Late Season Advice Please

I will be going hunting next weekend (the 15th & 16th) and have little late season experience. I was hoping the IDO experts would share some valued advice.

Does it pay to be on stand at dawn, or should I wait until 10 am or so and plan on sitting the rest of the day?

Do you recommend calling? I was thinking of using a Lil Can to sound like a fawn that is now in estrus and the occasional inhale only grunts once and a while… social grunts.

Do I use buck scent / lure?

If I don’t have a food plot will I be wasting my time freezing my a$$ off?

Is this the time to throw caution to the wind or play it safer than any other time of the year?

I will be hunting a mixed hardwoods / bog area of Pine County. I am sitting on general usage year round travel corridors. I saw a hand full of nice bucks (100 – 130’S) during the pre-rut and rut from these stands. This is the first year I have chosen to not shoot the first 2 year old basket racked buck to enter my shooting lane. I hope it pays off to hold out and be more selective.

Is there any food source available? This time of the year, especially as it gets colder the main draw will be food so sitting on food sources or trails leading to them is key. The second rut should be here or will be by then so a can call is a good idea in my opinion. I would skip the scent. I don’t hunt much mid day in late season. Mostly morning and evening with evening being the most productive. If it gets real cold they will need to feed more often, but an all day sit at 0-10 degrees if a tough sit. Good luck!

In my experience, you need to find food. I wish we had snow because the deer will begin to yard up once we get some. In my area, the deer haven’t yarded up yet but they are hitting a specific corn field. Late season is like early season, travel routes from bed to feed are your best bet. If you can get to your stand early enough to get them coming back to bed, then i would hunt there in the morning too. As of now, calling hasn’t been working for me until i see the buck. I had a 1.5 y/o come by at 55 yards and work his way away from me. I made a couple quick can bleats and he started trotting towards me. They’re beginning to search again so i would definitely bring some calls.

Have you looked at your spot on Google Earth? It’s a great prescouting tool.

The only KNOWN food sources are woody browse. They always seem to be chewing on something when I have deer near my stand. Using Google Maps (not Google Earth) I know a farmer has fields to the East / North east of the hardwoods. I haven’t done the ground work to know what he plants. I also know there is a small farm field to the west. There is a bog on the north and west of the hardwoods. I’ve noticed deer moving from East to West along the bog in the AM and then crossing into the bog. PM sits are just the opposite. They immerge from the bog to my West and head past me going East. If the far fields are useless, I’m not sure what to say for travel patterns.

The harder you work, the luckier you’ll get…

Several times in late season I’ve sat early morning- left the stand and returned in mid afternoon and found fresh tracks under and around my stand.

Like the others before me said…FOOD!!! That is the key to late season success. If you know that the farmer has a field, get over there and find the trail in. It’ll pay off

If all else fails, put your waders on, and start setting traps in the river bottoms. I was on a new property today from 6:30am to 1:30pm setting a new line. Two does swam from an island to shore and off into a standing corn field. Couple more came out of thick cover across another pond and farted around in the water for about 10 minutes. Was setting a beaver slide with a 330 conibear in my hand and a nice 8 walked about 45 yards from me. Found a dead 10pnt in the pond – I think earlier bow season??? Just seems like they know when you don’t have a bow or rifle with. I enbcounter so many deer when trapping, yet sit in a stand all day and only see a couple