What type of area are you hunting? Hardwoods? CRP? Cornfield? Give a little more info and we can help out more! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Assuming you are trying to kill a mature buck... Never ever ever hunt in the morning. It is a losing proposition. For every 1 buck you kill in your hunting career you will cost yourself 10. If you convince yourself that you have a scenario that should work for a morning hunt... punch yourself in the face. Just don't do it. As Shocker said... pick your spots when the weather and wind is right and hunt food sources in the afternoon that you can get to without spooking deer. Look at prospective spots from the perspective of access first. If it is too much of an intrusion or you are too likely to bump deer getting there then find something else if you can. On AG/foodplot fields I like to look for the parts of the field that get the first afternoon shade. If there is terrain look for low spots that get early afternoon shade. Deer don't like to walk out and stand and feed in the blazing sunshine in early season when the temps are presumably hot. Also don't go too early unless the weather is just phenomenal. If it gets dark at 7:30 then 5 is probably plenty early to be on stand unless you have a camera or some intel telling you otherwise. The earlier you go the hotter you will get getting there and the more time you will spend baking in the sun waiting on the deer to move. Next and maybe most critical are the thermals. The thermals are falling in the afternoon and in early season scent control is more of a challenge. If you are set up waiting on deer to come in from below you (i.e. lower ground) you are probably screwed unless you have a very steady reliable wind keeping your scent "out of the hole". If possible choose your location so that you can "give" your falling scent to a low spot where deer are unlikely to be. Think of your afternoon scent as a pool at the base of your tree. Like water it is going to flow into the low spots. If older deer come through those spots it is probably game over. Its best if you can have the deer coming in from above (like down off a ridge) but of course you can only control so much. Just don't set up on a field edge and expect a big deer to come by out of a hollow from below you. Unless you have a constant stiff wind in your favor... he is probably going to smell you.
I always wondered why people say hunting mornings in the early season is bad I usually see my best activity in the morning, I hunt mostly transition areas so I am catching them going back to bed why should I punch myself in the face? lol
Aren't you hunting in the burbs or some other atypical setting? What are the food sources? Didn't you say the deer are eating in people's yards and such? Anyway if you are having success that you are happy with then stick with it and definitely don't punch yourself in the face. You are right. I should have asked the fellow where he is hunting and what the setting is rather than just blurting out advice pertinent to Midwest hunting. All I can tell you is this my friend.... if you come down to KY to hunt with me you won't hunt mornings before 10/25. It's cool that you do well hunting mornings. I'd love to be able to hunt early season mornings but years of trying taught me that it's a no go. Good luck with that great buck you are after.
I am hunting the burbs! as for the food source it is people lawns and flowers with some acorns mixed in. If you don't mind me asking what has happened that makes no not hunt mornings early season? I have seen a lot of people talk about not doing it I just wonder why? And best of luck to you in KY I know there's a giant hiding somewhere down there for you!
From what I have been told, the reason why morning hunts are more harmful is because most of the time when you were walking into your stand, even if it's an hour before shooting light, The bucks are already getting ready to bed down, or are already bedded down. They will watch you walk right by, and bust out of there, or bust out if they see you sooner. At least that's what I've heard. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I figured it was something like that so it wouldn't be a bad thing to hunt the morning with regular daylight movement on camera?
Pretty much this. If your allowed to bait corn pile and apples are the ticket. If not crop fields like alfalfa are good. Wild cherry's, persimmons, and pear trees are sure bets in late summer/early fall. Some oaks like reds start dropping earlier than others and are good.
I never really knew any of this about early mornings honestly. I've seen some info about the temps and your scent kinda hovering or being stagnant? I need to read into some of that info a little more... If that's the case I definitely need to plan my hunting season differently for some areas. Appreciate the advice!
Well if you would subscribe to the idea that mature whitetail bucks usually react very negatively to hunting pressure then the idea of one you are after having a physical encounter with you in the dark in the area where you mean to kill him only days before you mean to kill him is the problem I'm describing. At least in the settings that I am talking about.... when you head to your stand in the afternoon in the early season you have an extremely high level of confidence that the buck you are after will not be already at your stand nor in your path to get there. When you try to get to a stand in the dark an hour (or hours) before daylight you typically don't have faintest idea where the deer might be. Since its early and typically warmer I'm going under the assumption (and from experience) that the deer aren't moving a large distance back and forth. The risk of walking across your buck or too close to him is too great. You might get by with it and you might not. If you don't you may well ruin your chance of killing that buck any time soon or ever. Can you kill one on a morning hunt?... absolutely but to me it's a simple game of numbers. In my opinion the chances are better of killing one in the afternoon anyway and the hunts can be done at a much much lower risk. If you try the morning hunt and screw it up you probably blow your afternoon chances too. At least give it your best effort a few afternoons before swinging for the fences with a morning hunt. For sure there are probably exceptions and you may very well be living in one. I hope you are. But I tried it for years and years and learned my lesson in my neck of the woods.
I too have finally learned this lesson through personal experience. If you are hunting burbs then I'm guessing that the acreage is pretty small. If that is so, your margin for error is zero! I blew my chances the last two years because I over hunted and tried hunting a couple mornings early season. I always blew deer out every time I did a morning hunt. The deer pictures and videos that I was getting got me too anxious to hunt and I blew my chances. This is what I missed out on because of over hunting and doing early hunts. I pushed this deer off the 10 acres I was hunting.
That makes a lot of sense! I apreciate the explanation and thinking about it I have blown deer out of an area walking to the stand in the morning of the early season, being the young hunter that I am makes sense now why they were there. I appreciate your explanation MSBK1
you are right the total acreage is about 25 the orchard next door gave me permission after they fenced the whole thing off. sounds like mornings are a better bet.
Great thread with great advice. I totally screwed up the area I initially hunted last year by overhunting and bumping deer in the morning early in the season (yes I freely admit it, yes I'm an idiot). I was so dang excited to finally hunt again that I seemingly forgot all the hard lessons from years past, and the great deer sign soon dried up. I didn't take a single deer there last year. I'm treating it completely different this year sticking mostly to what was mentioned above, and I hope it pays off. I love this forum for threads like this.
