Buckmasters Magazine

Five tips for hunting nocturnal bucks.

It had been a particularly frustrating fall. Pre-rut deer activity was unusually slow, likely in part because of an abundant acorn crop. The deer didn’t have to travel far to find food. Just about the time buck movement should have been heating up, a warm front moved in. For four days, the mercury never dropped below 50. According to the calendar, it was peak rut, but you couldn’t prove it by what I was seeing. It seemed like the earth opened up and swallowed every deer for miles around.

I had just gotten off the second shift and was driving home after midnight. As I rounded the last corner, a doe bounded across the road in my headlights. Hot on her tail was a buck, followed by another and then another — three racked bucks, mouths agape and tongues hanging out in hot pursuit.

Mystery solved. They were still out there. They were just waiting until the sun set to move.

THE NIGHT SHIFT

There are several reasons why whitetails, bucks in particular, become nocturnal. There are environmental factors like stormy weather or warm temperatures. Research shows deer move less during storms, and once northern deer have grown their winter coats, daytime movement all but ceases if temperatures exceed 45 degrees.

There are man-made factors, too. Nothing puts deer underground like hunting pressure. Radio telemetry studies show an inverse correlation between hunting pressure and daytime movement. The deer don’t leave the area, they just move less during daylight.

Then there’s age. Whitetails don’t use reason and logic, but they do learn. If they manage to survive a couple hunting seasons, they become conditioned to avoid locations and times that result in increased human interaction. They become Lords of the Night.

Fortunately, they can be overruled. It just takes extra time, effort and attention to detail. As with any deer encounter, a certain amount of luck helps, too. You can play the odds and hope luck turns in your favor, or you can work the odds in your favor by employing some specific tactics.

GO TO BED

I glanced at my watch, 30 minutes until the end of the hunting day. Time to stand up and nock an arrow. Fifteen minutes passed with no sign of a deer. I wasn’t worried. I’d hunted this stand for more than a dozen years and knew prime time was yet to come. There couldn’t have been much more than five minutes of shooting light left when I heard movement in the underbrush. The Lords were stirring.

A dark shape ghosted through the dense honeysuckle. Then I spotted antler and a thick main beam — a big buck! I drew and held on an opening ahead of the deer’s path. When he stepped into the open and paused, I let fly. The mortally-wounded buck died within 100 yards of his bed.

Conventional Wisdom says to hunt feeding areas, travel corridors or transition zones between bedding and feeding areas. Very seldom does anyone recommend you hunt bedding areas. But sometimes the only way you’re going to get close enough to a Lord of Night during daylight is to set up right outside his bedroom door.

Hunting mature bucks under any conditions requires meticulous attention to detail, particularly with regard to scent control. Hunting against a bedding area requires you to redouble those efforts. You also have to be particularly mindful of wind and weather, and wait until conditions are right. One false move and not only have you blown that stand, but you’ve probably educated the buck enough that you won’t see him again that season, if ever.

How you approach and exit your stand are critical. I have a ladder stand from which my son and I have now shot three deer within a few feet of their beds. We approach the stand the same way we would approach a bedded buck, inching forward one step at a time. It might take 30 minutes to cover the last 100 yards, but it pays off often enough to warrant the extra stealth.

We also use the wind, in more ways than one.

Obviously, it has to be in the right direction, in our faces. It also has to be present. Wind covers what little noise we make getting to the stand. On breezy days, we can move quicker. When wind is intermittent so are our movements. And when there’s no wind, we don’t hunt there. We also rarely hunt the stand more than one or two days a week, and never on consecutive days.

This tactic will work any time, but is most effective early in the season. That’s when bucks are most predictable. Their home ranges are still small, and they spend most of the day bedded in an even smaller core area. About the only reason they move is to feed, and they’ll expend the least possible amount of energy to do so. Temperatures are mild, so they loll in shady areas all day, waiting for the coolness and darkness of dusk. About the only time you’ll see them is during the first and last 45 minutes of daylight, which is why you need to be so close to the bedding area.

HIT PEAK TIMES

Several days after my midnight encounter, a friend called to ask if I’d be hunting that afternoon. The forecast called for unseasonably high temperatures and winds, both of which are pretty much the death knell for deer movement in my part of the world. The only shred of optimism we could muster was it was early November and, at least according to the calendar, deer should be moving. He finally convinced me to go, although my heart wasn’t in it.

I knew I wouldn’t see anything and was just going through the motions. By the time I reached my stand, I was covered in sweat and cursing the weather for the umpteenth time.

It was about 3:30 when I heard the shot. Later, standing over a handsome buck, Jim related how a doe had burst on the scene, followed shortly by the buck. “His mouth was open, his chest was heaving and his tongue was hanging out,” Jim said. Obviously, this buck couldn’t resist the mating urge and ignored the warm temperatures.

Regardless of how bad the weather is or how heavy the hunting pressure is, fawns will be born the next spring. Rutting action still occurs, even if mostly at night. Still, there will be a certain amount of daylight activity, and that increases during the rut’s peak.

During the week or two leading up to peak breeding, bucks might be on their feet and moving at any hour of the day. Anything’s possible at any time, and the best time to be in the woods is any time it’s legal.

