Bad weather can make for great hunting.
First, a sudden snowstorm or windy cold front will often reduce the number of hunters and allow whitetail deer to act in more natural ways.
Especially during the rut, cold weather may keep deer moving and increase your opportunity to catch a buck chasing or pursuing does.
By contrast, a sudden warm spell can be much more detrimental to hunting than an unexpected six-inch snowfall.
Scott Haugman writes for Western Whitetail and lays out an excellent plan to deal with stormy weather in this informative post.
Four days of hard hunting, and all I’d seen was a handful of deer, and no bucks. Does and fawns nervously fed along timbered edges, here and there, but the bucks—even the number of does I’d expected—were nowhere to be seen.
That night, just as I was ready to call it quits, a storm front moved in. Temperatures dropped more than 30º, and when I woke up, eight-inches of fresh snow blanketed the ground. Taking to the woods with optimism, I started glassing some of the same draws I’d been hunting, days prior. It didn’t take long to see, the deer had been there all along. Looking through my Swarovski spotting scope, the first three deer I saw were bucks, all feeding through wild rose hips. Two more bucks appeared farther down the same hillside, as did some does and yearlings.
As more snow started to fall, visibility diminished, so I began slowly hunting my way down a ridge. Over the course of the next 90 minutes, I’d lay eyes on over a dozen bucks, three of which were shooters, one of which was a monster pushing 160-inches. Unfortunately, the big buck busted me before I could get a shot. Then I found a good buck, bedded in the open. I snuck to within 275 yards, and sat, patiently waiting for him to get up. Over an hour passed, the temperature rose and much of the snow melted. When a swoosh of air hit the back of my neck, I thought it impossible for the thermals to carry my scent from where I sat, above the buck, all the way to where he was bedded. But within seconds the buck was up and sprinting away, reminding me how truly sharp their noses are.
