Now, I am probably going to get a lot of flack for this, and rightfully so. There are a lot of guys who know more about deer than me. A lot of guys who hunt more mature bucks, have killed more mature bucks, and have spent far more time studying deer than I have. A lot of those guys will tell me this is the dumbest idea in the world—but a lot of those guys are in a lot different situations than us.
A lot of those guys hunt bigger farms, have more opportunities, and hold more mature deer. A lot of those guys have never stepped foot into a pressured Michigan deer woods. And that is why I am telling you that doing something most of these guys say is dumb might not be the worst move this fall—hunting early-season mornings.
I know, I know. I hear it all the time too—don't hunt early-season mornings. This is the worst thing you can do. I am not saying the guys who tell you this are wrong. However, I would be willing to bet the majority of voices you have heard tell you this are hunting large private parcels, have one specific target buck they are after, and have a darn good chance of shooting that buck out of their box blind on any given evening on the first cold front this October.
But their situations are not like the average hunter. I have found a few situations where hunting early-season mornings has proven extremely lethal.
The first situation I have takes us back to 2021. Early October was HOT. I mean HOT. Temperatures were pushing 90 every day, and were not dipping much below that before dark. My cameras were showing awful movement on every property in the evenings.
However, one thing was becoming clear: the morning movement, and morning buck movement specifically, was insane.
Every morning, for about the first hour and a half to two hours, all of my cameras were extremely active. Temperatures every morning were down in the low 40s and hung around like that for an hour or two. It was almost like a mini cold front every morning, with temperatures pushing 50 degrees cooler than they were during the day.
On the morning of October 1st, I went in stupid early. I was set up over an hour and a half before daylight, waiting for the deer to filter into my woods from the adjacent crop fields.
Sure enough, about an hour before light, I could hear deer working throughout the woods. Bucks were grunting, rubbing trees, and hitting scrapes.
Forty-five minutes after daylight, I had a buck tag punched on a beautiful Michigan 8-point that was coming into my mock scrape.
Getting in early like this on an early-season morning, when the cameras and conditions told me I should, led to an easy shot on a buck who was enjoying the cool temperatures.
I have a pile of stories like this as well. My uncles and dad have stories upon stories of nice Michigan bucks they have killed early-season in the mornings, taking advantage of cool mornings and unpressured bucks in situations that they can take advantage of.
One of the big reasons why these early mornings can be so effective—and why you should take advantage of these mornings—is because of that pressure.
Many small properties, like the ones I hunt, might only divvy out a few opportunities a year. If the cameras and the deer are telling you when you need to hunt, you gotta hunt.
If there becomes a clear sign of when you can get in effectively and hunt a buck, there is no sense waiting for when the “pros” tell you to wait. Go in and take advantage of those conditions.
And these just might happen to be early-season mornings.
When the weather is cool for only a few hours a day and the deer are on a pattern, as long as you can get in clean, it can be extremely effective.
Hunters hunting one target buck who have the optimal setup to kill him without causing much risk have no reason to push it on the mornings. Fine, and rightfully so.
But not everyone is in that boat.
Sometimes, you just need to push it and take advantage of the opportunity.
-Alex Rewa, Host of "93 days"
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