HOW TO HARVEST A BIG BUCK EARLY SEASON
Right now everyone’s got trail cameras in the woods whether that’s over mineral or a good food plot, us hunters are anxiously waiting for the season to kick into gear. Like everyone else, I prepare for early-season by trying to put a pattern on one of my hit list bucks. Let’s dive into a few things to help you harvest a big deer early.
FOOD FOOD FOOD
As most people know when it comes to early-season whitetails their life revolves around food. Whitetails are creatures of habit. My early season success usually revolves around clover plots or mixes that have both warm and cool-season plants like Slam Dunk and Lights Out which will still be awesome hunting plots come rut, but that subject will be for a different month. If you don’t have a plot then most likely it will be revolved around Alfalfa, soybeans or cornfields. Most deer are on a bed-to-feed pattern at this point in the season and if undisturbed will continue that pattern for the first few weeks of the season. The easiest way to pattern these bucks is trail cameras or glassing and taking notes of entry and exit points. Take note of wind direction and temperature. This will be the information needed to put together a pattern.
FOOD PLOTS
If you have access to put in food plots, you are planting or already planted, the question I get most often is “what should I plant this time of year that will be good early-season through the rut?” The best options to plant are mixes I mentioned previously. Slam Dunk which has two warm-season plant varieties to attract deer early-season and two cold season plant varieties that will become attractive once it freezes. Also, Lights Out, which has warm-season oats and two cold-season varieties to last into late-season. These mixes work great at holding deer on the property for a length of time, which can help harvest that hit-list buck you’re after.
STAND LOCATION
Once you have that pattern established and you’re getting antsy to get in there to hang a stand, be careful you don’t want to get scent all over the place and bump him off his pattern. Then all your hard work is thrown out the window. I often do the hang and hunt early season if my stands haven’t been in the tree since spring. Go in early, take your time, hang your set and hunt it that night. Your stand should be on the downwind side of the trail you’re expecting that buck to come down. If that buck isn’t coming out till right at dusk then set your stand about 60 yards inside the woods in the “staging area.” Most big bucks will arrive in the staging area and stay 15-30 minutes to survey the surroundings for danger, watch other deer and their behavior before entering the food source.
WEATHER
Early season cold fronts are by far the best weather conditions to hunt early-season whitetails. If we get more than a 10-degree swing I’ll be sitting on a food source, since the days are cooler the deer tend to get stressed out and that burns more calories which makes deer get hungry faster, which then puts them in your plots or food sources before darkness. If you have some light rain beginning or it’s misting outside, better be in that tree, or if the barometric pressure is rising or falling, the sharper the rise or fall the better the hunting. Last fall we had a buck that was coming out after shooting hours the first three days of hunting season, the fourth day a big storm was headed for us and supposed to hit us about 11pm. The buck showed up in the clover plot two hours before dark and was harvested because the pressure was dropping.
I hope with these few tips you can put a big deer down early-season. Nothing better than beating that mature deer on his home turf.
Best of luck this hunting season.
Jeremy Berlin – Wisconsin Pro-Staff