A lot changes in October. One of the biggest things is the cover. Leaves start falling off of trees and brush. The ground cover that once existed is now open. Food sources change and hunting season opens and introduces pressure. Deer will react to that.
I'll share something else that I've observed and learned from reading some books on the biology of whitetail. You'll probably notice in mid-October you start to see some scrapes open up. This happens for a couple of days. But then all of a sudden the activity tries up. The scrapes get filled in with leaves they're not freshened up or used anymore. They also appeared pretty randomly and usually in the open, commonly on hiking trails. You also start seeing activity dry up on your cameras. So you ask a question what happened? Where did the deer go? Well here is the answer.
In mid-October, sometime around the 15th or 20th, mother nature sends the Matriarch doe into estrus. That sends all the bucks, for a brief time, batshit crazy. They start making scrapes and rubs. This sign is worthless to hunt over by the way. But then the activity dries up. This is because none of the others does have come into estrus yet. What the doe herd is doing now is actually trying to hide from the bucks. This usually sends them into the thickest nastiest wettest cover on the land. But something still relatively close to some food. Greenbriar and Dogwood swamps that abut an oak flat for example. But such places are typically not where humans go either. This is another reason you'll see the activity dry up on your cams if they're not in the right places. Does want to hide and move as little as possible at this moment.
Now the above is a valuable data point. What you can do is count 30 days ahead from when you see those first scrapes open up. This is when the rest of the does will come into estrus. This will be peak breeding, otherwise known as "the lockdown". The 7 to 10 days prior to that will be peak seeking and chasing. So say you found those mid-October scrapes opening up around the 20th (you would if you were in the woods). That means lockdown will be around 11/20 and peak rut chasing and seeking will be around the 10th to the 15th... Right on time, every year. The exception being when the herd is stressed, by something like drought. Such factors can move it a bit. But generally not much.
So the "lull" as it is sometimes commonly referred to is really just the herd responding to a number of things. They're biology, changing cover, changing food sources, and more than anything else - hunting pressure. If you biol it down to it's simplest terms, deer care about 3 core things...
Staying alive
food
sex and reproduction
Of those 3 things, #1 on the list is staying alive. This will have the deer move out of places where the cover is down and where they detect humans/pressure. So what do you have to do to get back on deer? Find the security cover. Find that cover in a place human's don't go. The most straight forward way to do that is distance. Put distance between you and the rest of the hunting crowd. Get away from the parking areas. If you see human cut trails, trimmed up trees for a climber, tree stands, glow tacks, flag tape, tinks bottles, or any other human sign, move on until you don't see that stuff anymore. If the land you're on gets hammered, and you can't escape the pressure, find another piece of land. Of figure out how to access it from an area people don't go because there's no parking.
I covered 4 miles yesterday, according to my GPS, on the hike in/out to a spot I hunted yesterday evening. I had a good encounter that did not result in a shot opportunity. But I did gain intel and data points for subsequent years. But I still saw glow tacks on trees even that deep in. So it's best to consider, you may be "hardcore" and willing to do what is necessary. But you're not the only one. Sometimes, you really do just need to go somewhere else.
I'm not trying to tell anyone that they're doing anything wrong, or how to do things, or that they're wrong in any way. My word is not gospel or scientific law in regards to whitetail behavior. Just stuff I've learned from others here willing to share, and a lot of hard knocks. When I fail, I don't just shrug it off and move on. I ask why. I come home, I upload my GPS tracks and waypoints, reexamine the terrain, compile notes on the observed terrain, cover, sources and distance to observed signs of pressure, etc. Then I try to change the things that I can. Get further away from pressure, get into some different cover, that sort of stuff. 80% of the deer occupy about 20% of the woods. So if you're in the wrong place, you're going to have a lot of boring sits. That place changes week to week as the season progresses as well. So you need to adapt. Well, you don't need to do anything, but you'll have a lot more success if you do.
I find it helpful to keep a journal. When I have an encounter I also note the GPS position (saved in Google Earth), the date, wind direction and conditions, time and direction of observed deer travel. When the season is over I revisit these areas again, try to locate the exact beds, make note of the entrance and exit trails, and just general lay of the land. These data points give me intel as to when to hunts the spots in subsequent years. I usually hunt them once and move on. See my prior point about pressure. Once the deer know you were there, and they will know, they'll relocate. So you have to do the same to stay on them.
Don't underestimate the value of in-season scouting. The best hunts I have are when I set out with no destination in mind. I identify an area based on wind, terrain, cover, time of year, food, pressure, etc. That area could be, say about 25 acres, in a 3000 acre swamp. I then scout it with my stand on my back until I find hot sign. If I find that sign in proximity to security cover / possible bedding, then I set up. These are evening sits because you can't do that scouting in the AM (dark). If I don't find sign, I won't even set up, I'll scout to dark, and head home. Sometimes I find the sign in the last 30 minutes of light and don't even have time to set up. I hunt from the ground if that happens. I see a lot of deer using this tactic.
I think of deer hunting like making a surgical and tactical strike. I'm in specific places at specific times for specific reasons. I sneak in uninvited and undetected, conduct my ambush, and then vacate the area.
All that said (long-winded I know), I'm hunting public land that sees a fair amount of pressure. Deer are well educated and most (but not all) hunters, less so. YMMV if you're on private where pressure is limited or if you're lucky enough or travel far enough to get on public that sees very little pressure. But keep in mind, pressure is not just from other hunters - it's from you too. A lot of people forget to consider their own presence in the equation.
It's tough work to get within 30 yards of a wild animal doing everything it can to stay away from you. Deer have been hunted for multiple millennia by humans. They're well adapted to staying alive. The perseverance of their species, while others have gone extinct, demonstrates that better than my words ever could.
I feel like "hunting" is becoming a dying craft/skill. Woodsmanship and good old fashioned hard work and perseverance are being replaced with the promise of quick success if you spend some bucks on trinkets and gadgets or scent control. But at the end of the day, you can't buy consistent success, you have to earn it. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. But to have consistent success, you just have to be good. You get good by taking your lumps and putting in the time and gain those woodsmanship skills.
Think about it like your career. You didn't get good at what you do overnight, or because you bought a new tool. It took time, experience, effort, dedication and a willingness to learn from failure. Hunting is no different.
A lot of people here have really helped me through the years. Some of them are no longer here. One, in particular, is no longer with us. I don't mean just not on this forum either, unfortunately. My activity in the hunting threads are my effort to add value to the conversation and pay that forward. But at the end of the day, I'm just another jamoke on the net, like everyone else here. If my advice doesn't resonate, you don't have to follow it.
