wisconsin. The difference in deer behavior should be minimal, but it’s not. The two areas are vastly different, and what deer do in the two areas is vastly different (even during the same weeks).
It’s always a good reminder to me that I have to meet the deer where they are. I can’t rely on them to be on the pattern I want them to be on, but instead have to go find them and hunt them on their terms.
This is a hard thing to accept. We want our hunts to happen the way we thought they would all summer long when we checked our cameras and scouted, but that’s not how it works. One oak tree, one tread-too-heavy hunter in the woods, or one warm front that blows in on a Friday can all wipe the slate clean.
The good news about this is that if you actively go to scout and hunt where the deer are now, you won’t have much company. Most hunters treat the early season as a time when the deer activity is known and predictable. This makes their moves in the woods as predictable as they expect the deer to be.
The hunter who recognizes a need to go scout out the first rubs of the season or where a concentration of droppings are is ahead of the game by a long shot. After that, it’s a matter of trusting the deer to tell you everything you need to know.
Hunters Lie, Deer Don’t
A deer that walks along a fencerow and munches some apples is telling the truth. The bucks that stage in the woods until dark before hitting the groceries are telling the truth. Their sign, their movements, they aren’t lies. Believe them when they show you something.
Where this gets tricky is that we think we know more than we do. We know the early season bucks should be doing this or that, so we tend to elevate our beliefs over what the deer sign actually indicates. The best hunters out there learn to just go with it, and while they use woodsmanship to scout and find the best setups, they keep their minds open to the most current deer activity.
On paper, this seems so simple.
In real life, it’s hard. It wasn’t until about the last 10 years that I started to truly allow myself to abandon my preconceived notions about a hunt and just go with the deer flow. This has helped me kill a pile of bucks, too, and it seems particularly valuable on my public land hunts.
The early season is one stretch of the deer season when we all think we know exactly what the bucks will be doing. They often have other plans, and this messes with us. Learn to trust what the deer show you enough to tamp down your ego and go with it. It’s harder than it sounds, but it’s also one of the best ways to shoot a September buck.
It’s also, a great skill to have for all deer hunters, regardless of the timing of the season, weapon choice, astrological sign, or anything else that might influence a hunt.
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