Basically the man working a standard day shift is relegated to hunting evenings with the occasional morning sit on Saturday Morning. Now it seems the bulk of my weekday hunts will be morning sits. Tell me how you view and approach a morning hunt differently from an evening sit.
I actually don't hunt mornings at all until around the last 7-10 days of Oct. The land I hunt just doesn't set up well for early season morning hunts. Once the bucks start to rut though...mornings become my preference.
A lot depends on what kind of area you are hunting. Personally, there is very little difference in actual stand selection for where I hunt. One thing to be careful of is deer out in fields if you need to go thru them to get to your stand. A lot of times I'll sneak much closer to a bedding area to get to a stand that would be impossible to get to in the evening. Especially if you go in pretty early & the deer are well off from where they will bed.
Same here. If I were to hunt mornings this early in the season, I'd try to get as close to the bedding area as possible and hopefully catch them on their way to bed.
I have never had much luck in the morning early season bow....so i stick to evening hunts, plus i work till 3 everyday...so....but mid to late october..ill be trying to get out as much as possible
I'd say it's this. One year, I knew exactly where a buck was bedding right from the start of our season (3rd Sat in Sept). I hunted mornings and evenings on and off for over 3 weeks without seeing him. I actually thought that he may have abandoned the spot, except I kept seeing his tracks and new rubs popping up. If he would have been up and about during legal shooting light I would have seen him because his bedding spot was a small low spot of cattails situated in the middle of a fence row between 2 crop fields. So, I waited until Oct 20th, my magical date, and set up in a fence row about 200 yards away from his bed and waited. About 5 minutes before shooting light ended, he popped out. I learned that he was there all along. He was getting there well before light in the mornings and not not comming out until after dark in the evenings. I don't chance bumping bedded bucks in the mornings. Your better off waiting for him from a distance in the evenings IMO.
The guys putting in to many morning hunts in the early season will be the ones asking about the "October Lull " about the third week of Oct. Might as well put a neon arrow light on your back and tree.
I have never had any luck seeing deer in the morning around my spots and for that matter all I ever do is educate the deer!
My morning whitetail hunts are very difficult as morning thermals are always working down the mountains and the big bucks are returning at the crack of dawn or even in the morning darkness to their beds. So getting in and setting up on a buck working upslope is a beeeeaaach. I usually can only do so in a few spots where there is a some sort of corner/banking structure involved in the terrain that will bank the decending thermals for me. I have two spots right now that really work well due to the terrain structure for morning hunts. For the most part though.... I like hunting elk in the mornings, whitetails in the evenings due to the thermals. When I put in mock scrapes I always put them in about 1 hour after daylight near a big mature bucks bedding. That way hes already in his safe bed and I can be below him with the morning thermals blowing my wind downslope, I can get the mock scent in, and get out. Come back that evening, after the thermals have switched at about 9 am and then blow scent to him all day until that last hour of daylight ...when they switch back down hill. My evening hunts on big bucks bedding areas are very short. the last hour of light, when the wind/thermals switch to downhill. Only during the rut will I set up in spots all day unless I just have the unique corner set up due to structure where the downlope and upslope thermals wont hurt me.
Most of the activity at my club seems to heat up in the evenings, right before dark. Never had much luck in the am even during rifle season.
For the first 3 weeks of October I will hunt some afternoons. Most of these occur over clover or soybean fields, although I will sneak into the woods some days. Right around Halloween I will start hunting a few mornings. At this point I feel confident to hunt any stand in the morning. I do however have one spot that I really only hunt in the morning. Not sure why, just can't see many deer in the afternoon here.
Well up until last year I was in the same boat as most of you, wait til the pre rut before I hunted mornings. Last year when I only had two days to hunt a week, I knew I had to try getting good morning spots down. So that's what I did. Now I didn't kill a big buck during the early season mornings, but I learned where to hunt and where not to. I never really spooked many deer at all getting in, because I was well aware of spooking them. Go in extra early, extra quiet. Sure I got skunked a lot too because I wasn't going to my best spots for fear of scaring them, but I sure have learned a lot about deer movement now that I've started hunting mornings.
