I grew up hunting whitetails in the mountains of southwest Virginia. If you have ever hunted the southern Appalachians, you know that deer seem to always stick to a few trends. In the mornings, right around daybreak, they will move from fields into cover and from low areas to higher locations. Just as the sun sets, they will move back down and spend most of their nights in open fields. As with anywhere, all of this gets thrown out the window during the rut. When the rut hits, it seems like you are likely to see mature deer moving at almost any place or any time. That said, having hunted these deer for over a decade, I became rather successful and would fill my buck tags with mature deer most of the last few seasons I was there.

Recently, I had a very sobering experience that challenged everything I knew about white-tailed deer. I have been in the military for over seven years, but I have always been able to hunt in Virginia. The 2020–2021 deer season was the first time I could not hunt back home. The story of this season starts all the way back in May when I found myself on the road, during a pandemic, being moved to southwest Oklahoma. For those that have hunted that area, you know that Oklahoma can produce some serious whitetail. I spent the entire summer and early fall scouting, patterning, and learning the deer. Just when I thought that I was ready for season, everything changed again.

In mid-November, just before rifle season opened in Oklahoma, I found myself once again being moved across the country. This time, I would land in southern North Carolina. I arrived during season here and immediately started to do some research. I found some public land to hunt, obtained my permits, and started asking around for some tips and for any help anyone would give me. Being so confident in my hunting skills in Virginia and being able to pattern and understand the deer in Oklahoma in a reasonable time, I assumed that I would have no issue harvesting a deer in North Carolina within the month I had left to hunt.

While I was working on registering my weapons and getting my permits, I did some scouting. What I immediately noticed was the complete lack of oaks. Where there were any oaks at all, actual acorns were basically non-existent. This is when I realized how much I had relied on acorns as the primary whitetail food source in Virginia and Oklahoma, where they are plentiful. Without being able to find acorns, I knew I had to find a food source. Luckily, I had come across some small managed food plots that were open to the public. These food plots were full of deer tracks. Even within a day of heavy rain, the sandy soil of the food plots would be filled with fresh tracks. I thought I had the perfect place, but I would soon learn such was not the case.

The first day that I was going to hunt I woke up extra early, excited to finally get in the stand. I parked the truck and got ready but decided to play it a little safe. Rather than walk in during the last remaining darkness of the morning, I decided to wait until just after legal shooting light. The food plot I had been scouting was at the end of a dead-end fire break. I knew that when I first topped the hill, and it came into view, I would be about 100 yards away. My hope was that if I waited, and there were any deer in the food plot, I would be able to see them rather than running them out of the food plot. Just as it became daylight, I started walking in. Somewhat to my surprise, the food plot was completely empty. Nonetheless, I made my way in, put my climber on the tree, and settled in for the day.

That first day in the stand was unlike any hunt I have ever experienced, but not in a good way. I sat there from sunrise until dark and did not see a single deer. I cannot remember a time in my life that I actually spent an entire day hunting without seeing any deer at all. I know to many people this is normal, and after talking to more and more locals, it is not all too uncommon here in this part of North Carolina. To me however, I felt like a complete failure because all I had ever known were areas where does were abundant and young bucks were relatively frequent. I had grown up learning the patterns of a very particular set of deer but was now somewhere where it seemed like nothing I knew applied. I decided to just write off the first day and went right back the next morning.

Three days in a row I made the same drive, put my stand in the same tree, and watched the same food plot. During those three days the only deer I saw anywhere was one running across the road on my way home one night. I had no idea what I was doing wrong, so I decided to start asking anyone and everyone. First, I called my father who offered some hunting advice but recommended that I talk to my grandfather. My grandfather, Ray, is a retired pastor who gets to spend many of his days sitting in his sunroom watching deer move through the pastures in front of and behind his Virginia home. When it comes to the deer of southwest Virginia, I am sure that he has forgotten more about those deer than most people will ever know. Those are different deer though; what could he possibly know about deer down here in southern North Carolina?

As unsure as I was about how much my grandfather would know about hunting here, I gave him a call anyway. What I soon learned was that he had done a fair amount of hunting in South Carolina in a region not vastly different than where I am. It turns out, he really knew what he was talking about. His advice seemed to contradict some things I had read online but, because of how much I have learned about hunting from him, I decided to stick it out and listen to him. For anyone that ever tried to hunt southern pine flats, the advice that follows will hopefully prove greatly beneficial to you all, as it did for me.

For starters, he told me it is not all that unusual to go a few days without seeing deer here. As I have learned the deer a little better, the frequency of seeing them has increased, but I have embraced the fact that I am just not going to see the numbers that I am used to in Virginia. My initial thought was that this infrequency of deer sightings was tied to the number of deer in the area. However, such is not the case. After talking to some local wildlife biologists, I have learned that there is a higher deer density here than anywhere I have ever hunted. I know this does not make too much sense initially but as you understand the deer you begin to understand why it is this way.

One big reason that you see less deer is simply where they are. This brings us to the next bit of advice that my grandfather gave me: staging areas. The concept of staging areas was completely foreign to me. For those wondering, a staging area is simply somewhere that a deer feels safe where they can move comfortably to and from feeding and bedding areas during daylight. In practice what this looks like is thickets near food plots. Usually, it will be a small creek or stream that runs by the food plot. These areas are generally 20- to 50-yards wide and run the full length of the streams. They provide an area where deer can bed and travel during the day while remaining almost invisible to anyone looking from the outside. What my grandfather told me was to get above the staging areas. Since the bulk of this underbrush is only 6- to 8-feet tall, if you can find a tree in, or close to, it you can position yourself above it and see down into it.

