Here in VA it has been pretty warm since the start of bow season. I would say average night time temps have been 50-60 deg. Day time temps 65-75 deg. some variance mixed in but overall it's been warm. To me it's been slow, very little movement in the day and lots of movement at night on cams. Made it pretty tough for me and my circle of friends. How about you?
Heat in early November was definitely a factor. Sadly I canceled my vacation and pushed it back a week due to temps in the mid 70's for 4 straight days. Unfortuantely what happened was those warm temps created a humid environment that brought fog for the next 3 mornings and high temps dropped by nearly 15-20 degrees each day. Wish I could mulligan that one in hindsight. After that temps got better but the big winds came in second half of my vacation week. Sat out those days as driving an hour each way fidn't seem justifiable. I think the early warmth turned them nocturnal in my area, then the big winds bedded them down . One of them instances where if you could be there for every hour of daylighy you probably would connect, but most of them available hours were wasted and led to discouragement.
It seems early in the season it was warm with the random "cool" day thrown in then back to warm again. We are in a warming stretch again. Also when it is cool the wind really seems to blow. The biggest problem with it all is that work gets in the way when the weather is right.
Similar results in south east kansas to what you described. A lot of wind, a lot of warm afternoons. I was home oct 27-nov 17 to bowhunt and see family. The mature bucks were chasing at night. Trail cams confirmed that. I had a few encounters with 150+" class deer on some colder mornings, but couldn't manage to close the deal. I'm investing in a decoy next year to remedy that! I managed to tag a traveler 3 year old 9 on nov. 12th. He's not the age class or antler score I normally aim to harvest, but time was short and he was a traveler to the farm confirmed by my two excellent neighbors who are all in on QDM with me. Great hunt, great experience, blessed to make an ethical harvest and provide meat on the table for my family, and needy families around me. Last year the first two weeks of November were cold and mature deer movement was all day long. I killed a 5.5 year old 160" homeboy, it was rewarding to say the least. Next year I need to be better prepared and have a plan in place if Mother Nature doesn't cooperate during early November. Lessons learned, experienced gained, motivation for next year. Good luck out there to those with tags to fill.
I've actually felt this has been the best weather year for me in quite some time. Yea there were warm days but I wasn't off on those. THere was one weekend that was really windy, but otherwise I had a good weather year on the days I could hunt.
Well, the warm temps certainly didn't help the daytime movement here in SE Pa, that's for sure. Also, NNE winds for about 4 weeks in a row (literally) in the beginning of the season stopped me from hunting a particular 8pt that I had trail cam pics of, but in the end the Lord blessed me with a neat buck anyhow. I'm thankful for that.
The weather really hampered my efforts. 80% of the first 20 days of November were in the 60s with 40s at night. Terrible for deer movement....on average.
I think I have seen about 17-18 deer from the stand since oct 3. hunted about 20 sits total. so almost a deer a sit when divided up. man the warm weather just seemed to zap the does and bucks. I just didn't see a bunch movement at all from any deer.
I was fortunate enough to tag a nice buck early in the PA season. MO this year was a whole other story. 4 days of 75 degrees didn't help. Last 3 days were decent, but nowhere near the cold front we really needed.
I'm in Halifax, VA. Singing the same song. I've seen bucks on the hoof, but not one single bit of rut behavior.
I personally though we had great weather here for most of the rut. Aside from the week of warm temps in early November we had plenty of cold nights, not a lot of rain and not a ton of high winds. Those winds did come after a front last week but we were pretty far into the rut by that point. Both of my bucks were killed on almost identical conditions - morning hunt with temps in the 20's, virtually zero wind, clear skies & high pressure. Nov 6th through the 12th were pretty much ideal conditions for hunting up here and a lot of deer died those days.
The more I hunt the more I realize the only thing that affects me not seeing deer is being unwilling to adjust tactics. They are always moving somewhere....
I too think this. I also learned how much I really do suck after 25 years of bowhunting. They do move and you HAVE to adjust. I didn't and I paid for it.
Same here in MD. My deer sighting have gone down significantly since mid october. Still last hr of light is when i see the most.
It is crazy, it hasn't been extremely hot, but just warm and enough to make it seem like that wait til dark to move. I really want to break this new parker ultralite 30 in bad.
so whats your predictions with the cooler weather now? think deer sightings will start to pick up? i got my fingers crossed, but I do have a buck and doe in the bag already, so im not stressing over anything.
