How to Take Hot-Weather Buck Deer
Day 5: Hunt the Water and Stay Scent-Free in Early Deer Season
Editor’s Note: Bow season opens in mid-October in many states, and in the South, the weather still can be hot and humid then. Hot-weather deer hunting calls for different tactics than when you’re cold-weather hunting. The deer are eating different foods and moving at various times. If you’re hunting in the South, especially if you decide to take advantage of North Carolina’s mid-September bow season, or the August hunting available in South Carolina on private lands, you need to know how best to hunt hot-weather bucks. You can bag bucks with your bow in hot weather. As winter seems to last only a short time today in many parts of the nation, more archers will have to learn how to bowhunt hot-weather bucks. The sportsmen we’ve interviewed this week live and hunt deer primarily in the Deep South for three to four months under hot-weather conditions each year and consistently bag their bucks every season.
 Deer hunters in Texas and other Western states have known for many years that water holes will draw-in white-tailed deer. However, anytime you hunt in hot weather – especially during a drought – beaver ponds, flooded timber, small creeks and any-other form of water will concentrate deer. Water provides several advantages for deer in hot weather. Deer ...
* will find the most-luscious foliage around water during hot weather,
* know water offers a barrier that keeps out hunters,
* discover that acorn trees around water often still will produce nuts even in a drought when the mast crop fails in an area.
 If you hunt a backwater slough or a beaver pond, many times you can use a pair of waders to get out into the flooded timber. Then you can put Bright Eyes, fluorescent- colored thumb tacks, in trees as you go to your stand. Utilizing this tactic, you can follow the Bright Eyes in the dark through the water to reach your stand before daylight. If you set up in a stand 15- to 20-yards from the edge of the water, you often will have an easy shot at a buck moving along the edge of the water just at daylight. During hot weather, bucks will feed on acorns that fall in the water. If heavy hunting pressure exists, they'll move through the water to avoid the hunters. They'll watch for danger to come from the land and rarely look out into the water to see a hunter.
 Solve Hot-Weather Hunting Problems:
All hot-weather hunters have problems controlling their human odor. If a hunter walks 50 yards in 80- to 90-degree weather and climbs-up a tree, he will perspire. Regardless of what substance he’s bathed with or washed his clothes in, the perspiration more than likely will penetrate those odor barriers. Hot-weather hunters encounter other problems.
Let's look at how many hot-weather hunters solve these problems. They:
* bathe with unscented soap;
* wash their clothes in unscented soap;
* hang their clothes on a line, and let rain water fall on them;
* powder their feet, socks and the insides of knee-high rubber boots with odor eliminators;
* wear camouflage pants, shirt, hat, headnet and gloves to blend-in with the terrain they'll hunt;
* carry backpacks with Ziplocs holding extra shirts and hats into their tree stands;
* remove their shirts and hats before climbing into their tree stands and spray their entire bodies with an odor neutralizer;
* spray themselves again with a light coat of odor neutralizer once in their trees;
* wear full headnets and gloves rather than using insect spray, which may scare deer away, unless they use an earth scent spray;
* carry a pair of ratchet cutters to prune limbs to move through thick cover; and
* try not to touch any limbs or bushes as they go from their vehicles to their stands.
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