The physical world is full of cycles that most of us understand: the changing of seasons, the phases of the moon, the coming and going of the tides, things like that. How individuals treat those cycles often has a lot to do with their success on the water and in the woods. Which of us doesn’t change where and how we fish as the tide rises and falls?Cycles, I was taught, even extend to the athletic field. More than 30 years ago, in a previous life as a sportswriter, I covered a high-school football team coached by a gray-haired, 60ish local legend known to some as the “Silver Fox.” He was convinced that examining the biorhythms of his players and those of the opposition would give him an edge on Friday nights, and his 70-percent winning percentage supported his claims.
Biorhythms, he explained, are cycles that our bodies go through — physically, emotionally and intellectually. Our energy and concentration waxes and wanes according to where our biorhythms are. Now, understand, biorhythms aren’t some kind of new-age thing that have to do with crystals and chanting. They suggest that our bodies go through cycles lasting between 23 and 33 days. When our cycles are up or on the rise, we have more energy, we’re sharper mentally, we think more clearly. Makes sense to me.
One afternoon, the coach showed me a gameplan based on biorhythms. His upcoming opponent was an unbeaten team that featured two all-world prep linebackers, both of whom eventually wound up in the NFL. If you were an offensive signal-caller, they were the last players you’d ever even dream about testing. But the Fox showed me their biorhythms; according to his chart, the strong-side linebacker was going to be in the toilet. On the other hand, his own stud running back was going to be on the other end of the spectrum: bulletproof.
That Friday night, the Fox ran right at the strongside backer, a 6-2, 230-pound specimen who started for a ranked college team the next season as a freshman. In the second half, the big linebacker began to crack. The Fox’s tailback kept pounding, and about the end of the third quarter, the linebacker was done. After each play, he could barely drag himself back to the huddle. The tailback, on the other hand, just got stronger and stronger. He ran for 200 yards, all of them right over the blue-chip linebacker, a performance the Silver Fox had perfectly predicted.
What does this have to do with hunting or fishing? More than any other time, October is a month of cycles for South Carolina outdoorsmen. It’s the best month to catch tailing redfish when the grass flats flood on super-high tides. For deer hunters, it’s the rut.
The rut describes the breeding season of the whitetail deer. The “peak” of the rut in a local area is the four- or five-day period when the greatest number of does enter their 28-day estrus cycle and are bred. As the rut approaches, bucks start to act funny. Their normal caution retreats. They come out at times other than pitch-black dark. They have more on their minds than food and safety. When they hit the peak of the rut, their behavior changes again. And your hunting tactics should change. If you can factor in how the moon cycle affects deer behavior and when the rut will hit, it’s just like having a chart entitled “Biorhythms for Bambi.”
I miss the Fox; I wish he were still around to tell me where to move my deer stand, when to hunt at dawn, dusk and lunchtime, and when that buck would have a bad day. I’m sure he’d look at the right chart.
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