Hunting Pressured Winter Whitetails

"Do these bucks move during midday because that is when there are fewer hunters in the woods? Quite likely, and even if it is instinctual behavior that has nothing to do with hunting pressure, what difference does it make? The important thing is that they move in the middle of the day."

- Larry Weishuhn

Tom was sure all of the bucks had turned nocturnal, moved to greener pastures or maybe just a different woods where hunting was not allowed. "All I've seen in the past three days is tracks," he whined. "Next year, I'll hunt opening week. I should have known better." I nodded sympathetically. I did not tell him that during those same three days, hunting the same property, I had passed on eight shooters. Two of those bucks had really tempted me. But I was looking for a particular buck that had cast a spectacular antler I had found late the winter before.

Was I really that much better of a hunter than Tom? Not really. I was just more experienced, someone who knew to keep hunting throughout the day, someone who had learned from mistakes made hunting other pressured buck late in the season. I had seen all of those bucks between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. when Tom was back in camp eating lunch and enjoying a midday nap.

We were hunting during Iowa's January late muzzleloader season on property that had been hunted for months starting with early archery season and continuing through a shotgun season when there had been numerous stand hunters and several organized drives. No doubt the property had seen serious hunting pressure and some of the remaining bucks had, indeed, become essentially nocturnal.

But not all.

The property was mostly brushy ridges and trees with creek bottoms and small fields of harvested row crops between the ridges. The crop fields provided waste corn and soybeans that had escaped grain trailers, excellent feed for deer late in the season. Because of the heavy hunting pressure, the bucks only fed in those fields well after sundown. Due to their rapidly decreasing testosterone levels, the bucks had essentially lost interest in the does that were feeding in the fields during the day.