What makes Hill country so good/different?

[Brad]

this is just my guess, another reason could be a shift of food sources as well. They're spending less time in the ag fields and the grasses and are moving to acorns, mast, and woody browse. At that time of the year, the does spending more time in the woods for that reason, means the bucks are starting to run around the woods like 21 year old dudes out bar hopping to pick up chicks...? maybe

[James]

It doesn’t have anything to do with wind in my opinion. As others have said hill country is good in late October because the leaves are down, the crops are coming out and it’s all timber and the deer have to be concentrated there. Bucks have to travel in the timber to search for does.

However, I would argue that the 3rd week in October isn’t necessarily the best time to kill the biggest buck. In my experience of hunting hill country, which I pretty much have exclusively hunted for years now, the biggest bucks I have killed and seen come in November. I do see a huge uptick in yearling, 2yo and 3yo activity in late October but in my own personal experience I just haven’t seen the biggest ones then. I did kill a 5yo buck on October 24 in hill country one year, but right place and right time. He was bedded close and I rattled him in early in the evening.

It can be done, but if I were scheduling only one week of vacation to get the biggest buck in the woods in hill country. I’d take the first week in November off.

[Exophysical]

Personally, I only hunt hill country, and its almost entirely because the way game responds to thermals in hill country makes them more predictable. As for the third week of October, possibly with crops off playing the topography and the thermals is a better bet for some? I agree that its not my favorite time to hunt, I'd agree that November is a better time to kill a mature buck. For pure numbers of buck sightings I think its hard to beat the first two weeks of November, but in my area I think more really big ones get taken in the last half of November than in the first half, I think the big bucks tend to cover more ground when hot does start to become more scarce.

[Exophysical]

Sorry duplicate.