Light & Variable

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blackwolf
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Re: Light & Variable

Unread postby blackwolf » Wed Mar 14, 2012 4:52 pm

One observation I have made over the years is that a light variable or almost nil breeze during a warm morning in the rut will have little buck action. But a lot of times lateer in the AM 10-11am the wind will pick up more consistently out of one direction. Time to be on stand, the bucks will start moving. I have seen a couple monsters under just these conditions between 10am and noon.


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PLB
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Re: Light & Variable

Unread postby PLB » Wed Mar 14, 2012 5:24 pm

blackwolf wrote:One observation I have made over the years is that a light variable or almost nil breeze during a warm morning in the rut will have little buck action. But a lot of times lateer in the AM 10-11am the wind will pick up more consistently out of one direction. Time to be on stand, the bucks will start moving. I have seen a couple monsters under just these conditions between 10am and noon.

I agree. I have witnessed the same over the years.

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Re: Light & Variable

Unread postby Motivated » Sun Sep 30, 2018 10:48 pm

I thought I would bump this one after talking about this yesterday. It seemed to have the most replies and decent posts after I searched the term "variable". Also since it hasn't been posted on in a while I don't feel bad about hijacking it a little bit. Sorry for the long post.

My thoughts are this, please let me know if you disagree. Not only are hunters in a little bit of a predicament during the light and variable winds, but the deer are as well. Now I don't believe they are reasoning like we do, but they have instincts and habits to draw back on.

I believe that light and variable winds overnight and into the early morning will lead to either 1 nonspecific wind bedding or 2 a return to the previous day's bed. (However, "I believe" statements don't have as much credibility as "what I have seen" statements.)

What I have seenon very calm mornings is a good amount of deer movement around 9:30 or 10 in the morning. Later than normal. I interpret this as the deer hanging back and moving to more secure bedding once the sun heats up and conditions become a little bit more predictable.

I'm going to try two things this season when light and variable winds occur in the morning. The first thing I'm going to try our long-range glassing, observation sits just to find out what the deer are doing on those variable wind days. If I can find a young buck moving into a spot on this day it might give me a good idea of what to do under similar conditions in the future. Then I could also try to move in for a kill later if the wind stabilizes. I'm not sure if he will wait until the evening to move or relocate as soon as the wind stabilizes to a direction in favor of wind specific bedding, but I'm sure that would depend on terrain and that specific deer.

The second thing I plan to try is to but up against a terrain feature that's going to cause a predictable thermal. The first thing that comes to mind is a warm water source during a cool autumn day. Most folks here now that it will draw air toward it and possibly create a predictable wind scenario for me. The second would be probably a south-facing slope if it is a sunny day, which should create a predictable thermal as well.

Please let me know if you have any other ideas other than just scouting for hot sign, hanging back, or hunting higher. I'm going to try observation sits and also try to find a predictable thermal.

A long time ago I posted something about avoiding beast hunting during light and variable winds. But I think now I've learned enough to try a couple strategies. Any other tricks you guys have up your sleeves?
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