Where to hunt…where to hunt.

If you all are like we, hunting is a huge stress reliever and really brings me back to center. It makes me a better husband, father, worker, etc (honey I hope you’re reading this ;-). But there is a part of hunting that is stressful, and that is the age old question of where to hunt. Hunting wouldn’t be near as fun if we didn’t face this dilemma each time we headed to the woods, but it still can be a little stressful as we try to guess that big ol buck’s next move.

I find some stress relief by getting a bit scientific and trying not to leave it all up to chance (as if we really have any control anyway!) The answer of where to hunt changes throughout the season as the deer move from early season feeding patterns, to pre-rut, to rut, to postrut. Of course, when you throw in lunar cycles, temp., and wind direction, there really is a lot to think about!

I don’t want to go in depth on all of this here, but I would like to let you know what I’m focusing on right now. Here in north Missouri the deer are still mostly in the pre-rut stage as they are making scrapes and a few are chasing does a bit, but that’s not the norm as of yet. I’m honing in on the scrapes and particularly the scrapes in high doe traffic areas. In my opinion this is the best time to hunt over a scrape as most bucks are not “with” a doe yet, but are frantically making their rounds to check their scrapes to see if there may be some does coming in. Once the rut hits, scrapes tend to get a bit more neglected as the bucks usually are hot on the trail of a hot doe.

I found this graph on bowsite.com that I found really helpful and at the very least interesting.

*Data Graph by (Kile and Marchinton, 1977)

I realize some of you are old pros, but for others hopefully this information will be helpful. It may be time to go rogue, forget that favorite stand and find you a nice clean scrape to hunt over and just wait to see what comes by – you can bet that’s where I’ll be!

Good luck to you – and by all means, let me know how you do! You can send pics and/or stories of your hunts to hunterbydesign@gmail.com and I’ll see if I can’t get them posted!