5 KEYS TO EARLY SEASON WHITETAILS

While living well outside “Eastern” whitetail habitat, I viewed the whitetail rut as vital to success. Early seasons were for bowhunting pronghorns, elk and high-country muleys, and the Midwestern late-October/early November program dovetailed neatly into season-long plans. I brought that assumption with me after moving to whitetail country. Whitetails were addressed only in November, when signboard scrapes lured northern Idaho’s vast big-woods bucks beneath my stands.

Eventually, I developed an obsession with tagging a velvet-antlered white-tailed buck and began setting the first week of archery season aside in that quest — soon discovering I’d been missing a highly profitable portion of the deer season. I’ve killed a decent percentage of my best-scoring bucks during traditional rut dates, but have also scored big and often during archery season’s opening days (though I still haven’t tagged that velvet buck).

I’ve discovered that early season bucks are much easier to pattern — in contrast to the hit-and-miss appearances of bucks during the chaotic rut. The weather is also more pleasant and bucks are generally