September, early or late October, the rut? What do you like best? Mountains, foothills, high plains? What trips your trigger?
Season opening Sept. 1, in the mountains above treeline. Big velvet bucks with wide heavy beams and extra points. This September will find me in Wyoming with a mule deer tag in my pocket, a bow in my hand, hunting mule deer with my son for a few days before the gun season starts.
That's easy, the rut. I love hunting those swollen necked bucks. You can not beat the Rockies (now days on horseback), but we have some very nice deer down in the desert flats and I saw a couple of monsters mulies in the sand hill area of SE NM, feet as big as antelope!
I enjoy them most in Sept/oct before the rut, bucks are in groups or by themselves. Rut hits there not whitetails, there more like elk, to many eyes and its not the buck I worry about, its some of them older does that will get you everytime. I hunt in the plains because its where I live, We don,t have the trophy quality, but will match anywhere on sheer numbers.
September in the ND Badlands...
In the badlands do you start high and work your way down or work through the draws?
Smoke, I like to get up high before light, then glass as the light comes up. Spotting mule deer is different from whitetails, you look for their white rumps. Take awhile to get used to it but once you do, their butt will jump out at you.
Once I select a likely candidate I put him to bed and plan/draw a map of the approach while waiting for the wind/thermals to stabilize and for his mid morning stretch (they usually get up & move to get back into shade when the sun starts getting high). After that, they will usually lay tight for a couple hours and it's time to make a move. I only plan on one stalk a day.
If I have some time left, I'll look for a field they are feeding in on top and set up an ambush on a finger draw they use to come up out of the bottoms to reach it...
Late August / early September when they are still sporting velvet!
The last week of Sept. in Wyoming foothills. Been there with training wheels, this will be my first trad.hunt and with my new bow. Life is GOOOOOOOD!!!!! :bigsmyl: