In life we must take risks in order to succeed. Whether that’s going up to a beautiful woman you spotted across the bar and working up the nerve to spark a conversation or quitting your job at the corporate office in order to start a business you’ve been saving up to start for numerous years. Bowhunting is nothing different; you must take risks in order to be successful, and living in Michigan, you should be taking MORE risks in order to put an arrow in a mature whitetail.
When I say risks, I mean doing things that most tv shows and other hunting experts might advise against. Let me ask you a question; when is the last time you were driving along the road in Early to Mid-October and saw a mature buck standing in the middle of a beanfield in the daylight? That questions was for Michigan hunters. If you live in another state in the Midwest such as Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, or Iowa, your answer is probably, “I see a buck in the field on my way home from work every day.” Here in Michigan, we cannot say that; you’re lucky if you see one good buck a year, and that might be while you’re in your truck and not your stand.
Mature bucks, the few there are, just don’t show themselves in daylight in Michigan until the rut comes around. There is something to be said for the first couple days of bow season; if you catch a buck on his summer pattern on October 1st or 2nd you might get lucky and get a chance to put an arrow in him. After that though, usually we go a good four weeks without seeing a decent buck. I don’t think it is impossible though; I just don’t think most of us are doing it right.
We always hear on tv and read things like “don’t get too close to bedding areas,” or “get in your stand really early in the morning so the deer aren’t detecting you,” or “if you know where a buck is living and bedding, keep your distance so you don’t spook him off your property.” One more and my personal favorite, “Don’t even hunt the first four weeks of the season and just wait for the rut.” Do me a favor this year; ignore the noise. We hunt in Michigan, and a lot of this advice that we listen to on podcasts and television shows is good advice, but its coming from guys that hunt in Kansas, Iowa, and other big-time whitetail states. We simply cannot relate; it’s like listening to a New York City Uber driver teaching you how to drive in Grand Rapids. It’s two different worlds, so most of the advice we receive really doesn’t help us become better hunters.
Ignore the noise. Get as close as you possibly can to those bedding areas. If you think you’re getting too close, go 20 more yards. If you bump a few deer along the way, oh well. If you’re approaching a stand correctly with the right wind, those deer you bump will probably take a few bounds and not leave the area. I once heard on a podcast about a guy who walks into a bedding area and TRIES to bump deer on purpose to see if there is a mature buck bedding in the area. If he bumps a mature buck, he puts a tree stand tucked right up close to the bedding area. He shot a mature buck TEN straight years using this technique. That’s not a technique you hear every day. I’ve also heard a story of a guy who bumped two giants walking into a bedding area, and instead of giving up on the hunt, he stayed right in the spot he bumped them and just sat on the ground. Sure enough, 15 minutes later both bucks wandered back into the bedding area and he killed them both.
Here’s the thing; most mature bucks in this ridiculously pressured state aren’t in the fields in daylight because they aren’t getting out of their bed until the last second of daylight. Most of us are sitting at the edge of the beanfield, probably at least 100+ yards from the bedding area, and watch as does and maybe a young buck or two file their way into the field as the sun goes down. Nightfall arrives, and we get down from our stand; another October night in the books and no sighting of your target buck(s). “He was in this field all damn summer, where did he go?” I know you’ve asked yourself this question, I know I have hundreds of times. Let me tell you a little secret, he didn’t go anywhere. Unless he was secretly harvested by your little cousin or the landowner’s nephew in the youth hunt, he’s still there. He just knows better to show himself in the daylight now that he’s sensed a little pressure in the area. It doesn’t take much for a mature buck to sense pressure; he might’ve gotten one whiff of you or the other guy who hunts the property while walking out to your stand the morning of October 1ST. All it takes is one whiff or one sighting of you, and like a flip of a switch his daylight movement is turned off until his testosterone gets so high at the end of October he just can’t take it anymore.
