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There are many factors that go into a successful bowhunt once the Orange Army has left the woods and deer resume more predictable patterns.
By John Eberhart
After two or more months of intense bow and gun hunting pressure, surviving mature deer — especially the most sought after mature bucks — are wiser, in tune with how to avoid hunters, resistant to traditional tactics and oftentimes, in heavily pressured areas, have turned almost totally nocturnal, stacking the odds greatly against bowhunters during late season.
Fortunately, for those willing and able to brave the winter elements, as days progress beyond gun season, hunting competition dramatically declines and along with an abbreviated late rut, and a need for deer to replenish body weight/fat lost during the rut, there’s a gradual shift to more daytime movement by mature bucks.
There are many factors that create a realistic opportunity for killing mature bucks after the rifle/slug gun and muzzleloader seasons. Previous hunting pressure in your area, types of terrain you have access to, food sources in the area, your ability to dress for the weather, and even the types of trees you have available to hunt from all play a major role in your chances for success.
Without a bedding area and/or preferred food source on or bordering your property, your odds of success will be near zero. The bedding area doesn’t have to be large, however it must be one that saw minimal hunting activity throughout the gun season.
Staying Warm and Quiet
The most important hurdle in Northern states is being able to dress appropriately to withstand the frigid weather. Layering is the only method that provides the flexibility to adjust to changing weather conditions while on stand and to keep you from sweating during long hikes in and out.
Moisture conducts cold many times faster than air, meaning if your base layers get damp from sweat during long hikes to your stand, you get cold much faster than if they were dry. A perfect example would be if you jumped into 33-degree water, where you would die from hypothermia nearly 30 times quicker than if your naked body were exposed to 33-degree dry air.
Wear as few clothes as possible on your upper body going in to your stand to keep from overheating and perspiring. Carry additional garment layers in your pack and once at or on stand remove your jacket and allow your upper body to cool. Once you’re cooled down, put on your other layers.
By late season the foliage is gone, and without it sounds are not absorbed and travel farther as if going through an amplifier. Therefore, your exterior clothing must be dead silent in calm, sub-freezing conditions, especially in pressured areas.
Nearly all waterproof and/or windproof garments have a polyurethane or Teflon membrane bonded below the garments exterior fabric. All of these membranes are noisy and the only way a manufacturer can mask the noise is by adding a deep and/or dense napped fleece exterior fabric.
Wearing a waterproof or windproof exterior suit is a huge part of staying warm because it will block the wind and contain your body heat. Otherwise, no matter how many layers you have on, if they’re all permeable (allow airflow through) and it’s cold and windy, you will get cold in short order.
The most prevalent micro-fleece short-napped exterior fabrics do not mask membrane noises to bowhunting standards and in pressured areas many shot opportunities are lost due to noisy clothing at crunch time. To test exterior clothing for noise, put the garments in your freezer overnight and then inspect them in the morning by ruffling the garment and listening. If it’s noisy, shop for a suit that isn’t. Deeper-napped suits might be more expensive, but why suffer through severe conditions only to have an opportunity lost due to inappropriate clothing?
In recent years, my go to suit for cold weather has been either ScentLok’s windproof Vortex or Covert suits or Rivers West’s waterproof Ambush suit. Their exterior fleece is dense, deep napped and extremely warm, and most importantly, they’re quiet. For scent control purposes, when wearing Rivers West I wear ScentLok Base Layers as my bottom layer.
A proper scent regiment requires rubber boots and my preference is Baffin’s Titan rubber pack boots. Do not be fooled by rubber boots without inner packs that have low temperature ratings, because those ratings are for walking, not sitting.
The biggest secret in the industry for staying warm is Grabber’s air activated Adhesive Body Warmers! Until you’ve strategically placed these gems on your upper body’s bottom clothing layer during cold weather, you have no concept of what warm is while on stand. These controlled heat pads were originally designed for medical applications, such as arthritis, and generate heat for 12 hours. Centering one on your chest and one over each kidney will reduce the number of layers needed and dramatically increase comfort and the time you’re able to spend on stand. Using a quiet muff strapped around your waist with a hand warmer inside will allow you to wear light gloves.
The Need to Feed
The more severe the weather, the greater the need is for deer to feed. I have sat in blizzards and 35 below zero wind chill temperatures and have taken bucks in each situation. The only weather condition I’ve hunted several times without seeing a single deer is freezing rain.
On one hunt I arrived well before first light and fell asleep in my saddle. During the hour I slept, a freezing rain moved in, and when I woke at daybreak my bow and arrow and my waterproof suit were coated with ice. I had to kick ¼-inch of ice off each step of the climbing sticks in order to have a firm foot and hand hold when I descended the tree.
Scouting Secrets
Periods of high winds or heavy snow are the best times to scout, because both will mask your noise and lessen the probability of spooking deer. Scouting in calm conditions during late season is nearly impossible without spooking deer, and spooking deer is detrimental to future hunts.
With the leaves gone, you should set up higher in trees than during the fall when there was concealment foliage. Getting away with movement is nearly impossible when hunting from low, exposed stands. In pressured areas, conifers and oaks that held their leaves are the only types of trees in which you might get away with low stand heights.
