The end is nigh.
Deer season is quickly coming to a close. Have you tagged one yet? If not, put your fears to rest. Realtree’s Josh Honeycutt has a clever 5-day late-season plan that will greatly increase your chance of taking a buck while there’s still time.
With this plan, Honeycutt promises you only need five days to stake your claim. They don’t even have to be consecutive days. If you have time off in the coming weeks, you’re in luck. Check out the plan on Realtree’s site.
It may seem counterproductive to limit your hunting time when you only have five days, but you can’t kill a deer if none are around. It’s far better to spend two or three of your five days nailing down the best spot for a couple good hunts, rather than four of those days sitting in a gar hole.
The late season is driven by the belly of the beast, so your first scouting goal is to find food. Expect deer to concentrate in big numbers around the best food sources right now, old bucks included, since they can lose up to 30 percent of their body weight during the rut. Don’t count on seeing late-rut activity, but if you do, it’ll be because a select few doe fawns have come into heat for the first time. Those fawns will be on the food same as the other deer, so that’s where the bucks will look for them.
In the North and Midwest, late-season food means corn, soybeans, and milo as well as hard mast and brassica plots. Down South and in the East, you can still count on the row crops and hard mast, but also look for “green stuff” like wheat and oats, clover, and a variety of soft mast and browse. Much of that stuff stays palatable all winter long. Regardless of where you’re hunting, grain fields such as corn and soybeans receive more attention when it’s bitter cold. Green fields such as wheat and brassicas tend to be more attractive when temperatures are rising.
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