Sports

SAMUEL: There is no ‘October lull’

COMMENTARY BY DR. DAVE SAMUEL

Here we are in mid-October, and bow season is off and running.  Right about now is when we start to hear hunters talk about the lack of sightings of deer.  Many hunters call this period the October lull.  If one believes in the “lull” then they believe something shuts down buck movement in October.  Being a science guy, I’ve found that such a belief is not based on science. 

For example, one of the big beliefs relative to deer movement is that the full moon reduces daytime movement.  In earlier columns, I’ve presented the data from Penn State University on moon phase that clearly shows a full moon does not cause deer to move less. 

What about the weather?  If we had high winds or days of heavy rain, that might affect deer movement.  Although we are having some pretty good winds today (last Wednesday) as I write this, in general, the winds haven’t been bad so far in October.  We also haven’t had much rain either.  Science (data collected on deer movements during high winds) shows that deer move in wind, and aren’t affected until you get really high winds of 30 miles per hour.  Same for rain.  Heavy downpours affect deer movement, but you can’t really bowhunt in really heavy rains anyway.  In general, rain and wind do not affect deer movement

If it was unseasonably hot, that might cause an October lull in deer movement.  Again, science shows deer move when it’s hot and when it’s cold.  True a cold snap the last week of October can trigger more buck movement, but other than that, October temperature doesn’t impact deer. 

Then there is the obvious.  Deer have to eat every day.  This year, the hard mast (acorns) is spotty, but if you find a white oak that is dropping acorns, set up a tree stand nearby.  They will come.  As I’ve mentioned in previous columns, some individual white oaks are always big producers of acorns.  Just look for acorns that are split in half.  Deer cut them in half with their lower incisors (they don’t have upper incisors) and sometimes don’t keep both halves in their mouth. The other half drops to the ground and isn’t always found.  Halved acorns are easy to spot and means that deer are feeding there.  Find that tree and you sure won’t have to worry about an October lull in deer movements. 

One more thing on acorns.  In years when white oaks do not produce acorns, look for red oaks.  They are the next preferred acorns behind white oak.  If there are no acorn producers in your area, hunt field edges.  Forget orchard grass and Kentucky fescue fields.  Deer have to be really hungry to eat those species.  Look for clovers and alfalfa.

Perhaps the biggest problem for bowhunters not seeing deer is that they either hunt their stands when the wind is wrong, or they overhunt their stands.  Either way, deer figure that out and you won’t see them.  Overhunting a preferred stand is an easy habit to get into.  We get into a routine and go back there several times in a row.  Maybe it’s because we killed a good buck there in years past.  Maybe it’s because we like where that stand is located.  Great travel corridor.  Maybe it’s because the stand is a short walk from our car, so we can slip in there for an hour’s bowhunt on the way home from work.

Maybe it’s an easy walk to that stand, and as we’ve aged, easy is good.  Maybe we spotted a dandy buck there a week before the season.  If he came there once, he’ll probably come again.  We just need to be in that stand when he shows up.  Sooner or later, he’ll walk by there, so we’ve just got to put in the time. 

All of us can come up with reasons to go to a stand night after night, even though we know we’re putting more scent in that area with every sit.  Then, there is the wind to consider.  How many of us have returned to our “best “stand, even though the wind wasn’t perfect.  The wind might not be totally bad, but it wasn’t perfect, so we’ll take a chance and maybe get lucky. 

There is a classic study done at Auburn University that shows what overhunting does to buck sightings.  They proved that it doesn’t take much to overhunt a stand. 

They mapped a “Harvest Zone” around each stand.  They found that bucks were four times less likely to walk through the Harvest Zone at the end of the season than on day one.  How often have we heard that the first time you sit a stand may be the best chance you have for the big buck working that area?  Apparently bucks avoid stands after they are hunted awhile. 

They also found that if a stand was hunted 12 hours in one week, the odds of seeing a buck in the Harvest Zone were reduced by half.  Think about what that has to do with your hunting success.  If you sit a stand for three hours each evening from Monday to Wednesday, the buck you were after was twice as likely to avoid the Harvest Zone.  I understand that all bucks “don’t read the book,” but the data does provide food for thought.

They also found that at the end of the hunting season, bucks moved an average of 55 yards further from stands than they did on day one.  Those are bucks that are still in your vicinity, but you may not see them because they avoid the stand a bit more than they did when the season started.  

What about hunting your stand several times in one week?  If you hunted one day in the stand, how long will they avoid that stand?  The Auburn researcher looked at six different circumstances: The stand wasn’t hunted within the previous five days, it was hunted the previous day, and it was hunted two, three, four, and five days ago.

When the stand hadn’t been hunted in five days, there was only a slight impact and bucks were seen entering the Harvest Zone.  There was a food plot there, and often supplemental feed there, so they came.  However, if the stand was hunted the previous day, bucks immediately avoided that stand and this avoidance lasted three days.  Maybe this is the most critical piece of data from this study.  Hunt a stand one time and, on average, bucks will avoid it for three days.

The fourth and fifth days following a hunting event saw the bucks return.  Not as much as if there had been no hunting prior to your hunt, but still some bucks did return. 

There is no lull.  Lots of things affect deer movement, and that movement determines to a degree whether you will see deer or not.  Some of this you control, but some of this is out of your control.  So, just take advantage of beautiful October, be smart, and enjoy the woods. 


 Dr. Samuel is a retired wildlife professor from West Virginia University. His outdoor columns have appeared, and continue to appear, in Bowhunter magazine and the Whitetail Journal. If you have questions or comments on wildlife and conservation issues, email him at drdave4@comcast.net.