Oak Duke

The celestial spheres have ganged up to throw us deer hunters an astronomical curve ball this year, skewing the methodology of how we determine the dates of the 2025 whitetail rut a bit.
A pitcher’s curve ball entices batters into making poor swings and deceives them by breaking one way or the other.

From my precarious perch in a ridge-top oak tree, I watched four big bucks work out their breeding ritual. The center of their rapt attention…a tiny doe, in the corner of a field. The diminutive size of the doe amplified the buck’s size, as back then I was under the mistaken idea that mature bucks only bred mature does.
Back in those years, now 40 years ago, I was hunting with a right-handed 70-pound draw Howard Hill longbow, and the tending, breeding group I observed occurred during the short, mid-December extended archery season here in New York state back then.

The call came in to my wife from one of her friends, “tell Oak there is a big buck in my front lawn, down by the woods, and it is just standing there, looking down at a little doe that is lying down! Is she hurt?”
“And what’s more,…” she added excitedly, “… is a little buck, 4-pointer, I think, that is walking around them!”
Lockdown. Ironic, but the same day as I was driving up to a hunting spot on a dirt road, there stood a nice 7-point buck staring off into space, transfixed.

I hate moving a treestand during the hunting season. And no, it’s not the work, the sweat, or even the lost hunting time that I mind most. Sometimes re-hanging a stand right in prime time is a necessary evil for deer hunters.
When I move a treestand in season, the existential reality is that it almost always cascades a negative, disrupting effect on the local whitetails…exactly those deer that I hope to superimpose with my pins or crosshairs.