Understanding a deer's day puts venison on the table

The object of deer hunting is to put a hunter and a deer in the same place at the same time.

By far the best way for a hunter to accomplish the former is to spend as much time in the offseason as possible exploring the specific area he or she intends to hunt.

The hunter should know where the local deer feed, where they bed and what trails they use not only to travel to and from food sources but to escape from danger.

Set stands and identify observation sites in the best-available locations, and the same-place side of the equation is as close to being solved as it can be when whitetails are involved.

But what about the equally important same-time factor? Is it really possible to predict when the bucks or does will be in the place he or she has chosen to guard?

This is the point where whitetail experts begin to vacillate.

It’s not our fault. The behavior patterns I’m about to describe are generally accurate for most deer most of the time.

However, there is no such thing as a deer whistle blower, who signals when all the deer in the woods should simultaneously feed, breed or tuck themselves into bed.

Deer are neither diurnal (active primarily in the daytime) or nocturnal (active primarily at night.)

Deer have alternating periods of activity and rest throughout a day.

Unfortunately for hunters, there are approximately 11 hours of legal shooting time on opening day of the November portion of the firearms deer season and that shrinks to 9.5 hours by the end of the muzzleloader season.

All other factors aside, more deer activity occurs outside of legal hunting hours than during them.

Now for some good news. It’s all but certain the majority of an area’s deer will be active for two to three hours after first light.

A second mass activity period occurs from about an hour before sunset through the end of the legal shooting time.

A third activity period — especially for bucks — runs from approximately 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Some hunters cheat themselves out of a chance to shoot a trophy buck because they’ve been sold on the idea that all big bucks go nocturnal the first time they’re disturbed.

I have no doubt that a few bucks and does shift the majority of their movements to the nighttime hours in response to heavy hunting pressure.

Most deer of either gender continue to observe a 24-hour day, but they might shift their daytime activity periods away from sunrise and sunset to avoid the two times most hunters are in the woods.

My son, Aaron, had a simple way to pick the best time of day to hunt.

As he put it, “Go into the woods before it begins to get light and don’t come back out until after it’s black dark.”

That’s sound advice, but in defense of the rest of us, Aaron could go all day without eating or drinking, and his pain threshold was was off the charts.

The first few hours of daylight are my favorite time to hunt deer.

I love watching the view from my stand slowly emerge from darkness with the approaching dawn.

I enjoy watching and listening to the squirrels, birds and other daytime creatures take their turn on the stage.

From a more practical standpoint, knowing that I’m as apt to see a deer at 9:30 a.m. as I am at 7 a.m. helps keep the cold at bay. If I do kill a deer, there’s no need to rush the process of getting it out of the woods.

Despite what I just said, my schedule demands I do most of my deer hunting in the evening.

That’s OK, too, because the reverse of the things I said I liked about sitting on a deer stand in the morning are true in the evening.

The major downside of evening hunts is that the deer often don’t appear until sunset, which leaves only 30 minutes of legal shooting time to work with.

Successful hunters will immediately learn that nothing about tracking, field-dressing or dragging a deer is easier in the dark.

I rarely take my own advice about hunting during the middle of the day. I should know better.

When Aaron was still at home, he and I hunted with another man and his son. We had a traveling trophy awarded to the man (or boy) who shot the biggest buck.

Aaron won it 2 years in a row with bucks he shot at high noon while the rest of us were sitting around the campfire enjoying sandwiches and coffee.