Habitat changes across the Carolinas may find hunters in different circumstances as the peak of the deer mating season arrives.
Few hunting secrets exist today for whitetail seekers, especially during the rut or mating season.
There’s little dispute across the majority of North Carolina that these magical weeks begin near the end of October and extend through the first three weeks of November.
Those dates hold true for the eastern and Piedmont sections, with the prime rut in the western mountains starting about a week later.
Stories are legion of novices who carried buckshot-loaded shotguns, unscoped .30-30 lever-actions or tack-driving 7mm rifles who had a wild-eyed buck with rocking-chair headgear run within 10 yards and offer a broadside target.
However, hunters who regularly put big racks on the ground rely more on tried-and-true methods than luck. And they have more overall success. Think of it like this: What doctor would you choose to implant a pacemaker, a surgeon with 20 years experience or a newly-minted medical-school grad?
Not surprisingly, experience plays a role in bagging big bucks during the mating season, and that becomes obvious; successful hunters often share that they use similar tactics.
Just as biologists preach that suitable habitat is a key to having wild game, so it is with whitetails. The main differences in how North Carolina hunters use habitat are adaptations they make between eastern and western landscapes.
During November, eastern hunters must decipher the secret paths of whitetails in thickets and swamps, because the coastal plain is mostly flat as the proverbial pancake. Otherwise, its mostly rural landscape features large agricultural fields, small towns and river drainages.
By November, hunters who once placed stands near the edges of soybean and corn fields and carried flat-shooting rifles have abandoned the tactic of waiting for a trophy deer to appear; most crops have been harvested and excess grain eaten.
A hunter or two might get lucky and gain access to an unharvested field, but those places are few and far between as winter approaches. However, in the Piedmont and west, hunters choose long-range rifles — including scoped muzzleloaders accurate to 200 yards — because hilly woods are mostly clear of leaves, and sight lines are obvious.
John Mercer of Goldsboro and Josh Bohannon of Danbury hunt the east and Piedmont, respectively. Both have degrees in advanced whitetail tactics and both bagged impressive bucks last November by solving problems unique to their different regional habitats.
“First, I’m particularly looking for does and food sources,” said Mercer, a 46-year-old native of Onslow County who moved to Wayne County in 1988.
Mercer shot a buck last November that measured at 1761/8 gross and 1593/8 net non-typical inches. The rack, with an unusual, 14-inch beam jutting out from its right base, beneath the right main beam, had a 5-inch abnormal point below the extra tine, plus a 3-inch abnormal point sticking out of the 5-inch point.
For hunters in eastern North Carolina, food sources for deer in November are acorns, particularly pin oak and white oak acorns.
“In Wayne County (the rut) is a little bit toward the end of the (acorn crop),” Mercer said. “If there’s a big source of acorns, it’s a good place to be because it concentrates does, and bucks will be near them.”
After finding a good supply of acorns, Mercer tries to locate the nearest bedding area.
“If you can find a bedding area close to food sources, a place where the does don’t have to walk a long ways to find food, those places typically will have bucks,” he said.
Finding bedding areas presents a problem in eastern North Carolina due to the pancake-flat landscape. Many bedding areas are sheltered by low-lying, wet thickets. Hunters plunging into tangles and sloshing through swamps make noises similar to a marching troop of redcoats and alert whitetails.
But Mercer solved his area’s deer-bed puzzle several winters ago.
“The banks of the (Neuse River) can reach 50-feet tall,” he said. “Large creeks also may have sections with ridges. I scout for oak trees along those ridges, because bedding areas will be nearby. I look for deer trails leading from bedding places to oak ridges. All you need then is the right wind to hunt.”
Bohannon, a 31-year-old who grew up in Patrick County, Va., before moving to Danbury in Stokes County, also hunts ridges, but they’re definitely not in the lowlands. The Sauratown mountains, a Blue Ridge foothills area, dominates the region and includes peaks including Pilot, Brown, Ruben, Cook’s Wall, Moore’s Knob and Devils Chimney. Bohannon says many ridges are marked by fields that go almost to the highest elevations. He places ladder stands along those field’s edges.
“(November) is a typical time to hunt the top of a ridge,” he said. “Lots of guys put stands on ridges because you usually can see a long ways. If you get a situation where you can see down both sides of a ridge or can find a saddle, sometimes you can see bucks walking or chasing does in the woods on either side. But I’m also hunting food sources.”
Bottomland properties that Bohannon hunts are often planted in soybeans and corn, but deer quickly eat most excess grain by November, so he hunts oak ridges with nearby food plots.
“We plant wheat up there on top of one ridge,” he said. “It stays green throughout the winter. It’s where I put a stand because deer like to eat green stuff. There’s not a lot of green in Stokes County in November.”
A ridge-top field bordered on one side by a pine thicket and an overgrown weed field on the other was where he used a .50-caliber muzzleloader to drill a mainframe 4×4 buck with 14 total points that scored 1764/8 gross and 152 1/8 net inches last Nov. 13, 2015. Deer used the tightly-bunched pines as a bedding area.
“The big open field had been planted in wheat,” he said. “I put a ladder stand on the east side to take advantage of the wind.”
Bohannon had climbed into the ladder stand the day he killed the big buck but said he wasn’t expecting to see a mature, multi-tined deer.
“I don’t hunt necessarily to kill bucks,” he said. “I just go to watch deer. This time a buck came out.”
A machinist at Winston Tool Company in King, Bohannon said he uses trail cameras as scouting tools, but they hadn’t captured photos of the buck.
“I never saw him before, and I’ve got friends that use trail cams who said they’d never seen him either,” he said. “They’d have told me if they’d seen him or gotten pictures.”
On the other hand, Mercer doesn’t have the luxury of long, natural sight lines from his stands like Bohannon because he hunts at Wayne County. So he relies heavily on trail cameras — 12 months a year — to discover where deer bed.
The vice president of operations for family-owned Builders Discount Center, Mercer hunts two farms and is dialed into modern deer discovery tactics, particularly with trail cameras.
“At different times, I have set up from five to 20 cameras,” he said, admitting he had nine cameras out before the 2016 season opened.
Just before the mid-September beginning of archery season, Mercer places cameras around trails leading to crop fields, searching for regularly-used paths to and from bedding areas.He said he’s had good success hunting near food plots and deer beds, especially during the muzzleloader season.
“I think the best late-year food plots for deer have Australian winter peas,” Mercer said. “Anyone can grow them, and if they can withstand the deer in September, they’ll be a good food source when other browse is gone.
“I like to hunt with a bow and muzzleloader, but I also love a 300 Short Mag when it’s rifle season.”
Mercer doesn’t shoot deer over corn or other baits. He uses bait to lure deer within camera range because he’s curious and doesn’t want to waste time hunting a property that doesn’t hold a big buck.
“I put out corn near bedding areas (a few weeks before hunting season) mainly to get an inventory with my cameras,” he said.
Although he prefers to hunt all season with a compound bow, weather, wind or other factors may cause him to carry his rifle in November.
“I can’t hunt (near) the bedding areas because it’s too thick,” said Mercer, who clears shooting lanes during the summer using a bush hog and grinds up limbs, brush and the like with a large mulcher.
“Some of my shooting lanes are 300 yards long,” he said. “Once I cut one, it’s easy to keep it clear with the bush hog.”
He sets stands near those trails, depending upon the time shown on his digital photos. Then he factors wind direction.
“If your camera catches a buck in August using a certain trail, and you don’t disturb him, say, during a half-moon period, he’ll travel that same trail in November at the same time,” he said.
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