Dealing with hunting pressure is often inevitable during a gun opener; here’s how to deal with it

Archery deer opener comes silently, like archery hunters themselves. Oh, I’m sure there are bowhunters who go to archery deer camp, but it doesn’t have the hoopla, the tradition, or the excitement of the firearms deer opener in Minnesota. Nor does it have all the people.

For archery opener, you can really put together a solid game plan. Scout to find where deer are moving, or monitor their movements with trail cameras. True, bachelor groups are just breaking up about the time archery season begins, and bucks become more solitary, but if you’ve done your homework, you stand a reasonable chance of seeing a buck.

And if not the first sit, maybe the second. Or the 10th.

But with the firearms deer opener (Nov. 8, 2026), all your pre-season scouting may be for naught once a few hundred thousand orange-clad hunters simultaneously barge into the woods. True, you might catch a buck sneaking along to check scrapes or going about his daily movements at first light of opening day, but in many cases, once he gets a whiff of human scent all over the woods, all bets are off.

OK, maybe not all bets.

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If you’re hunting the center of your own fair-sized property, the local deer probably won’t even realize firearms deer season is open. But eventually the neighbors could bump a deer. And certainly on heavily pressured public areas, deer figure out quickly that there are a lot of intruders. They may not realize they’re being hunted, but just the same, they don’t like the human disturbance.

So what’s your opening-day game plan? First, you’ve definitely got to consider hunting pressure. If it’s high in your area, plan accordingly.

If there are only a few hunters, you can probably expect deer to mostly go about their daily routine. In areas with low hunting pressure, I’d rely on my scouting and hunt my plan, whether that be hunting over scrapes, sitting along the edge of a food plot, or perching near a funnel to watch for cruising bucks.

Even where hunting pressure is high, I’d rely on scouting at least for opening morning and hope to catch a buck in his normal routine.

Where hunting pressure is turned up a notch more, you might rely less on scouting and try to plan your hunt based on a deer’s reaction to that pressure. For example, a friend of mine once upon a time was hunting a parcel of public land that gets a lot of hunting pressure. His plan? He arrived very early, got way back in the nastiest swamp where he knew deer would flee once the orange army started traipsing through the woods, and let other hunters push deer to him.

And you know what? It worked like clockwork.

To be successful in pressured hunting areas, you have to constantly adapt. If your target buck spent the night on the neighbor’s land and got shot first thing opening morning on the way to your stand, you have to regroup and figure out a new plan. That’s the part that can be tough to handle.

But it’s not all gloom and doom. The presence of other hunters in the woods can also get deer moving. Spend all day sitting in a funnel or escape cover and let other hunters push deer to you.

As people get bored or cold or head back for lunch, they may just push a deer toward you if you’re patient and willing to stick it out.

Often, you can escape the crowds and find less-pressured deer if you’re willing to work a little harder and get farther off the roads and trails. Take a canoe and paddle across a lake or river to get to places few other hunters venture. Or put on hip boots or waders and slog back into a nasty swamp. I’ve done both these things and yes, it’s a lot of work. But it can be worth it to find unpressured hunting spots.

Most importantly, pay attention to what’s going on around you and be willing to adjust your plan. If you had a great spot on opener, saw deer, but just didn’t see a buck you wanted to shoot, great. You might hunt the exact same spot the second day. But if you saw more hunters than deer, or deer activity was nil, you might want to formulate a new plan for Day 2.

Maybe the problem wasn’t other hunters. Maybe it was a poor acorn crop and the deer just weren’t around. Or deer walked where you didn’t expect them to be, and you couldn’t get a shot.

Good hunters formulate a plan, figure out where deer are, and make the kill. Great hunters adapt to changing situations and change their fortunes when things don’t go as planned, rather than hunting the same old way each day and simply hoping for the best.