By Will Brantley

“It ain’t over till it’s over,” the saying goes, and here in the Mid-South, there are still plenty of late-season deer hunting opportunities available. Harry Pozniak, owner of River Valley Farms in Cadiz, Kentucky, had a pretty good week of late-season muzzleloader hunting.

Harry said many of the hunters in camp last week have been youngsters looking for their first deer. And among those youngsters was his stepson, Nathan Barnes, age 9, who found success last Thursday. “We were hunting from an old, dilapidated horse barn that’s surrounded by a thicket and overlooking a clover and turnip field,” Harry says. “The buck came out, and we watched him for 40 minutes until Nathan settled down enough to shoot! He made a 60-yard heart shot, and we have a future deer hunter who’s totally addicted now. It’s cool to not only get kids involved, but to see them have success.” That’s Nathan with his trophy, above. Harry and Nathan’s mom, Jana, are two very proud parents.

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By Will Brantley

Overall Activity Status: Except for some late-evening activity, warm weather has kept things stale. “Things have really slowed down since it got so warm,” says Jimbo Robinson in West Tennessee. “We were getting a lot of daylight trail camera pictures two weeks ago, but now, most of the morning activity is around 4 a.m. Deer are only moving right before dark in the evenings.”

Fighting: I haven’t heard any fighting reports in a while. I have heard a couple reports of bucks returning to bachelor groups. I saw two bucks together in a field the other evening, although there were half a dozen does with them as well.

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By Will Brantley

Overall Activity Status: If you follow many of my posts, you know I frequently reference what my wife, Michelle, sees when driving back and forth to work each morning as a gauge of deer activity. Michelle has a 30-mile one-way trip through rural farm country that’s loaded with deer. All last week, deer sightings were slim or none. Wednesday morning, she saw 20 and called me with a question: “Could some deer still be rutting? Because there was a big buck chasing a little bitty doe all around a beanfield on the side of the road.”



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By Will Brantley

Overall Activity Status: The rut’s still cranking in most of the Mid-South, but deer activity has slowed significantly on the fields the past few days, and that’s often a sign of “lock down.” My good hunting buddy Tim Daughrity shot the big buck in the photo Saturday morning near Murray, Kentucky. Tim began the morning in a ground blind on the edge of a picked cornfield, but decided to change his strategy after sitting 45 minutes without seeing a deer. “It just didn’t seem to be happening in the fields,” he said, “so I took my climber and eased into the woods near a thicket. I wasn’t up there any time before the first doe came through.”

Another doe walked through a short time later. Tim expected a buck to be following somewhere behind the does, and before long, footsteps in the leaves and a glimpse of antler through the thicket confirmed his hunch. Tim wasted no time filling his Kentucky buck tag.
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By Will Brantley

The rut is on in the Mid-South, but depending on where you live, it’s in varying stages. The Mid-South states are at that pivotal latitude where the whitetail rut timing changes fast. A hundred miles north or south can make weeks’ worth of difference.

Northern tier states—Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia—tend to follow a typical Midwestern rut schedule, and bucks began seriously chasing does about two weeks ago. Now, many bucks are “locked down” with receptive does; it’s the true breeding peak of the rut.

“We had some good weather and a pretty pronounced chase phase of the rut in much of West Virginia,” says Chris Ryan, who works for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources. “The peak breeding should occur over the next few days. That’ll mean bucks are locked down, and it can make the hunting pretty tough. Sometimes hunters actually think the rut is ending at that time, but it’s simply hitting the next phase.”
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By Will Brantley

I only had about an hour to hunt Friday afternoon, but at this time of year, an hour can be plenty of time. I snuck into a stand hanging over a winter wheat food plot and, within 20 minutes, I was watching a field full of deer. A spike chased a doe several laps around the field edge, up into the timber, and back again. The commotion attracted the sound of this nice 8-pointer. The buck stepped into the field, worked a scrape, and then took the spike’s place in chasing the doe.

As fun as this time of year is to hunt, it can be maddening for a bowhunter to see a nice buck, but not be able get a shot. Shooting light was fading fast when the doe finally led the buck across one of my open lanes 30 yards away. I hit him with a loud, aggressive voice bleat, and he stopped just as I drew my bow. I had to shoot fast. Fortunately, the arrow hit the right spot, and we found the buck piled up just off the edge of the field. I am a happy hunter to... [ Read Full Post ]