Wednesday, October 04, 2006
A Case Of Too Much Wind
Only one thing is worse in this state than an east wind for deer hunting, and that is too much wind.
My thoughts last night about an impending storm were dead-on. The storm came rolling through about midnight, and there were scattered reports of funnel clouds southwest of Traverse City and elsewhere in the state.
The storm brought with it very high winds, heavy rain, and in some places golfball-sized hail. So if you see a deer walking around in a dazed manner, he or she may have been bonked on the head with a rather large piece of hail last night.
The wind, as often happens when a storm front passes through, also brought with it a northwest wind with gusts up to 25 miles per hour. That, my friends, is too much wind for good deer hunting.
Deer are a walking basket case to begin with. Add strong winds at this time of the year, and much of the fall color in our leaves begins to sail toward the ground. Leaves are falling, tree limbs are swaying, grass and weeds are bent over, and everything is in constant motion.
A dead calm is almost as difficult to hunt in as too much wind. Deer can hear a mouse running through dry leaves at 100 yards. How much chance does a hunter have if he tries to draw on a nearby buck.
The whisper of cloth again tree bark, cloth against cloth, the nearly silent hiss of an arrow being drawn back across an arrow rest: all will drive a whitetail buck or doe off. Often they don’t pause long enough to try to determine what spooked them. They get gone fast.
The wind can be a hunter’s best friend or his own worst nightmare. Play the wind right, control your scent, and stay downwind of a buck, and your chances of hunting success will soar. Get wrong with the wind, do nothing about your human odor, move at the wrong time or make some sound, and the hunt is over.
It seems our weather hasn’t been conducive to good hunting but we’re only four days into the season. Hunters often forget what happened last year or the year before, but as a reminder, we had a great deal of east wind in 2005, and only a few days in early October were worthwhile.
Deer get overly spooky when the wind circles, switches directions, gusts one minute and is nearly calm the next. They like a steady breeze from one quarter, and it shouldn’t blow too hard. Hunters hate those calm days when a ruffed grouse walking in dry leaves will spook deer a long distance away.
I’ve always thought that whitetails are very high strung. They remind me of a small piece of electrical machinery with a short circuit. They do not handle noise or movement well, and if they catch your scent, they may disappear before the hunter ever knows they were nearby.
Keep hoping for ideal hunting conditions. Cool temperatures, a soft breeze that barely ruffles the leaves on a tree, and you’ll find that the deer will move well. Each day is best taken as it comes because nothing can be done about changing Michigan weather.
But let’s hope we don’t have many more days like yesterday and today. —The Whitetail Wizard