With this advice, I changed my tactic. I completely abandoned the idea of hunting food plots and began looking for these staging areas. What I found was an area where two creeks joined. Down within the thickets were tons of deer trails, just like he said there would be. I found a tree right between two trails and right in the edge of the thicket. It did not look like what I would have considered a “good spot” to hunt but sure enough on the first evening there I saw my first deer from the stand. What I realized then was that if I had been just 10 or 20 yards further away from the thicket, the deer I saw would have moved right by me without me ever knowing. Sure, I would have probably heard it, but that is not enough when you are hunting to harvest. I spent a few days in that area, seeing a few deer, but it started to seem like this was not the area that was going to produce a mature buck.

With this is mind, another call to my grandfather left me with piece of advice No. 3. At this point, it was late in season on public land. In his typical “use your own knowledge” fashion, my grandfather prompted me into giving myself this advice. What he brought me to consider was the hunting pressure. Even though an area would likely be a perfect place for deer if it were untouched, the hunting pressure was prone to pushing deer to areas that were a little less ideal but that had a lot less hunter presence. Luckily, the land I was hunting has an online sign-in for the compartments. If you know how many spots are available in each compartment, you know how many people are hunting that area any given day.

This brings me to hunting location No. 3. On a rainy evening I went hunting with my new neighbor. We put everything together finding a good staging area in a hunting compartment that not a single person was hunting in. Finally, I had my first promising hunt, even though it ended without a harvest. The area has a large pond that is fed by, and feeds into, a small creek. All around the creek and pond is thick and looked like the area where I had been seeing deer. We arrived late for the evening hunt and unfortunately that cost us. As we walked in, we went toward different sides of the pond. My neighbor was on the north side, and I went to the south. We both walked toward the head waters of the pond where it met the creek. Though no deer were harvested, my neighbor jumped a good, mature buck from his side of the pond that ran down across the creek and crossed in front of me without ever providing a shot.

Now, I felt good. I had finally put eyes on a mature buck so I at least knew they were here. When I called my grandfather to tell him about the buck I had seen, he offered one last piece of advice that baffled me. He told me to grunt and rattle from the stand. That is of course not crazy advice, but what shocked me was that he told me to call at least every 15 minutes. Everything I had read and everyone I had talked to had said that calling more than once every 30 minutes was overcalling. Many even suggested calling as infrequently as once every hour. I almost threw out this advice completely, but luckily, I did not.

For the first few evenings after he told me that, I still only called every half hour. I was seeing deer, but most were does that seemed to just completely ignore the calling altogether. What I was doing was a few grunts and then 30 minutes later a rattle and then 30 minutes later a grunt and so on. Finally, I was down to the last day that I was going to be able to hunt for the season. I figured that my grandfather knew a lot more about hunting than me, and at this point I really had nothing to lose, so I just decided to give it a try. This final evening started off badly. As I headed to my spot, the bridge was out. Now I was frantically trying to find somewhere to hunt. I decided to go back to a food plot, but instead of watching the plot like I had done in the past, I would pull away from it to hunt the staging area.

I finally settled into the stand around 3:00 p.m. It was later than I had hoped but not too late. I let everything settle and then began calling around 3:30. This time I was going for broke, and I listened to my grandfather’s advice. Every 15 minutes I did a short, light rattle sequence, then a grunt, then a longer, more aggressive rattle sequence, then another grunt. All in all, this would take about 2 minutes for the complete sequence of calls. I had never called this much in my life, and I did feel like it was way too much. I called at 3:30, 3:45, 4:00, 4:15, 4:30, and then boom. Right as I eased my rattle bag back into my pocket at 4:30 I heard what I was sure was a deer moving through the thicket in front of me. I got the gun ready, but nothing. For about 10 minutes I sat there staring into the thicket, but I saw nothing. I decided to just look around. As I looked over my left shoulder, I saw a deer in the open about 200 yards away. There were a lot of mature pines between me and the deer, but with the branches so high it was relatively open. As I turned back to look at the thicket, something important happened.

What happened was a light breeze brushing across my face. What made it important was the situation. I thought I heard a deer in front of me right after I called, now I heard nothing in front of me, I know there is a deer in the open behind me, and I am looking into the wind. This is when I recalled my grandfather saying, “When you call just be cautious because a mature buck will try to get downwind and smell you. They always want to come to you with their nose in the wind.” Was this happening to me? I gave up on the noise in the thicket and repositioned to get a better look at the deer behind me. Sure enough, right there in the open, was a mature buck slowly making his way straight toward me. He moved slow, extremely slow, and I did not know if he was ever going to give me a good shot.

As he moved ever so slowly, the sun was setting. To try to speed him up, I grunted again at about 4:50. Just a light little grunt to get his attention. He noticed; he stopped and looked my direction but then just kept on with his meandering stroll. He would eat a little bit from the ground, sniff a little bit, look around, and then take maybe one step. Over the course of half an hour I watched him move only 20 yards toward me. Luckily, that was just far enough. Some small shrubs prompted him to change direction for just a few steps. This provided me with a broadside shot on a deer in a place where just a few weeks prior I was almost convinced there were no deer at all. Finally, after a month of putting everything I could into hunting this area, I was able to harvest a mature buck. For anyone in a similar area, I hope these bits of advice can help you. For everyone else, please let my story be a reminder that it is not always easy, but dedication and a desire to learn and succeed will eventually pay off.