In big timber areas, acorns (preferably white oak), late falling fruit and preferred browse will be main food sources, and if they are within some form of security cover, set up to hunt in the evenings. Entering these areas prior to daybreak will spook the deer feeding there.
Cedar swamps are major feeding areas during seasons with early snow. The deeper the snow, the greater the odds of encountering a buck in the cedars, and the more likely deer are to stay on runways. In large cedar swamps, hunting at any time of day can be productive, due to the fact that these swamps become yarding areas that deer don’t leave.
In agricultural areas, locate the best travel routes to preferred crop fields and set up a minimum of 50 yards off the field’s edge because your odds of getting silhouetted against an open skyline if hunting the field’s edge is far greater than when hunting back in the timber a bit. Deer slow down to a snail’s pace when nearing exposed areas for a visual, which makes getting away with movements nearly impossible.
When hunting field edges, there’s also no way of getting in or out of your tree without spooking deer. In the morning you would be spooking deer going in, and in the evening while they’re coming out. Mature bucks in pressured areas rarely enter exposed crop fields during daylight anyway, so the only times I hunt field edges is when I want a doe for the freezer.
In agricultural areas, if acorns or fruit are still available in the timber, mature bucks will likely visit these food sources before entering open crop fields after dark.
Hunting the Subtle Late Rut
There is a subtle late rut. In some states, such as Michigan where gun season coincides with the peak rut, and in many heavily pressured areas up to 80% of the antlered bucks are taken — resulting in some adult does not getting bred during their first estrous cycle. Approximately 28 days later they will enter estrus again, and some doe fawns reaching puberty will add to the late rut intensity.
There will be far less scrape and rub activity during the late season, with the majority of it being done at night. What little signposting that does take place will usually be found in travel corridors between bedding and the now more precise feeding areas.
Blizzard Buck
In 2008, I applied for and received an Illinois tag with plans to bowhunt public land in December after the gun seasons ended. On December 14 (the last day of the Illinois gun season) the extended weather forecast was for snow, wind and extremely frigid temperatures. I welcomed the fresh snow to pattern current deer traffic, but the single-digit temperatures would test my dedication.
I left early the next morning and when I arrived at around 10 a.m. the forecast had been spot-on — the public ground had received about 8 inches of new snow, it was extremely windy and the temperature was 5 degrees. After dumping my gear at the motel, I headed out to scout the remainder of the day.
I found two adequate locations in bedding areas and one tore up location near a locust tree where deer had been pawing up and eating the long black beans it had dropped within the past 24 hours. While locust beans are not a preferred fall food source, like acorns, apples and crops are, when there is deep snow locust beans become a primary food source because they’re easily pawed up.
On short-term hunts, I’ve learned to never start hunting until I feel the odds of an opportunity at a couple of locations are excellent. Otherwise, I’m always working backward and time is not on my side. I wasn’t completely happy with my two bedding area locations, so I blew off hunting the next morning to scout for more locations. After finding another tore up locust tree location I went back to the room, showered and headed to the locust tree I found on Day 1.
To say the weather was miserable would be a gross understatement. The temperature was 7 degrees, it was snowing very hard, and at times the wind gusts hit 30-plus mph. Thank God for my Rivers West Ambush suit to block the wind and for Grabbers Adhesive Body Warmers. Without the body warmers there’s no way I could’ve remained on stand all evening.
By 2:30 p.m., I was perched about 28 feet up in a maple tree about 17 yards from the locust tree and the ground below it was more pawed up than the day before. The 360-degree shooting mobility of my saddle allowed me to swing around the tree and place my face against the tree trunk to help block the wind.
Shortly before the end of shooting hours, three small bucks passed by and disappeared into the blizzard, without going near the locust tree. Within minutes, a respectable 10-pointer walked under the locust and instead of eating beans, sniffed the snow in search of a receptive doe. At one point I considered taking him, but didn’t. I was amazed that deer were moving so well during such adverse conditions.
As he moved away into the heavy fog of snowflakes, I caught movement of another buck followed by three does coming directly toward the locust. This was unbelievable, I was on public land two days after gun season and I had now seen five bucks! As he approached it became obvious that he was a shooter, even by Illinois standards.
Once under the locust he didn’t stop to eat beans, but just kept moving. I came to full draw and performed a vocal bleat to stop his forward progress, but because of the strong wind he didn’t hear me. I bleated louder. No response. He was now at 14 yards, dead broadside and still moving. Two more steps would put him behind some brush and negate any opportunity.
My last bleat was very loud and he stopped abruptly and looked in my direction. My arrow flew true and found its mark behind the buck’s front shoulder. As he ran through the timber he began to seemingly disappear into the blizzard of snow — but just as I was losing sight of him, he fell over and expired.
In the several minutes it took me to get down and get to him, the buck was covered with snow. I knelled down and pulled his head out of the snow — and counted 12 perfectly symmetrical points.
— John Eberhart is an accomplished big buck bowhunter from Michigan that has exclusively hunted heavily pressured public and knock-on-doors for free permission properties for 52 seasons. You can learn more about his tactics through his instructional books and DVDs available at: www.deer-john.net.
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