In life, I’m an extremely lucky man. I somehow tricked a very smart, pretty and funny girl into marrying me, only for her to become my best friend. All of my children and loved ones are relatively healthy, safe and productive members of society. I’ve got a dream job that you all literally empowered me to have, good health, a roof over our heads, food in the stomachs and, though we’ll never be rich in finances, we are rich in what truly matters and have enough to not sweat the bills each month. Heck, I can make a legit case that I’m the luckiest man in the world, in no small part due to all of you!

When it comes to hunting, I’m also very lucky. As with life, there are many things one can’t fully control. Sure, we can impact our health, but if we are born with failed immunities, well, such are the cards we’re dealt. That said, even then we can take steps to minimize the bad luck we were dealt. Also like in real life, the more thorough and solid our plan for dealing with issues are, the more we tend to make our own luck.

Here is how I strive to plan for both season and habitat improvements. Not surprisingly, the better my plan the luckier I consistently get.

Flaws of One Size Fits All

Pooling resources can be truly awesome. Most that hunt or improve the habitat have real jobs and lives that don’t allow for near limitless time to invest in researching, studying, planning and implementing said plans, all for what is generally a hobby. Yes, this may be a true passion for many of us, but it doesn’t pay the bills, help with homework, clean up around the house or put clothing on our loved one’s backs. Learning from others is a way to reduce these limitations.

The issue lies in every person, property and resident deer herd being at least somewhat different. A stark example of this was when I planted dwarf essex rape at a slam dunk location in Northern Missouri. The following spring, the plot looked like it belonged on the cover of Farm Digest Weekly. The only issue was that the deer were supposed to clean it up the previous fall and early winter. Unlike the many locations the deer had done just that for me in Central and Northern Wisconsin, the Northern Missouri deer completely ignored it. After all, they had corn and bean wastes laying in fields, acorns not covered in snow in the woods and even had greens to eat in January. The Wisconsin deer I’d fed had sticks, buds, dead grasses and weeds or my plot. There’s a bit of a difference there.

Therein lies the rub. Though one can easily understand how deer two states apart may act differently, it’s also the case between adjoining states, adjoining counties, adjoining townships and even adjoining properties. Habitat and topography are comparatively rarely a constant across an entire property, much less from property to property. Will the differences be as pronounced as the rape plot’s experience? Occasionally, sometimes less and sometimes even more so. 

That same area, I arrowed a 4.5-year-old buck that had busted me cold in stand, at less than 20 yards. He caught me or the camera person moving and literally stared holes in us for a minute or two, before dismissing us as harmless and started making a scrape, when the Easton vanished in his boiler room.

Simple question time. How many believe they could pull that off on a buck half his age, where you hunt? I’ve hunted a bunch of places and can only think of two areas that I believe I could pull that off. Why could one do that a handful of years back, in that specific area? The true answer is that the overwhelming majority of hunting in that area was done inside trucks creeping along back roads and through fields. The deer hadn’t been trained to fear idiots like me sitting in trees.

That said, seemingly minor details can make the world of difference, as well. One property I managed had been overran with hunters. They literally blew up their deer cover, starting a couple weeks before bow season on through gun. After gun hunting, they’d hang it up for the year.

Simply because of their actions, the neighbors had much better hunting on through the rut. After all, the hunters on the ground I eventually managed were essentially doing four or five deer drives a week, starting before season ever began. When the neighbors aren’t exploding their grounds, the deer have a very strong tendency to shift to areas of lower pressure.

Now, what they did have was some truly prime north country bedding. A stand of evergreens on a southern exposure was in its prime age range to offer thermal cover, but had just enough grassy openings to also allow the deer to sun themselves, when they desired, as well. Historically, as soon as our group of hunters left the woods for the year and the temps would really drop, the deer would filter into their bedding and the quality of the neighbor’s hunts would drop hard.

In that situation, merely the differences in hunting tactics or the prime bedding spot alone is enough to cause these deer to act differently than they otherwise would. Add them both together and it becomes even more impactful differences.

Sorry for wasting so many words on this, but this actually is the most critical portion of this entire piece to grasp. Every person and property are different. Because of that, no cookie cutter, one size fits all plan will ever be as effective as catering one’s plans to accentuate our personal, habitat’s and resident deer’s strengths, while minimizing our collective weak points.

Learning from others can be extremely beneficial in a bunch of ways. Just always realize that what worked great for your buddy down the road may actually be a dismal failure for you to employ. When making changes, keep that in mind and start small, evaluate, adjust and proceed, repeating that as many times as required to hit our own personal sweet spots.

