Table of Contents
Best Time for Whitetail deer Hunting
If you are going to hunt deer, you need to know about deer. Because a deer has not the same daily routine as you. You have to know about deer activity all day or seasons. Average hunters hunt in the same traditional way. They don’t even know why they are shooting at that moment. They don’t see the deer’s internal clock and mostly don’t research the deer. But successful hunters know when to hunt deer and their behavior as well.
Another thing is that a deer won’t need to adapt to your hunting time, but you need to change with their daily routine. There are some easy guidelines about when to hunt deer. If you catch the instructions, you also know about the deer and make an essential decision about pursuing them.
Regular activity of deer
You should know what a deer do in the day and when the goes out. Their outing reason and their daily routine are essential to know. Let’s roll:
• Most of the time, deer begin their day at the evening time. When the dawn comes, they are out in between 4 to 6 pm. It entirely depends on where you stay and mostly in the deer hunting season.
• The only reason they go out is to find food resources. They can move anywhere for food, even at recklessly. But be sure that they are more aware when eating food due to a strong sense of danger.
• They become more alert when night time starts. Though they don’t have high visualization at night, they are ahead yet due to be alert.
• They search the food resources the whole night. They take rest occasionally at midnight before starting again in the early morning.
• They usually back to their bedding after the initial morning session of food searching. It could be 6 to 12 am for bedding.
• After bedding back, they spend their midday in between 12 to 3 pm. That means they take bedding times from 6 to 12 am. Then they retake snacks in between 12 to 3 pm before again starting their evening feeding.
• The most active periods for a deer are in between 12 to 3 pm. They take a deep rest at this time. But some bucks can move at this time.
So, we now know the deer routine of finding food resources and bedding time. You can now decide to hunt at which time should be perfect. Yet there is some important factor that can change their routines such as temperature, weather, and wind, etc. So, be aware of this factor.
Deer behavior according to the season
We talk about daily routine. But they can change their behavior and activity according to the season. So, you have to know the season and their behavior also. We will let you know about it.
In early spring: if deer suffers in winter, they go out for forage as early as possible before sunrise. Since the fawns are weaned off milk at this time, there is a rule for those. They cannot take rest at midday, and they look for food like forage or whatever before the dawn. The most active periods in spring are before dusk.
Mid to late spring: in this time, forage and food is growing, and they are available for the deer. So, they stick to the location where they found this food. They hardly go out for a long time as food searching is the only reason for them and that’s available at this time.
In summer: due to hot days, they hardly go out during the days. Most of the time, they go out at night. But some ruts are going day also. They work most of the time at night and before sunrise.
Early fall: this is the time when people reap their harvest as well as deer. This time they go out long distances for quality food, and they don’t come home empty as it is the best time for them.
Mid fall: in this time, most of the hunters are going out to take the field. So, they reduce their go out cycle just three times. The only time they eat is before dusk.
Late fall: this is the time when food becomes unavailable slowly for them. So, they go out for a long time, and small amounts of food will then be valuable for them.
Winter: when the winter begins, they move to the vast areas for forage. They move for late afternoon to take advantage of the warmth of the day. They rarely go out at night time.
So this is the behavior and routine of a deer seasonally. This also helps you decide when to hunt deer. However mule deer and whitetail deer has different behavior against seasonally. If you want to know about the difference between mule deer and whitetail deer than you can check this mule deer vs whitetail deer.
When to hunt deer in the day
The pre-dawn moment: this is the best moment to hunt a deer. Because at this moment they are lazy than the evening and herd of them come together. So, there is a great chance to hunt.
Mid-morning: in the spring, if the day is cold, then mid-morning is an ideal time to hunt deer. Because at this time, food is difficult to find them. So, they increase the outing cycle.
Late morning: this is another critical time to catch them. Because some deer came back to bedding lately from food searching, if the day is rainy, they can move to bed site later in the late morning, mostly from 10 am to 12 pm.
Early afternoon: this is the best time to hunt deer. Because it doesn’t matter the weather, time or whatever, they must come out at this time, and you can catch them easily.
At dusk: when the light is affected by temperature, the deer also is alert at that time. So, if you use stands, be careful about it because they have a strong sense of smell and scent.
If you want to hunt productively, then it is the best time to check-in late morning in the early evening. At this time, they don’t check any variables, no matter what weather or temperatures. Statistically, it is proved. But it would help if you realized that deer don’t abide by statistics. They go out for their own needs. But this is their nature and routine. So, we hope that you will get the information and imply this effectively.