I shouldn’t say its completely turned off, but it is turned off in highly visible areas. Like that beanfield, food plot, or bait pile in the open timber you’ve been hunting since bow season opened. He’s not waiting until its pitch black to get up from his bed, but he is waiting until pitch black to step out into the field feed along with the other deer. Get close as you can to that bedding area though, and you can kill him. Now I’m presuming you know well enough to wait for the perfect wind and weather to hunt that stand and hunting it preferably in the evening. That buck is settled into his bed well before the sunrises, so I truly believe you do more harm than good walking in close to a bedding area in the dark before the sunrises in the morning. If you get a cool evening though, with the right wind and high-pressure system; you can kill him. Get as close as you can to that bedding area and settle in early in the evening between the bedding and the food source, and I bet you’ll be surprised how early that buck is getting up from his bed. He’s probably getting up before sunset, hanging out in his bedroom, and slowly starts making his way to the food source in the last few minutes of light. Your shot will probably be in the last few minutes of legal shooting time, but if you do it right you might just finally get a shot at that buck you were watching all summer. I can’t stress this enough; get as close as you can to that bedding area. If you bump him, oh well. First of all, if you’re approaching the stand correctly with the right wind, you most likely didn’t bump him out of the area and he might even return that night or the next day. Second of all, if you bump him and he leaves the area for a while, you weren’t going to shoot him sitting over the beanfield anyway. Take a risk and get close to that bedding area you’ve been avoiding the past five years; it might be the best decision you’ve made in the deer woods.
In October, it’s not how hard you hunt, but how smart you hunt. I don’t agree at all with guys that sit out the month of October and just wait for the rut to hit; I think they are missing out on great opportunities to harvest mature bucks. However, I do believe that the majority of your October hunts should take place in the evening. It’s easier to sneak in on bedding areas because the deer are most likely still bedded, unlike the mornings when they are still on their feet as you walk to your stand in the dark, and naturally deer move more frequently in the evenings in the early season. Like I briefly mentioned earlier, most mature bucks are back in their respective beds before the sunrises, so you might be doing yourself more harm than good sneaking out before daybreak into your stand, especially if that stand is close to a food source where the deer have been feeding all night and are probably still feeding until you bump them out walking into your stand. You very well could be bumping a buck off your property before you even get a chance to lay eyes on him if you continuously hunt multiple mornings each week. I’m not saying that you should completely abandon hunting mornings in the early season, but you should be more strategic as to when you do hunt mornings. If the weather is calling for a big temperature drop, a high-pressure system, or even a major wind direction shift, get your butt out of bed a couple hours before sunrise and head to your stand because the deer will be on their feet and take a little bit longer to get back to their bedding area. I think a big temperature drop and high-pressure systems are self-explanatory as to why those would be good sits but let me briefly explain the major wind direction shift. Let’s say that the wind has been blowing out of the South for the past few days; if that wind does a complete shift overnight and is coming out of the North the next morning, you should be in the stand for that front. The first few hours of a front will always produce the greatest amount of deer activity, regardless of the wind speed; when that front hits overnight, you need to be in the stand the next morning because the deer will be on their feet. Same counts for evening hunts; if a cold front hits midday, clock out of work early and get in the stand that evening because that buck will most likely get out of his bed a little bit earlier that night and might even make an appearance at your food source in legal shooting hours. I know for a lot of us, its hard to stay out of the stand on the weekends because that’s our only chance to get out in the mornings during hunting season, but I promise if your patient and wait for the right mornings to hunt, you’ll be more successful in the long run. Treat hunting season like a marathon, not a sprint.
Try something new this fall and ignore the outside noise and try a couple of these pointers and take a few risks, if you don’t see success in the first couple years, go back to hunting the way you hunt today. However, I’m confident you will see success, and hopefully some of these tactics will become a habit for you over the next couple years. I LOVE seeing mature bucks killed in Michigan because everybody on the outside thinks it’s next to impossible; it’s not impossible, we just have to adapt and do things a little differently. Ignore the noise this fall, take a few risks, hunt mornings more strategically, and send me a picture of your buck on the wall next spring.