Hunting Plans

With all of that in mind, this is how I try to plan out the season as a whole. Please keep in mind that I am huge on planning, but even a bigger fan of being rigidly flexible and adjusting on the fly, when the deer or my lack of success are suggesting I do so. Plans are awesome, but flexibility is what truly makes them sing!

I approach about every season with the same general foundation of a plan. That is to hunt stands that are hot for what the deer want that specific day, during that specific phase of season. Very generally speaking, I follow the same formula every year:

Start hunting food and water, as that’s what the deer want and need, before the rut.

Shift to specifically hunting the hottest scrapes offering good odds of daylight visits for about 10-14 days before breeding begins.

Once breeding starts, I hunt the does concentrations, as that’s what Mr. Big is hunting.

Post rut, I hunt prime food in the PMs and the most dominant doe group bedding in the AMs, as I’m trying to catch Mr. Big checking on the doe fawns, and the PM food is what both the doe fawns and Mr. Big need, where as bedding is where he’ll find them in the AM, most often.

Then, I take it a step further. I need stands for each of those phases that work best in very windy, hot, wet and cold days. The weather is going to impact their movements and I want to be able to capitalize on that.

There is also a theme as it applies to aggressiveness through the season. I again match that to what’s going on in the deer world.

During early season, there is a comparative surplus of food and the deer have little incentive to tolerate pressure. So, I strive to hunt lower impact food related stands. As we near the peak scraping phase, the testosterone levels in bucks are rising and driving them to be less cautious. That allows us to get more aggressive, with decreased risks, as we go through the rut. After all, during breeding is the one time that most any of us can be busted by a buck, only to have a doe lead him past us ten minutes later. Safety is still a concern, just maybe not as much as perpetuating the species, when the buck’s testosterone levels are truly rocking.

Once the peak breeding has gone, Mr. Big realizes that there are still doe fawns to be had, but the true frenzy has waned. That said, they’ve lost 25-30% body weight and, at least for the Midwestern and points north herds, are facing their seasonal low point for food. They are running negative energy balances, meaning they burn more calories to heat their bodies and enduring daily tasks than they get from their food stuffs.

No, these deer are not as sensitive to pressure as they are earlier, specifically as it applies to abandoning prime food by getting bumped. Even higher pressured bucks, when desperate for very limited food supplies, tend to repeatedly expose themselves to danger, even after busting a hunter a time or two. So, one can comparatively be a bit more aggressive than in early season. The catch is that most all the deer are on high alert at this point of season. So, make doubly sure that one is careful with movements, sounds and odors.

Nailing a Hunt

When it comes to planning an individual hunt, I merely modify the seasonal approach.

The first task is always to ID how much pressure the area receives. If it’s high pressure, I’m seeking out the areas no one else goes and then trying to apply the tactics for that phase of season and the habitat’s specifics.

When hunting low to moderate pressure, I’m merely looking for the hot spots for that phase of season.

In both cases, let’s say I have nine days to hunt. I’ll start by hunting the highest odds stands in what I consider the low impact group, meaning I feel safe getting to, hunting and from stand, without spooking deer. My goal is to get it done from the low impact group, leaving the deer ignorant to my hunting efforts.

If we get to day 3 and low impact just isn’t cutting it, I’ll shift to the best of the more mid-range impactful stands. By day 7, if I still am not getting it done, I’ll shift to the most promise, higher impact stands I have available.

In my experience, too many go straight for their best stands on day one of a trip. Unfortunately, those are often not well suited for the phase of season and/or very impactful stands. We tend to repeat on day two and three and four, until we aren’t even half way through our hunt and have already told every deer we’re hunting to stay away.

Instead, by targeting the hot stands for that phase and then gradually ramping the aggression as required, we have much higher odds of the hunt getting better, not worse with each passing day

Conclusion

I love my hunting plan. It works extremely well for me in the areas I hunt. That said, please don’t follow what I do to the letter. It’s my hope that it becomes a starting point, but I can all but promise that the best place for each of us to land will be at least somewhat different. So, adjust on the fly, tossing what doesn’t work well and replacing it with what simply works best for you, in your unique situation.

Finally, never forget that deer are the only true experts on their own behaviors. We are lucky to accurately ID their overall tendencies, which by default means there will be all sorts of exceptions. When deer are telling you, through sign, pictures or sightings, to break the rules of your plan to tag them, listen and forget about what any expert has to say about it. They are the only true experts on what they do, when and why. The rest of us just make educated guesses and try to sound smarter than we really are.

— For more tips and tactics, be sure to check out Steve’s “Hunt ’em Big!” video series at our YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/DDHOnline