It’s the first week of October on the farm I primarily hunt here in western Kentucky. Like clockwork, all of my trail cams that are still located on early season food sources, like soybeans, have gone quiet. Two weeks earlier and these same food sources were full of bucks every evening. The cameras I’d moved to the cut corn and oaks that had started dropping were a different story. The bucks didn’t leave, they’d just moved with the food.
Is the October lull real? Not on the ground I hunt. The standard October lull deer hunting advice says mature buck sightings plummet , they go nocturnal, and overall buck movement decreases through the first half of the month, so you should be selective, save your spots, and wait on the pre-rut. I can see why a guy would believe that. If you’re hunting the first part of October the same way you hunted the early season, the same bean field from the same stand location, then yea, it’s going to look like the deer disappeared. They didn’t. You’re hunting September in October.
What’s actually going on in October
Three things happen on the farms I hunt between the end of September and the middle of October, and each of them affect what the deer are doing.
Bucks finish shifting into their fall ranges. Nine times out of ten, a buck’s core area in the fall doesn’t include the field you watched him in all summer.
Crops start coming out. Mainly corn on the farms I hunt, and a cut cornfield full of waste grain pulls deer the beans can’t compete with once they start to turn.
Acorns start dropping and once on the ground, a buck that fed on a field edge in September has every reason to spend his evenings in the timber instead.
What all of this means is that bucks aren’t necessarily moving less or turning nocturnal. They just start moving and feeding where hunters aren’t sitting.
What October lull deer hunting looks like on my farms
I don’t have to guess at any of this, because trail camera data and time in the stand show me the same thing every year. By the first part of October the bucks on the farms I hunt have mostly shifted into their fall ranges. The beans are turning and losing their pull, and a camera sitting on beans that showed bucks every evening during early deer season goes quiet, and I mean quiet.
The cameras I shift to the cut corn and the acorns start gaining traction. It’s the same bucks eating something different. By the middle of the month the cameras I keep on scrapes start seeing more buck activity, which is my first sign that October is about to turn into the pre-rut.
If your cameras are still hanging where you put them in August and you’re still hunting these locations, that’s your lull. Move them with the food and your cameras will start to light up again.
I hunt every chance I get in October. That’s not me being stubborn. A mature buck in early October is on a pattern, and a buck on a pattern is about as killable as he’s going to be all year. Come November, once the rut is in full swing, that pattern goes out the window.
The two weekends I hunted September in October
I learned this the way most guys learn it. I went into the season with a buck figured out. The intel was solid in September but my mistake was trusting that intel into October. I ended up burning two weekends sitting stands that were setup for his early season pattern when I should’ve quickly realize that all the new intel was telling me his pattern had shifted. After two weekends of looking at yellowing beans and the occasional doe, I knew it was time to make a change.
That sums up the October lull in my opinion. Two weekends wasted, hunting a pattern that ended in September. In season scouting is how I stay on top of changing food and patterns now, because that mistake is the one I’m least interested in repeating.
How I hunt October, and the one place I’d slow down
I can already hear the backlash from this article. Why would you want to pressure and possibly burn your hunting property before the rut? Aren’t you worried that your target buck is going to figure you out and move to the neighbors? And to answer that, no I’m not worried about any of it.
None of this means you can get sloppy while hunting October. Hunting a property hard and hunting careless are two completely different things. I still play the wind, make sure my access is dialed in, and that I am confident in a spot before I climb a tree. Mature bucks during October are still patternable, and in my experience that means he’s killable if you play it right.
Here are the three keys to finding success while hunting in October. Stay mobile, so when the food moves you move with it instead of sitting in a tree hoping. Hunt the freshest sign, meaning the scrapes that opened this week and the oaks that just started dropping, not the field edge that was hot in September. And keep fine tuning your setups after every sit. If the wind was a little off or the deer came through out of range, fix it before the next one instead of hoping it works out.
The one place I’d pump the brakes is a small parcel. If a small piece is all you have to hunt, hunting it every evening in October piles up pressure fast, because every trip in and out counts and there’s nowhere for that pressure to spread. On a piece like that, be more methodical. Pick the sits where the food and the wind line up, and let the other days go.
The bucks on my farms don’t take October off, and I doubt yours do either. The October lull isn’t a thing. It’s a name hunters slapped on a stretch of the hunting season where they hunt the same way they did in September and expect the same results.