October Lull

If you are like me, you were really excited to get out in the woods opening week to bow hunt. I had 3 specific deer that I was after. I have numerous trail camera pictures of them and felt like I had them somewhat patterned. I had set aside 5 days to hunt bucks and 2 more days to doe hunt. This almost seemed easy to me as I planned everything out based on my information obtained last year. I thought by October 3rd I would have a couple of does and a big buck on the ground. We even had a cool down in temperatures and the right wind for 3 consecutive days. Everything was set for success.

From the first day of hunting, things have been frustrating and unpredictable. The first night out I hunted with my Dad on a food plot where we saw 3 shooters last year (at this time), plus 20 additional deer. Unfortunately we saw only 2 consisting of a small buck and a curious doe who touched my ground blind window with her nose. Where were all of the deer? The food plot had burned up in our current drought and wasn't pulling the deer in like last year. I blamed the food plot but didn't think much more of it. Time to move to another farm with better fields and food plots.

I spent the next 3 days hunting my favorite stands without seeing a single buck and sometimes not even seeing a deer. I also had to give up a hunt one evening to chase off some (would be) trespassers trying to hunt our fence line. What was happening to my plan and where did all of the deer go. My stand locations were dead, they weren't coming to the food plots and soybean fields. I didn't even get a single big buck picture on our 7 trail cameras either. Frustrated, I began to experience the thoughts about all of the other things I could have been doing with my time off. Like spending more time with the family, getting work done around the house, taking the wife out on a date, school work, etc., etc. What had happened to all of the deer? I blamed the October Lull! I blamed the weather and the farm. I should have blamed myself.

So, I have been thinking a lot about this the last couple of days. How could hunting be so good last year during the early season but so poor this season. I did recognize that our weather pattern was different but other hunters that I have talked to have also experienced the same problem. Their big bucks have vanished. Where could they have gone? Is the October Lull for real. Do bucks bed down and lay around for a couple of weeks before the rut kicks in? I started to believe this was true but I still knew I needed to take ownership for my lack of success. What was I doing wrong?

Kansas has been extremely dry for the last three months. Our creeks are dry, ponds are only half full, most have harvested their failed corn crops, the soybean fields have only produced half of their potential, etc., etc. I knew this was different from last year but it was still able to pattern bucks in August and the first 2 weeks of September. Then something changed and I missed it. Due to the hot dry weather, the bean fields have dried up significantly and have turned yellow. Deer will stop hitting them hard until late season now. Due to weather, forage is also changing in the woods sooner that normal. Acorns are already falling, the leaves and forages in the woods have changed more significantly and are sweet and palpatable, apples and persimmons are ripe for the taking. The deer are now eating mostly in and around their bedding areas where they have security cover. There is no need to travel long distances to crop fields when they have all they need right now in their bedroom. This usually doesn't happen in our area until October 10th but due to our weather pattern it has started 2-3 weeks earlier. I failed to recognize the change and was hunting the wrong areas.

So what can we learn from this? Remain flexible in your hunting. Just because you think you have the deer patterned and have a great plan to ambush them today, doesn't mean you wont have to throw it out the window tomorrow if you want to be successful. Although we have to remain persistent and put our time in the stand to be successful on mature bucks, we also must remain flexible with an open mind.

I have learned a valuable lesson for next season. Even though I currently have a better understanding of where the bucks may be and what they are doing right now, I am not about to move in on them in their bedding areas and over pressure them. For me, I would rather give them a month to be comfortable and not pressured before the rut. At the end of October I will start again on trying to pattern the bucks during the pre-rut. I usually start by moving from the outside in. This gives me something to prepare for and look forward to next month. Besides, we probably don't have a lot of nice days left after this month to finish our work around the house and have fun with our families outside. It is time to get outside and enjoy the weather.

(P) Crab Claw 10 and October Lull

Well, I put in a couple of hunts this weekend. I went down to one of our farms and hunted Friday evening. I saw 12 does and fawns but no bucks. One of the button buck fawns that I saw was being harassed by a coyote. The fawn ran past my tree stand location. The coyote was so intent on staying on the fawns trail that he did not notice me up in the tree. I let the coyote have a taste of my G5 Striker broadhead at approximately 25 yards. It was a complete pass through which means the coyote would not go far. That made my weekend a success and I had only been in the stand for 2 hours.

The next day I got up early to try my first morning hunt of the year. I was in the stand about a half hour before day break. It was fun to be in the stand again and watch the sun rise. The morning was full of anticipation but I only saw one doe over a 3 hour period. I got down for the day and returned to hunt the stand for the evening hunt. I was disappointed to see only 3 does. No bucks for me. I found it interesting that the does were of a different age class and came from different directions. None of them had fawns with them. One of the does looked old so she maybe could not have fawns anymore but the remaining two does should have had babies with them. I began to wonder if coyotes had been hitting the fawns hard on our farm in the spring/summer while they are smaller. I will have to look into that some more.

Dad hunted the evening hunt on one of our food plots. We checked our trail cameras to find that we only had pictures of one mature buck regularly hitting our fields. It was the Crab Claw 10 point buck (see August 28th post- Food Plots are Finished for a picture of this buck). He was hitting this particular field between 11pm and 3 am. I thought Dad should hunt that field in the event that he came out early on this night. As luck would have it, the does and fawns did not enter the field until the last 15 minutes of light (not a good sign but it was 80 degrees). The Crab Claw 10 showed up right at dark (too dark to shoot) and stayed out beyond Dad's shooting distance. He visited a cedar tree that he has been rubbing regularly. Then he put his head down and began to check the does in the field. After pushing the does around, he left the field and the hunt was over.

Other than the Crab Claw 10 sighting, I think everyone is experiencing the October Lull from Wisconsin to Kansas. Some of you may be asking what the October Lull is. Well, it seems that mid-October has little to no buck movement. There are a couple of reasons for this. One of them is the bucks are beginning to become more aggressive. They break away from their bachelor groups and began to challenge each other to work out their pecking order of dominance. This is also a time when many of the crops (corn, soybeans, milo, etc) are being harvested. The deer have moved away from the early season feeding patterns. Many deer stay in the woods and feed on falling acorns under oak trees. Leaves are beginning to turn color and fall but there is still a fair amount of browsing in the woods close to the forest floor, so the deer don't move much. Sometimes it seems like the bucks scatter, disappear and become nocturnal. It is a tough time to kill a buck. However, we are only a couple of weeks away from the pre-rut activity. We just need the weather to cooperate.