Another prime time, especially for those really cagey mature bucks, is the tail end of the rut after peak breeding. If the rut was a foot race, yearling bucks are sprinters, first and fastest out of the gate. They’re also the first to run out of gas. The next oldest bucks are the mid-distance runners; they expend a lot of energy from beginning to end. The real winners are the long distance runners, the mature bucks. They start out slowly, pacing themselves. When peek breeding ends, they’re still in high gear, but have to wander farther and wider to find a hot doe, making them particularly vulnerable.

BEAT THE ELEMENTS

Snow fell intermittently, but at times was so heavy that visibility was less than 100 yards. Meanwhile, gusty winds blew that snow diagonally and honed the already stabbing cold winds.

It was not what most hunters would consider favorable deer hunting conditions, but for the time and place, they were ideal.

I didn’t actually see the buck come in. He must have arrived during one of the heavy snow squalls. When I looked up, he was standing in range. Adrenaline surged through my veins as my heart raced. I grabbed my rifle and hastily tried to settle the wildly bouncing crosshairs on his chest. The combination of cold and adrenaline had me shaking so badly I couldn’t hold steady.

Fortunately, the deer was in no hurry. The wind had him on edge, and he stood for several long moments scanning with his keen eyes and radar-dish ears. It was just the time I needed to calm down, steady my aim and squeeze the trigger. The buck took two bounds and fell with a ground-shaking thud. I was grateful for an opportunity to down such a great beast. I was also glad the remainder of my hunt would be spent inside a warm lodge.

Some of the biggest bucks in North America, in terms of both rack and body size, come out of Canada’s prairie provinces. The mantra among Saskatchewan outfitters is, “The colder, the better.” And when they say cold, they mean chilled through the bone, ice on the mustache, frozen lunch, can’t feel my toes cold. In the north country, that’s when the big bucks really move. That’s when you need to be in the woods.

And it doesn’t just apply to the Canadian provinces. It also applies to colder regions of the U.S., from the Rockies to the East Coast, especially during the post rut. Bucks are depleted, and their priority shifts from mating to replacing lost energy reserves. It’s no longer a matter of whether they want to move; they have to move. Balancing the cost of movement against the amount of energy taken in while feeding becomes a matter of survival, and they expend the least amount of energy moving and feeding during the warmest part of the day.

As with peak rut, a deer encounter can occur any time of day. When temperatures are cold but normal for that time of year, most of the movement will still be early and late. But when the mercury drops out the bottom of the thermometer, peak time is often the 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. period.

It need not be bitterly cold, either. Moderately cold, rainy days can be great for crossing paths with a largely nocturnal buck. Movement is triggered by daylight, and heavy overcast tends to extend twilight — that low light period when deer are on their feet. It can also fool a buck into lingering a bit later in the morning or rising a bit earlier in the afternoon. And the colder the temperatures, the more likely that is to happen.

SPY

I doubt there’s any such thing as a truly nocturnal buck. At some point over the course of the season, every buck will be on its feet during the day. It might be because of weather, or the rut or to feed. You can boost your odds by hitting those peak periods. Some bucks might even develop patterns where they are regularly up and about during the day. Even if it’s only for a brief period, that makes them vulnerable. But we can only be at one place at a time. If only there were some way to keep track of multiple locations at once.

Fortunately, there is. Scouting cameras can be a boon to catching a Lord of the Night during his daily indiscretions. It also gives you a way to maintain a constant presence on the very doorstep of his most sensitive areas without excessive disturbance. Obviously you have to strike a balance, minimizing disturbance while still being able to act on daylight movement in a timely manner. Unfortunately, the only way to determine that is through trial and error. But you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet.

FORCED MOVEMENT

I’m not a big fan of forced movement. I like to challenge my opponent on a level playing field, but it’s hard to hold a competition when the opposition fails to show. Sometimes the only way to get the bucks back into the game is to make them leave their comfort zones. That means either a drive or a push.

There’s a subtle, yet distinct difference between the two. A drive usually involves a gang of people moving noisily and deliberately through the woods with the simple objective of getting deer on their feet in hopes one will happen by a strategically placed stander. It’s an all or nothing proposition. Sometimes the deer go where you want. Sometimes they don’t, especially older bucks that have learned how to slip around drives and double back. If you don’t get it right, you’ve pretty much eradicated natural deer movement in that location for days and possibly weeks. Even if it works, you sacrifice a certain amount of personal satisfaction knowing you haven’t really outwitted your quarry.

With a push, one or two hunters still-hunt through bedding areas and thicker cover, applying little or no more pressure than already occurs on a somewhat regular basis. Instead of sending every deer on the parcel fleeing randomly across the landscape, you’re making a calculated attempt to nudge them along an escape route or past a particular point. If done correctly, it should work almost as well for a bowhunter as for a gun hunter, and you can do it multiple times in a season.

CONCLUSION

Hopefully one or more of these tips will give you an edge this season, or some time in the future, but none will guarantee success. They merely represent one more weapon for when crossing swords with the Lords of the Night.

Read Recent Articles:

• Two Bucks, One Great Day: A hunting couple share an amazing day on public land in Montana.

• Scopes Simplified: How to pick a scope that’s right for your gun and hunting style.

• Take a Rest: They’re not the sexiest accessory, but rests are the most important bow component.