Our planet is definitely becoming warmer, and excessive heat is now the number one killer of humans. Imagine how it must be affecting heavily furred wild animals, evolved to survive long periods of very cold temperatures in winter, like our whitetail deer. There should now be little wonder now why these deer have become nocturnal.

Whenever it is unusually warm in November (above 50 degrees where I hunt), which is well after my deer have grown their warm winter fur, they are now forced to limit their physical activities to cooler nighttime hours. Two encouraging facts my sons and I learned about our whitetails during the past five years are 1) they aren’t as nocturnal as they originally seemed to be and 2) stand hunting is still the best way to hunt mature bucks.

As I had strongly suspected, our deer had figured out how to continue twice-a-day feeding without our knowledge. I should have realized it on opening morning in 2018 after I had lost my way to an intended stand site while sticky snow was falling heavily. At first light, I found myself in a jungle of young trees with the tops of many of them bent to the ground by the heavy snow. The snow there was covered with an astonishing number of very fresh mature doe, fawn and yearling-sized tracks. These deer had obviously been feeding on the slender, uppermost branches of bent over trees. I had never seen anything like this before.

I cautiously returned to this site from downwind three times during the following two weeks, but no fresh deer tracks were found there again. In fact, nowhere within our entire hunting area did whitetails return to sites where an unusual number of does with young, and an occasional mature buck, had fed together at night. These deer, led by well-experienced dominant does, were deliberately avoiding feeding and bedding at any site more than once, and were leading their herds 1 to 2 miles to new, widely scattered feeding and bedding areas every night.

This was very different from pre-2018 habits and behavior of whitetails, when 4 to 5 individual does with young lived in separate home ranges averaging about 125 acres, within square-mile ranges of every dominant breeding buck, until migrating to a combined wintering area in late December.

Beginning at snowmelt last spring, my son John and I began exchanging cards in our large number of trail cameras about every two weeks or so (requiring taking 330-mile round trips each time) to keep closer track of what our deer and wolves were doing. We thus discovered small herds of does with young and a few bucks in velvet, ranging in age from yearlings to 3 1/2, that traveled together, snacking along the way, on their way to sources of water limited by drought during mid-nighttime hours from some (not all) previously logged areas. These particular areas were notably smothered with 6- to 10-foot-tall, second-growth quaking aspens (popples), young sugar maples, various kinds of woody shrubs, young spruces, balsams, jack and white pines, scrubby red oaks and patches of viciously thorned black raspberry canes that can seriously ravage expensive hunting clothes and exposed skin.

Like large corn fields in farm regions in which whitetails have long been feeding and bedding in large numbers, well-hidden and protected by corn stalks that rustle loudly when brushed by approaching hunters, it was becoming evident that our whitetails had begun using habitat that provided similar advantages; in this case, much greater concealment and much greater difficulty for wolves and hunters to move near without greater effort and the likelihood of being heard.

The old clear-cut that first caught our attention was known for being very treacherous to hike across, being full of obstructions and holes that fleeing whitetails can freely leap over, but wolves and humans can’t, thus slowing and discouraging pursuit by them. These areas were also rich with grass and browse that our whitetails greatly favor such as red osiers and suckers sprouting from sugar maple stumps. Especially where located adjacent to reliable water, minimizing exposure when necessary to satisfy thirst, whitetails inhabiting such an area could stuff their stomachs, drink and rest without moving more than a few yards during daylight hours, and not be seen doing it.

Though whitetails in other regions where such habitat may not be available may be fully nocturnal in hot weather, we have discovered daylight hours in our hunting area are shot full of short periods during which nocturnal deer are likely to be seen moving during legal shooting hours. To take advantage of these periods, the hunter must recognize them, act quickly to take advantage of them, and proceed with much greater skill than in the past, forsaking less troublesome habitat where hunting was great years ago.

One bit of research we tried last fall was to stay well away from one of these extensive areas after we had established it was regularly inhabited by a yearling buck, a 2 1/2 year-old buck and a 3 1/2 year-old buck, plus three does with fawns (two of these fawns were eaten by our new five-member wolfpack), to see if this would improve buck hunting success there in November. As it turned out, this was the area in which we took our two mature bucks last November, and almost another.

This year, therefore, our plan has been to concentrate on several areas just like this one while scouting in September, and preparing to stand hunt at multiple sites near well-tracked deer trails about their perimeters, for one-on one and large-group stand hunting in November. We are keeping in mind to make it possible to always be able approach and sit somewhere downwind or crosswind of where we expect to see a buck. We then plan to stay well away from these areas until the hunting season begins, not returning for any reason.

From opening morning on we will not miss a minute of the first legal half-hour of hunting time near such areas, always getting there an hour before sunrise. If our current drought continues until November, we also plan to stand hunt near well tracked whitetail watering spots.

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