When Do You Hunt - Morning, Midday or Evening?
Ray Croswell

If you could only hunt one time period during the day when would it be - morning, midday or evening? Most of us would tend to say mornings. I recently read an article in an issue of “The American Hunter” that posed several questions to a panel of hunters. One question really got me thinking about my experiences over the years. The question, “If you could only hunt one three-hour period a day for big bucks, what three hours would it be?”

My first thought was if I could only hunt one period of the day, it would be the first three or four hours of the day. Then I began thinking back on my past experiences. Over the years I have kept detailed records of all my deer kills, so back to the stat book I went.

Fifty-six percent of my bucks have been taken in the mornings, 23 percent of my bucks have been taken mid-day (10:00 AM to 2:00 PM) and 21 percent in the evenings. Like most hunters I do most of my hunting in the mornings, followed by evening hunting and the least hunted time would be the midday period. Yet, after studying my stats, I found that I have taken more bucks midday than in the evening and some of my midday bucks are some of my largest.

I took one of my nicer blacktails just before noon. My son Tom and I hunted a basin where I had taken several bucks in past years, but this morning was a bust. While hiking back out to the truck, I noticed a respectable buck feeding in a small opening on a ridge across the canyon about 1,000 yards away. When we got to where the buck was located the brush was so thick that we spooked him. It had snowed a few days earlier and there was still a little snow on the ground, so we started tracking him. After another 400 or 500 yards, we found him feeding on trailing blackberries. One shot at 20 yards and it was all over.

This buck was out feeding at noon and we all know that he should have been bedded down behind some old stump, but not today. Experience has taught me that deer will move around a little midday and if you are out there, being patient, you just might get your chance.

Recently while scouting mule deer in eastern Oregon I found a buck that I wanted to try to harvest during the upcoming season. He was living in a sagebrush basin where we found him during our summer scouting. I went over two days before the opener in an effort to locate him for a chance on opening day. As luck would have it, I was able to locate him right away. I watched the buck all day from a ridge across from where he was bedded with another buck of equal size.

When it got light they were already bedded in the sage. Around 10:30 AM they both got up and moved about 20 yards to a new bed and during that time they were only up for about five minutes. Then they got up again at 12:30 PM and fed for about 20 minutes, never moving more then 20 yards from where they were bedded. That afternoon they got up two more times and fed for 10 to 15 minutes each time, then rebedded. From 3:00 PM until dark they never got up again. If I had gone out just doing a quick glassing session in the morning and evening, I never would have seen these bucks. It's this midday effort that eventually led to the harvest of my best mulie thus far.

A few years ago I was hunting the timber country of Northern Idaho for mule deer. I had worked my way up a timbered ridge, until I got to the alpine ridge top. I continued to work my way along the ridge about 11:00 I decided to rest for a couple of hours and hunt back down the ridge to the road. I found a spot in a low to the ground fir where I could sit on the edge of the timber and just enjoy the solitude of the area. About noon a doe ran out into the opening about 20 yards from me, a couple of minutes later a buck came out. That's all it took. A nice 26" four point was mine.

If I had to pick one time of day to hunt I would still pick the mornings, but I would try to stretch them out through midday, because you never know, that big buck just might find you.