As the leaves burst into flavorful colors of cherry reds, chocolate browns and lemony shades of yellows, the corn remains gold as ever and indeed, gold is truly what it is!
We, as hunters, have anticipated this time period for many months. A slight timeframe when our odds of harvesting a mature whitetail are reasonably higher and the precious moments in the woods have more meaning than ever. It’s nearly whitetail-rutting time.
Last weekend, I drove back home from college to see my family and prepare for a few other hunts this fall. While I was home, I watched as the combines engulfed hundreds of acres of stalks, stripping away everything except the priceless cob of corn. With corn prices up, farmers have put the seed to work and are happy to make bank on the crop. With nearly every field around my house devastated by farmer’s invasion, the main whitetail food source has been heavily reduced along with soybeans and alfalfa.
I’ve always had luck hunting over picked cornfields, especially the first week after it’s been picked. Deer will flock to the abandoned kernels and gobble them down and leave nothing to waste! It almost reminds me of when I watch the Discovery Channel and they’ve got an exclusive shark episode playing, where sharks are having an absolute feeding frenzy. The combination of security, nutrition and food availability makes a cornfield a whitetail's buddy; yet a hunter’s best friend.
This weekend, I’ll be hunting at Bluff Bucks Outfitters in Buffalo County, Wisconsin. A county that re-writes the whitetail record book on a yearly basis, and more trophy class bucks roam this river valley in a square mile than anywhere in the entire universe! Some areas around the country have corn still standing, due to severe weather conditions during planting season, but Buffalo County is not one of them.
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In my opinion, deer would rather binge on agriculture fields before our homemade custom food plots any day, which almost seem to finally kick in during the late season in the upper Midwest. Depending on variable food availability, deer seem to leave just as fast as they came once the stalks are busted. The once-secret bedding areas have been revealed and the food has been severely reduced, almost as skimpy as trying to snag a crumb after going through a buffet line that’s been already torn up by a football team’s offensive line.
Hunting has always been a game of inches and seconds. With each blink of an eye there’s no telling when something wonderful can unravel. That is why I believe it’s so crucial to hunt the right food sources at the right time, because after a few weeks pass, the situation can really get corny and deer have reason to relocate their bedding areas and or travel patterns.
Last fall, I hunted Buffalo County during this same upcoming weekend and I was so fortunate to have killed my biggest buck with a bow. He was working an early morning scrape line parallel to a cornfield, which was infested by doe. I think he must have been checking not only the wind that blew from the field, which carried the succulent smell of estrous into the woods, but also keeping check on his dirt dating method.
This weekend, I’ll be trying to slam a back-to-back year buck from the same tree stand setup. The only difference this time, is that I’m more than ready for him to step out!
I wish everyone good luck hunting. These coming weeks are what we as hunters have been anxiously waiting for all year and it’s crunch time. Whether it’s corn or some other food source available, stick to it and hunt it hard, because where there’s does, there’s bucks. |