By: Aaron Outdoors
November has come and gone, a cold wind now blows, and you still have that buck tag in your pocket. Panic starts to set in and many folks give up on filling their tag, thinking it is hopeless after the rut has ceased. It is easy to get discouraged in the late season and even easier to give it up but don’t lose hope. There are still opportunities at a late season brute if you hunt smart.
One great thing about the late season is food is king! If you can find a food plot, agriculture field, natural browse, or bait you just might be in the money for some of the best hunts all season long! We love to hunt the late season because bucks get patternable again. The randomness of the rut is gone and the big mature bucks are slaves to their stomach needing to recharge their rut worn bodies.
This time of year, we transition all our cellular cameras back to food. This way we know the minute the deer are back on that particular food source and what times they are using it. Oftentimes you can almost set your watch by a late season buck coming in to feed.
We’ve used this tactic many times in the past and with the innovation of cellular game cameras by GSM Outdoors we have up to the minute information about where to hunt and when. We were able to capitalize on a mature buck this December utilizing this very tactic.
We hunt in Kentucky where baiting is legal and common practice so on December the 8th, in preparation for the upcoming muzzleloader season, we freshened up a bait site and where we had a Stealth Cam Connect. The next evening we had a mature buck show up before the end of legal shooting time. We had not seen this buck on camera in several weeks. We knew we had to make a move the next evening, which was opening day of the late muzzleloader season in Kentucky. The buck looked worn from a long November and we just knew he would be back feeding the following evening.
We settled into our Muddy ground blind early the evening of December 10th and had several does all around us all evening. Right on cue, the old bruiser came in at almost the exact same time as the evening before. The MRI we gained from our Stealth Cam Connect put us in the blind that evening. The camera even caught the smoke from the muzzleloader and the buck running off. He didn’t make it 75 yards and he piled up. It’s pretty great when a plan comes together and you can see it all unfold right from the Stealth Cam Connect’s photos!
So take it from us, if you still have that buck tag in your pocket, don’t panic. There is still time. Transition your cell camera to a food source and let it tell you when to move in and make your move on your target buck. Late season can be dynamite, just find the food, and let that cell camera do the rest. The proof is in the pictures!
