Ryan Rothstein: Don’t sleep on October cold fronts

The more things change, the more things stay the same, or so the phrase goes. While I’m not necessarily a subscriber to that philosophy, there’s no doubt it rings true for certain aspects of the deer-hunting world.

When I was a kid, every deer-hunting magazine I picked up would warn of the folly of hunting the “October lull.” If you go on YouTube, TikTok, or virtually any other social media platform, you’ll find endless videos in which another “influencer” in southern Iowa or Wisconsin or (insert big-buck state here) will tell you all about the horrors of being in a deer stand in mid-October.

Best to wait for the peak rut, they’ll say.

I don’t have the greatest sense of smell, but in my experience, this is all starting to reek of the bull going No. 2. Here’s why.

Based on a compilation of GPS-collar research done around the country across multiple studies, daily buck movement will nearly triple from early fall until the rut, regardless of location. Here in the north country, that means from our archery opener until peak rut, that buck you’re watching on trail camera is likely moving nearly three times more in November than he was in September.

I know what you’re thinking: Isn’t that a good thing?

On paper, if a buck is moving three times more during the rut, shouldn’t he be more killable?

That would hold true – if bucks stayed within the same home range throughout the entire fall. The problem is that bucks increase their overall area of travel as fall goes on.

MORE WHITETAIL COVERAGE FROM OUTDOOR NEWS:

Heavy rain has impact on 2024 fawn survival in south-central Minnesota study area

Ralph Loos: Are rifles boosting deer hunting numbers in Illinois? Not so far

Patrick Durkin: Wisconsin DNR keeps ignoring CWD elephant in the room

Yes, they’re more active, but they also have a bad habit of wandering far and wide, searching for love. Unless you control vast swathes of land, this does little to improve your odds of connecting on your target buck. Once November rolls around, that buck is far more likely to get shot several miles from your property.

And then there’s the elephant in the room. If you’re a bowhunter in Minnesota, even in a year like this with a “late” firearms opener (Nov. 9), you have less than half of the rut to connect before the Orange Army comes to town. Why wait?

The untold secret of those “influencers” who hunt in states such as Iowa or Illinois is that they have two factors going for them that, unfortunately, most Minnesota deer hunters don’t.

The first is that the overall buck age structure is extremely good in most all of those states. It’s a lot easier to kill a stud 4.5-year-old buck when there are a lot of them around.

The second is that, nearly across the board, most big-buck states don’t start their primary firearms season until the back half of the peak breeding window, or in some cases not until the breeding is all but over.

Even Wisconsin, which has one of the earliest firearms season openers of the big-buck states, doesn’t unleash the Orange Army until the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Many states, including Iowa and Illinois, don’t start until December, when most of the breeding is long complete.

It’s a simple fact: If you’re a bowhunter in Minnesota, you have far less time during the rut to arrow a deer than you would in virtually any of the renowned big-buck states. It’s got to be awfully easy for some social media star to sit there in Iowa and tell you to wait for the rut when he or she has the entire month of November to hunt a relatively pressure-free deer herd that also happens to include a much higher number of mature bucks.

I don’t say all this to discredit those folks in other states. In their situations, with much different circumstances than ours here, their advice may be spot-on. But in a state with an early firearms opener like Minnesota, a successful archery season often requires a more novel approach.

For that reason, I’m not skipping out on October cold fronts.

Yes, theoretically, your target buck is moving less than he will in a month or so. It also means that he’s more predictable, his home range is smaller, and it’s easier to pick up on a pattern that he may have.

While I’ve killed only one early-October buck in Minnesota, I have more than a handful of trail camera images that make me kick myself for skipping an early- or mid-October hunt that I was contemplating but ultimately decided to skip.

Across the board, all of those images came on days featuring a massive cold front. In each case, the primary reason I decided against hunting was that it was too early, or the timing wasn’t right.

Although research hasn’t quite teased out an answer to why big cold fronts seem to affect deer movement, there is a pile of anecdotal data to suggest that they can matter. In my personal experience, particularly during a fall such as this where we’ve experienced consistently above-normal temperatures, that massive cold front matters even more.

If you’ve been following a single deer that seems to end up on a food plot just after dark, or if you regularly catch him heading to a bedding area just prior to legal shooting light, make October cold fronts a priority. Any time there’s a forecast showing a 10-plus-degree temperature drop from the day prior, do whatever it takes to be hunting that day, whether it’s a morning or evening sit.

It’s still deer hunting, so there are no guarantees. But in my experience, your odds are substantially higher to encounter that buck during these October cold fronts. While breeding is at least a few weeks away, bucks are starting to get a little careless, and a big cold front can be the trigger that causes them to slip.

Plan your strike while he’s still somewhat predictable, and you might be notching your tag during the so-called October lull.