3 Ways to Ruin Your Deer Season Before It Starts

I am writing this email while relaxing in a massage chair at my local Toyota Service Center's lobby. In the background, the Allstate Mayhem commercial is playing. You might wonder why I am telling you about my oil change and tire rotation. The reason is that I am about to fulfill a childhood dream by embarking on a cross-country trip to chase bugling bulls and bounding mule deer in Montana's beautiful Treasure State with my Hoyt! I will be accompanied by my childhood friend and Navy Special Forces veteran Michael Hofer and professional photographer Mike Clingan, who is also a good friend of mine. We will be hunting the Beavershead/Deerlodge National Forest and have two elk tags and a deer tag between us. We will be sharing some great content with you from the trip. Thank GoWild for sponsoring the trip and allowing us to use their beloved trailer, Gladdy. Remember to download their app!

We will depart from my house in Nashville on September 8^th to begin a 10-day hunt, starting on the 10^th.

On to the main course:

The Kentucky archery white-tailed deer opener is Saturday, September 1. This is a beautiful appetizer to cleanse the pallet before departing for Montana. While daydreaming about the farm at Whetstone Hollow and that first mosquito-plagued sit of the year, I began reminiscing on all my mistakes over the years, resulting in lingering consequences and less predictable deer movements. I have distilled those destructive behaviors into three chief totems to live by heading into the deer season.

Don’t Force It

We have been waiting all year for this. You have dreamed of this day since the last deer season's conclusion. You have made adjustments, planted food plots, manipulated woodlots, and convinced yourself that this will be the year it all comes together. Don’t blow up your plan and ruin your season by forcing yourself into a hunting situation where you don’t need to be.

I see it repeatedly when well-intentioned hunters force themselves into a stand location early in the year to capitalize on the bachelor groups' predictable summer patterns. I understand the desire to get it done before the bucks shift to a more nocturnal existence leading into the rut. I have found myself on both sides of this tactic- the side where my hands are covered in ticks crawling off the velvet antlers of a deer after a successful hunt and the side where the deer smelled me sweating like a priest in a whore house and immediately altered his movement patterns as a result.

DO NOT LET THE VELVET TEMPTATION CLOUD YOUR JUDGEMENT. Just because it is opening day doesn’t mean you must hunt. It is a long season, and if your property isn’t large enough to accommodate burning out a few stands by hunting unfavorable conditions, perhaps you should sit opening weekend out and enjoy Week Zero of the college football season.

Don’t Be Afraid to Harvest Antlerless Deer Opening Weekend

I am a massive proponent of filling your antlerless quota as early in the season as possible. Here are a few reasons for targeting antlerless deer early in the season:

- The habitat will have fewer mouths to feed heading into the winter when most deer herds face their most significant nutritional bottleneck.

- While you will undoubtedly witness fawns nursing during the early season, those fawns have been weaned for months and no longer require the nutrition from the milk. It is more of a bonding exercise than anything else at this time of year. The fawns won’t parish as a result of harvesting the accompanying doe.

- It is easier to distinguish a doe from a fawn early in the year. I receive calls yearly from landowners who mistakenly harvested a lone button buck late in the winter, mistaking it for an adult doe. Don’t be that guy.

- You're in luck if you find yourself in the “deer genetics are super-duper” important camp. This is one of the few circumstances I feel the landowner has an actual impact on the buck genetics on his property, so hear me out: When a buck fawn reaches one year of age, and his mother is getting ready to replace him with the new cohort of fawns, she will chase the buck fawn away from the territory he called home as a yearling. On average, these buck fawns will often distribute to new home ranges 5-10 miles away from their natal range. This is a defense mechanism for the species to avoid inbreeding- the bucks disperse, and the does (generally) stay with mom in a doe family group. By harvesting the doe before she chases her yearling buck away, you can encourage some of these males, typically fathered by local bucks, to stick around on your property. (Whether or not this would lead to potential inbreeding is an argument for another day).

- A tighter Buck to Doe ratio leads to more exciting hunting during the rut! If your herd is overrun with doe family groups, not only will they pressure mature bucks off of the property during the summer, but they will also oversaturate the landscape with receptive does during the rut. The bucks won’t have to travel far to find the next receptive doe. Shoot more does (early), and see more bucks in November. Easy math.

Hunt High In The Trees During a Breeze, Hunt from a Blind When The Flag Sags

This one is anecdotal, but I HATE hunting from a tree stand or saddle when the weather is still. The scent drops from the stand and begins to disperse, saturating the surrounding area with your stinky human smells because there is no wind to carry the odor away. Any time the conditions call for less than 5 MPH wind, you will find me in a blind of some sort. Even hand-made brush blinds do an excellent job of containing your scent on a still day. Put on your safety harness once that wind picks up with a bit of consistency.