Each part of season offers advantages

When is the best time to go deer hunting? That depends on how you define the word time.

A bowhunter could define the term “best time” based on his or her favorite of the four astronomical seasons, because bows and arrows are legal for hunting deer during the last week of summer, all of autumn and about four weeks of winter.

A far better and more used method is to divide the  season into three parts: early, middle and late.

Any method of dividing a long hunting season into smaller parts will be more or less arbitrary. For our purposes here, the early part of the season will extend from Sept. 15 (opening day) through Oct. 31.

One of the most important upsides to this part of the season is the deer have had no negative contact with humans for eight months.

Given you don’t goof something up, they’ll be as calm as a high strung whitetail deer ever gets. This is important to a hunter whose target must be within 30 yards or preferably 20.

Another important upside to the early season is that both bucks and does are following stable patterns. This day-to-day stability is the reason many bowhunters believe the early season is the best time to take a record-book buck.

Prior to the onset of the rut and the firearms deer season — both of which stress deer — almost all deer of any age or sex yield acceptable venison.  I’ve never taken an October deer that didn’t. Most pre-rut venison is a fork-tender delight.

Temperatures during the early season range from too hot to bitterly cold, but, on average, the early season is the most comfortable time to go deer hunting.

While comfort isn’t a major factor to any of the serious deer hunters I know, few of them would prefer to be miserable.

Mosquitos and other pesky bugs are the only major downside to the early season. I’m glad I don’t believe in scent-blocking clothing and sprays, because I’d feel silly putting them on just prior to dousing myself with insect repellent.

The middle portion of the season runs from Nov. 1 through the end of the antlerless deer firearms season on Dec. 6. This segment is by far the most volatile of the three.

As far as the overwhelming majority of the state’s deer hunters are concerned, the No. 1 upside of the middle season is that center-fire rifles are legal during most of it. Check the Missouri Department of Conservation’s brochure before you go hunting.

The fact that the rut occurs during most, if not all of the middle season is a huge mental upside to many hunters.

This year, bowhunters will have two weeks to enjoy this part of the whitetail’s life cycle before the firearms hunters take over. If you would rather be lucky than good, this is your best chance to harvest a big buck.

Competition with other hunters is a major downside throughout most of the middle portion of the season. There are ways to make other hunters unwitting allies, and there are ways to avoid them altogether. I’ll cover these in a future column.

The late season will begin on Dec. 7 and end on Jan. 15. Bowhunting is legal throughout the late season, and muzzleloader hunters have a window of opportunity Dec. 19-29.

The only upside to the late season is that those who hunt it have the woods virtually to themselves. Spending an entire day hunting on public land without seeing another deer hunter is the norm rather than the exception.

Down sides include spooky deer, cold weather and, especially for muzzleloader hunters, conflicts with the Christmas holiday season.

Since I’m an incurable black-powder addict, I’m searching for whoever set the dates for the muzzleloader season.

If I find them, I’m going to keep them covered with my trusty smoke pole while they explain this idiotic situation to my wife and my mother.