When and Where to Hunt Whitetails in October

Where and when do you hunt whitetail during the month of October and how do you switch strategy, depending on the time of the month and the changing activity of the deer? Here's how we like to do it at Midwest Whitetail.

Early October

For the first 10 or 15 days, if we're after one specific buck, we're trying to pin down where he likes to be and we're going to hunt him in the evenings at a green source. We don't hunt a lot of mornings during this part of the season, as we feel like we can do more harm than good. You're more likely to push deer out of your area if you're heading to the stand in the morning when they're already in the field. We prefer to let the deer go back to bed and then wait, either in a transition area or right on that food source. If he's been showing any signs of daylight at all, we'll be right there on that food source. If we get any cold fronts, we're especially going to hunt those. Deer movement in general tends to increase during cold fronts, so we might sit out the particularly warm weather so as not to over-hunt the stands and educate the deer.

Middle Month

As we get to the middle of the month or later middle, maybe around the 20th, things really start ramping up. we're running cameras over scrapes, so we know where there's a deer we want to go after. And now those scrape lines and rub lines are really opening up, so we get closer to bed where we think he's bedding and sit over the scrapes or rub lines and see if we can catch him headed to food. You can still stick to the food sources--those are a good shot as well--but we really like those transition areas between bedding and food. During this middle part of October, the deer are nocturnal and tough to catch out in the open during the day. As before, any cold fronts that might come in really continue to help as well, so if you get any, you definitely want to be out there.

Late October

As we move into the later part of October, we change it up a little bit and we're sitting on food sources in the evening where we know does are going to be. If you hunt the same farm every year, you see four or five does in this area consistently year after year. That's a good area to be. We want to couple that with some kind of a funnel: a pinch-point travel corridor. If the bucks start cruising with some really good weather, they're out following the does and we want to catch them in that funnel. If we're hunting public ground or highly pressured private ground and we're not seeing bucks at the food source, or if the bucks are nocturnal, we're going to move back toward where we think they're bedding and try to catch them earlier in the afternoons. Same with mornings: we'll stay closer to bedding areas and hunt the fringes of them. Sometimes we'll be right in a bedding area on the downwind edge, keeping in mind all ravines, our entry and our exit.

We hope those tips help. Good luck out there!

--Midwest Whitetail