It was the first week of the 2020 Kentucky bow season and the first time I’d been able to get out for an evening sit. I had packed my Lone Wolf tree stand in with me that afternoon and setup on the edge of a soybean field where I had watched my target buck feeding the last several evenings. Everything seemed to be going according to plan, but I couldn’t shake a pit in my stomach. It wasn’t nerves but something worse. The quiet, sinking feeling that I should have slipped in a little tighter to where I’d watched the buck enter the field the night before and that playing it safe was about to cost me.
I was right.
An hour before dark, the buck walked into the standing beans roughly a hundred and fifty yards away with two younger bucks. A 160-inch 8-point I figured at six or seven years old, a deer I’d had history with for three summers. He had no idea I was in the world but as mature bucks do, he didn’t rush. He slowly fed his way through the beans and walked thirty yards past the tree I knew I should have been in. The tree I’d talked myself out of that morning because I was worried I’d bump him getting to it.
That was the last time I ever laid eyes on that buck.
As far as early season hunts go, I’ve thought about that sit more than any of them. The biggest mistake I made during that early season hunt wasn’t spooking the deer. It was playing it safe on a deer that I knew my window of opportunity was already closing, and caution ran out the clock.
A quick note on timing. When I say early season hunting, I mean the first few weeks of bow season in states with a September opener. If your archery season doesn’t start until October, these tactics still help, but the bucks you’re after have already shifted into their fall pattern, and the window I’m about to describe closed before your season ever opened.
Why Early Season Beats November for Mature Bucks on Your Farm
The majority of deer hunters I know save their vacation days for the rut and hey I get it. Increased deer movement, cooler temps, and one of the best times of year to see a mature buck on his feet in daylight. But seeing deer and killing a specific mature buck are two completely different games, and for harvesting the single biggest buck on a property, I’ll take the first week of the early season over the rut any day.
Here’s why. From late summer through the first weeks of fall, a mature buck that has not been pressured is more predicable. Bedding areas to food sources then back to bed, repeat. A buck that you saw hitting a food source at 7:30 today is very likely to do the same thing tomorrow. That kind of predictability disappears the second the woods see an increase in hunting pressure and when bucks start to worry more about does than their stomachs.
Then there’s the clock hunters rarely talk about, and it’s one of the reasons that big 8 is a ghost instead of a mount.
When a buck sheds his velvet, usually in early September, his world starts changing fast. Testosterone climbs, bachelor groups break up, and a lot of mature bucks shift off their summer range entirely. The National Deer Association points to research showing bucks often use different core areas in fall than they did in summer, and that shift tends to line up right around velvet shed.
The big 8 was a walking example. Three years running, about a week after he peeled velvet, he’d vanish like somebody flipped a switch. Every single year. I don’t know where he went but where he spent all summer was in the middle of a 1300 acre farm and went he went ghost, he was nowhere to be found on that 1300 acres.
Hunt the Window Like It’s Closing, Because It Is
Once you accept that the window to capitalize on summer buck patterns is short, everything about how you hunt the first few weeks of deer season changes. You stop buck hunting like you have all fall and start hunting like you only have three sits to make it happen.
Know exactly what he’s doing before you make your move
Success hunting early season bucks is directly correlated with how good your intel is. Glass feeding areas like ag fields, typically soybean fields in Kentucky, during July and August evenings. Take note of where, the time, and the weather/wind direction the buck enters the field. The where and when could change based on the wind direction so be sure to take note.
Keep a safe distance while glassing so you don’t tip the deer off to being watched. Personally, once I’ve found the buck I am planning on hunting opening day I’ll keep tabs on him glassing once a week and ramp up the couple days leading up to the opener.
Remember, a pattern isn’t “he feeds in this bean field”. It’s where and when he enters the field on a given wind direction.
Hunt the food sources he’s on this week.
