The first month of Virginia's 2014 hunting season is becoming another in the books. The 27-day archery-only season is a great prelude to the upcoming energetic breeding season for Virginia's brown-bodied favorite game animal - the white-tailed deer. Those lucky Virginians who are fortunate enough to bowhunt are able to get into the woods before the deer become pressured, when acorns just begin to fall, and before the bucks put their mind on a mission.
I can still remember the first day of the season...quiet, slightly windy. I didn't see a deer all morning. I sat until about 12 pm, then headed out for lunch and caught a quick nap before heading back to the stand around 2:30. I hunted on the top of a slightly-sloping hill, full of oaks, uphill from a swampy flat. To the other side of me, a freshly-cut corn field. It wasn't until about 6pm that evening that I started seeing deer moving off in the distance toward the field. The only one that came in range was a small 4-point year-and-half-old buck. I admittedly mistook him for a large-bodied doe, until he turned his head just right and I noticed his tiny head gear. The little guy wasn't worth one of my three buck tags, especially on the first day. So I lowered my draw and let him walk. He seemed to still have fawn-like personality attributes; full of playful energy, innocent, inexperienced. In the coming days, however, his brain is going to start telling him to think quite differently.
I've started hunting my own property for the first time in the 8 years that I've lived on it. The terrain is unbeatable. Two good steep hills, rolling valleys, bowls, swamp land, carved creeks, thick cover and open marsh, and the winding Chickahominy River, all nestled on 50 narrow acres. It's a favorite highway for deer, and the quality of the bucks I've been catching on camera is surprisingly not bad despite low-quality management tactics by previous hunters. I've spent some time and energy to try to figure out where they're traveling (where are their highways?), when they're traveling (mid-morning, late evening?), and why they're traveling (food sources, or love sources?). The catch? I've had to try to figure it out it only one short month. All the answers aren't creating a story quite yet, but I believe the process of figuring out the white-tail brain is what keeps a good deal of large corporations in business, anyway! It's an ongoing, lifetime-long process.
From Day One until now, I've only harvested one small doe. But remembering the atmosphere of that day, all the way up to the hunting adventures in the past week, I can definitely tell a difference in the behavior and signs of the deer. I've made more shots on deer this year than I have in previous years. As the month moves along, the tell-tale Virginia temperatures really start to spike up and down, and as the moon rotates its phases, the deer activity has obviously increased. So far, scrapes and rubs have only begun to pop-up within the past 2 weeks. I have yet to see a buck actively chasing a doe, but I have seen lone bucks with their noses to the ground as if following one. And I've had several camera sequences from different locations on the property showing does being followed 2 hours later by a buck. Coincidence?
It's been said that 2014 is predicted to be the year of big bucks. The rut is in its early phases here in the heart of the state, and I honestly feel that it's going to be one heck of a season; if not for me, then for many, many Virginians.
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