CHUCK
K OLAR blaze coats for sitting in their deer stands or stands with heaters in them, because a lot of the time it’s cold by our standards, not by a hunter’s in Texas.
We are also told warm weather shuts down the rut, deer don’t move when it gets too warm. Magazine articles and hunting shows have been telling hunters this for years.
This hunter told us all of those things. He was born and raised in Central Wisconsin and was now living in Cloquet, Minn. We were eating lunch by a very small scenic flowage.
He was dressed like a trapper or maybe a duck hunter and had a skiff on a homemade wood rack on his truck. But he told us he was bow hunting and was driving around since the rut was shut down and the deer weren’t moving. We had seen several deer already crossing the roads that morning.
He said he felt for his friends hunting
LOCAL OUTDOORSMAN
deer on opening weekend of gun deer season in Minnesota that day. He didn’t know how they were handling the “hot” conditions. It was 62 degrees at the time. Some guy in Arizona would have been glad to have 62 degrees when he headed out to hunt that morning. He told us we was sweating just sitting in his stand. And here lies the rub. He had top quality gear for hunting the rut. Temperatures this time of year normally start in the high 20’s or low 30’s and normally top out at mid 40’s. So I’m sure he was uncomfortable. He should have been wearing a lighter shirt and light pants at that time of day. He felt it was too hot for the deer to move, but we had seen one 30 minutes prior. Walk into any hunting clothing retailer in our area and try find a light button up cammo shirt or hoody for conditions in the 60’s or higher. The hype tells us we always need a cammo jacket that is wind proof, water proof, scent controlling, designed for temps in the 40’s or lower, and costs well over a hundred bucks. Same with the pants and boots. They have to be the knee high rubber boots that cost $150. That stuff is nice when the temps are right, but when temps get hotter or colder things start to unravel.
When we left the lunch area we saw a doe cross the road within 200 yards of the two track. A half-mile or later, we came upon an area of hardwoods on the left and thick lowland brush on the right. The cover was about 600 yards long and on the other end was a hunter with a nice seven-point buck he had just loaded on his truck. He shot it at noon.
He was wearing old woodland cammo fatigue pants, a black T-shirt, and had a pack with an old woodland cammo field coat sticking out. He was wearing a pair of Fleet Farm day hikers.
My friend was asked if he hunted in bad conditions. He told the guy if he didn’t he wouldn’t get to hunt much.
Don’t believe the hype, stay flexible – hunting season is a fluid situation, you can’t shoot them from the couch.