Notice the wording there. Not the food he was on in July or the field you have trail cam pictures of him in three weeks ago. The food source he’s hitting this week. We’ve already covered how deer are on a bed to food pattern during the first part of the season. One thing to keep in mind however is that the preferred food sources can change fast, and a pattern that held all summer can die in a couple days.
Beans start yellowing and quickly become undesirable. A single white oak starts dropping early on a ridge you haven’t walked since spring, and every deer in the section knows it before you do. If you’re hunting August intel on a September evening, you’re gambling.
So verify before you climb. Drive the fields at dusk two or three nights before you hunt and glass what’s actually standing in them. Locate the oaks producing the majority of the acorn drop. The bucks that get killed in the first week get killed because somebody matched a sit to a current food source and a workable wind. The ones that don’t get killed are usually still on the same schedule. The hunter just hunted last months intel.
Make your first sit aggressive but surgical on fresh sign
This is where I failed during that hunt at the beginning of the article. Being aggressive early can be extremely effective as long as you’re not sloppy. Using your most recent intel determine the exact tree you need to be in for a shot and on what wind. This is only half the battle. Once you have the tree picked, you’ll need to figure out how to enter and exit without alerting deer to your presence.
Come in downwind or at a cross wind, use creek beds, ditches, or standing corn to stay hidden. Sometimes this means instead of walking a couple hundred yards to your stand location you’ll end up walking a half mile.
The exit can be just as difficult. During an evening hunt on a food source the field can be full of deer and if you climb down and exit through them you’ve just educated the farm. Have an exit planned out the back and in instances where that’s not on option, I’ll have a buddy clear the field with a truck or side by side. In my experience this doesn’t affect whitetails as much as a human bumping them.
The Safe-Tree Decision: Where Caution Helps and Where It Kills You
Let’s go back to that early season hunt in 2020, because the whole article hinges on a single decision I got wrong.
I had two options going into that hunt. One was the kill tree, where I’d witnessed the big 8 entered the field most evenings. The other option was the safer bet, farther down the field edge, that provided easier access with less of a chance I’d bump other deer on the way in. I’d glassed that field enough to know the tight tree was where I’d have the best chance of getting him in bow range in daylight. And despite all that, I picked the safe stand location because I told myself I couldn’t risk spooking him.
Read that back. I passed on the tree where I could kill him, so I wouldn’t scare the deer I was trying to kill.
Here’s the honest part and the thing that took me a year to admit. Sometimes caution is the right play. If the wind is wrong for the kill tree, don’t hunt it, full stop, no matter how good the spot is. If there’s no clean way in or out and hunting it means blowing every deer off the field, back off and wait for the right opportunity.
But sometimes caution is just fear wearing wisdom’s clothes. Ask yourself: is the wind actually wrong, or am I just worried I’ll spook deer getting setup? Is their really no good way to access the spot, or am I inventing a reason to avoid walking the extra half mile to sneak in? That afternoon my wind was fine. My access to the tight tree was doable but would require a little extra effort. Nothing was actually wrong. I was scared to commit to the aggressive play, so I dressed up indecisiveness as strategy and called it patience. And one of the biggest 8 pointers I’d hunted for three years walked past the empty tree while I sat forty yards out of bow range feeling that pit in my stomach grow.
Instead of asking “should I be aggressive or patient?”, ask “is there a real reason to hold back?” If you can’t name a specific reason to be cautious, like bad wind or bad access, then go make the aggressive move. Caution has to justify itself with evidence. It doesn’t get to win automatically just because it feels safer.
The Takeaway
I don’t tell the story of that big 8 pointer because it’s a good hunting story. It’s a story about a buck I never killed, and every time I hunt that field, I think about him walking past that empty tree.
But it made me a better hunter, and it changed how I treat opening week for good. I used to think the careful play was the smart play. That patience always paid. Now I know better. A short-window buck doesn’t reward patience. He punishes it.
Caution didn’t save that buck for me. It saved him from me.
Go hunt your kill tree.