Fall Bow Hunting

                There isn’t a more exhilarating adventure for a hunter then a late Fall Bow Hunt.  Bow hunting Whitetail Deer is not a simple nor inexpensive hobby either.  There are many concepts to be grasped through experience and equipment to purchase that goes along with it.  Late Fall for Whitetail Deer means the deer are in Rut, or their mating season.  This means that the bucks are sexually aggressive and will respond well to calls and scents.  One thing my father and I liked to use is Tinks #69 doe in rut buck lure.  This is a little brown glass bottle filled with estrus gland fluid naturally produced by the does when they go into heat.  On the opposite end, the bucks produce a secretion from a gland called the tarsal gland which is located in two locations; around the mid section of the back legs and between the ears on the skull.  Dad and I put these scents around our tree stands to try to attract the bucks close enough for a shot.  If you want to imitate two bucks fighting one would make use of rattling antlers.  Take a matching set of antlers from a previous years kill and crash the antlers together.  Last year I rattled in one of the nicest ten point bucks I'

ve ever seen in my life.  I first noticed him over one hundred yards away and when he heard me rattle he became angry and ran strait for me.  A more popular form of calling would be the grunt or doe bleat.  The grunt imitates a buck and bleat imitates a doe in heat.  My favorite type of bleat call has always been The Can Call.  It is a small, black, plastic cylinder that fits in your pocket and is a very close imitation of the sound a doe makes.  I have had good success using these.  The grunt call come in many shapes, sizes, and brands.  I have had so many over the years I couldn’t even tell you which one I currently am trying. 

                To hunt whitetails late in the fall has many advantages.  By this time the soft woods like maple and poplar have already lost all of their leaves.  Most of the forest floor is covered with delicate watery vegetation that wilts upon the first frost.  This make your vision in the wood much easier.  Early season I can barely see thirty yards in front of me, but in late fall I can see as far as one hundred yards in any direction.  Deer trails are now much easier to see as well.  The trails are beaten clean of any plant life with nothing but dirt and hoove carvings  in the earth.  Due to the fact that the bucks are chasing the does all night, the tracks are much more congested on these trails and often can tell a story of what happened.  One could notice a set of  buck and doe tracks that was drug over a two foot span suggesting she was slipping as she was trying to run away from the buck that was chasing her down.  Since there has already been a frost or two, the sugar beets we planted in our lower field have turned sweet and the deer will trample through them, replenishing themselves of nutrients and energy lost from endless hours of chasing and mating.  Although they like the sweet sugar beets after a frost, nothing will ever be chosen by a deer over acorns.  Luckily at our land you can’t hardly take a single step through the woods without crunching and popping on one of those suckers.  Believe it or not, the deer also prefer the acorns of a white oak over a red oak.  Don’t ask me why.  Its and old saying that seems to have no scientific fact but spend any amount of time in the woods and you will notice the deer spending more time around the whit oaks then the red oaks when milling around for food. 

                My absolute favorite part about late fall hunting is the signs left by the bucks.  I'm talking about scrapes and rubs.  A scrape is an exposed dirt patch where a buck he leaves his scat, urine, and tarsal gland secretions.   He will find a spot, primarily on a field edge and under a low hanging tree branch, where he will scrape away the grass and leaves leaving a roundish dirt spot.  Consider a scrape to be like facebook, mypace and match.com for a buck.  His plan is to come back minimally every twenty-four hours or so to check and see if a doe has visited his scrape and left her scent or “phone number”.  If so, the buck will spend  time trying to locate this doe to mate.  Usually the buck will snap the low hanging branches almost as if hes flagging the spot in case he loses it.  Another action performed by a buck would be a rub.  This is when a buck rubs his antlers on  smaller trees ripping the bark from them.  This is his way of marking his territory and leaving his tarsal gland scent in an area he feels is ruled by him.

                All of these concepts are fairly easy to understand.  Most of the signs that I have talked about are fairly easy to identify if one was to spend time in the woods looking for them.  The most rewarding is being able to witness these deer and the behavioral patter changes in them when their reproductive system takes over.  One early sign that the does are going into rut is when you notice the does make their young “leave the nest” so to speak.  The does tend to travel alone once in heat and you will notice a lot of young deer running around alone and clueless, left to figure out the rest on their own.  The bucks will become stupefied with hormones.  Their tempers are very ill and they will become easily agitated by the sound or smell of another buck in their proclaimed area.  The buck’s neck will become swollen and dark.  His tarsal glands will be wet and greasy from constant secretion.  If any two bucks cross paths while you are in stand you will be rewarded with a rarely seen action of the two bucks engaged in a fight.  It is usually a suspenseful primal excitement that one can only achieve by such an act as freezing your butt off in a tree hiding yourself from captivity.  Even if you don’t like hunting, or deer, or nature in general, I don’t think anyone could keep a steady heart beat while two buck fight to what could be their death.  It is a very real and intense experience I wish everyone could share.   Indeed, late fall Bow Hunting is an adventure.