It’s the bottom of the 9th. You’ve got a tag to fill or maybe you just need to top off the freezer before you’re ready to hang it up for the year.

We’ve all been here. There are only a couple weeks left in the season and there’s not enough daylight left to hunt after work. Your hunting season is now down to hours instead of days.

How do you pull off a win when there’s only minutes on the clock? Subtlety is no longer your best bet. It’s time to get aggressive.

Food, Food and Food

Yes, deer have been piling on the calories all season, focusing on successive mast drops and grass or ag fields. Mast feeding is pretty much over with in most parts of the country, so deer are hitting the fields with renewed vigor. Usually, though, this open country feeding is a late-evening and nighttime affair.

If you’re after venison, this is an exciting time to hunt. You’ve probably identified the fields or edges where does are coming out to feed about a half hour to an hour before dark, and their routes to get there are usually predictable. How you set up for this type of hunting will depend largely on your weapon.

When hunting with a rifle, a good ambush point or ground blind set up downwind of the general area deer exit the woods is your best bet. But just because there may be a lot of acreage to work with doesn’t mean scent control is not important. In fact, with deer having been assaulted with human scent over the last few months, keeping your odor at bay is as important or maybe more important than it has been all season.

For bowhunting, narrowing down the woods-to-field entry points is key. You want to set up within bow range, of course, and that means intercepting the deer as they transition from cover to the open. Tree stands are your best option here. Draw upon past observation and on-the-ground evidence to locate these transition points. Look for disturbances in the leaves indicating current trails, high concentrations of deer droppings near the field edges, and, if barbed wire fencing is part of the landscape, snagged hair is a good indicator.

Thus far, we’ve been talking about strategies for filling the freezer with a mature doe. For those who have their mind set on a mature buck, the challenge is greater, but not impossible to achieve.

Most bucks are in serious rest and recuperation mode. The rut has left them worn out, hungry and possibly damaged. They, too, are intent on replenishing their bodies, but after being pursued by hunters for two or three months, they are as wary as they get right now, and rarely will you see them in the open unless they are pursuing a doe.

That leads us to our next late-season strategy.

Love Still Rules

Not all does are bred during the primary rut. Does that were not bred come into estrus about 28 days after their last cycle. Also, yearlings that are entering their first estrus cycle tend to do so later in the season. Although bucks are no longer tearing up the woods looking for estrus does, a mature buck will certainly not turn away from an amorous opportunity.

This is why we continue to use breeding scents into December and January, but because things have cooled off xe2x80x94 literally and figuratively xe2x80x94 using a potent, high-quality estrous scent such as Special Golden Estrus is important. You want any passing bucks to know without ambiguity that a second chance at mating is close by.

At this time, we’re not being stingy with our scent application. We’ll use Magnum Scrape Drippers and wicks in relative abundance around our standsxe2x80x94usually along those bedding-to-food source travel routes or on the fringes of buck bedding areas we’ve identified earlier in the season.

We’ll also bring out the scent drags. These can be especially effective inside the wood lines, where does enter the fields to feed before dark. Try laying a scent trail paralleling the field edge 30 or 40 yards in the woods. This will give a buck that may be holding back in the cover an opportunity to pick up the scent and make its way to your stand before the end of shooting light.

Pull Out all the Stops

Whether you are after a freezer doe or are still pursuing the big boy, remember that this isn’t the time to hold back. Does will be going for the food and bucks will be keying in on both food and potential hot does. Thus, food scents can be used for either. Acorn and apple scents can be highly effective in piquing any deer’s interest when pickings are slim. So, too, can curiosity scents like Buck-Nip.

Again, don’t be shy about filling the air with intriguing aromas xe2x80x94 even to the point of scent-bombing your hunting area. Those half-used bottles won’t be of use to you next year, so put them to good use now. Just be aware of wind directions when placing your scent stations, whether you are using breeding scents, food scents, or curiosity scents. In other words, try to stay off to the side of the scent stream.

Continue Scent Management

As we mentioned earlier, deer have had plenty of human encounters with their noses over the last few months. And with the foliage gone, their ability to smell you and pick you out has never been better. Strict scent management xe2x80x94 from body and clothes washing in scent-free soap and detergent to the ritual application of Scent Killer Gold scent elimination spray before every outing xe2x80x94 is difficult to maintain as the season winds down. We tend to grow lax in this department and that is a mistake because we need it more than ever. You’ve got the goods to keep your scent down, so use them.

Late-season whitetail hunting can certainly be frustrating, especially when the pressure is on to fill that tag and the freezer. But all hope is not lost. Alter your hunting style to meet the changes in deer behavior, continue to use scents, and practice good scent management until the bitter end. Your reward may be the big buck that survived the early bow and rifle seasons.

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Sooner or Later | Destination Whitetail