We've long been preaching the benefits of hunting whitetail bucks in the morning because mature bucks simply spend more time on their feet in the morning hours of daylight than the evening hours of daylight. So if you want to catch a buck moving, it makes sense to capitalize on his walkabout time, right? Well, maybe.

Although I'd have to agree that mornings are perhaps best, I've always preferred hunting evenings. Maybe it's just my biological clock, but I've had just enough evening success to keep me coming back. As a matter of fact, the last two mature bucks I've taken fell in the evening, each about an hour before nightfall. That may be just coincidence because I hunt mornings just as fervently as evenings, but looking back over the years, I've found some pretty good reasons to key on evening bowhunting for whitetail deer.

HOW WHITETAILS MOVE Deer biologists point out that whitetail deer get up about every five hours to feed. This puts the average whitetail on its feet about three times during every daylight period. Most of their movements are timed to dawn and dusk, but the moon and weather may alter movements to feed. We've all seen deer on their feet in the middle of the day, and they become more visible where they are undisturbed. Bucks are no exception, though their movements are more secretive in daylight. Some movements to feed, especially during daylight hours, may be little more than rising and feeding in close proximity to their beds.

Bucks put most of their energies into nighttime movements. Some older bucks are strictly nocturnal year round, but most bucks do a good deal of their business on into the morning hours, rubbing trees, scent marking and scraping, and generally putting their mark on their territory. Of course, during the rut, bucks may extend these daylight movements throughout the morning into early afternoon. It's no wonder they are dead tired about the time we are climbing into our stands in the afternoon.

It's much easier to walk carefully and quietly to a stand site when you can see where you're going. There's also the off chance that you'll get a shot at a deer on the way to your afternoon stand. It happens.

Armed with this information, it would seem hard to make a case for evening hunting. After all, in the afternoon we are hunting periods of movement that are effectively cut off by darkness. It gets harder and harder to see as the evening wears on and legal shooting time ends, whereas in the morning shooting light only improves. Plus, morning offers the chance to encounter a buck that may be a bit tired and vulnerable yet still on his feet completing what he considers important business.

CONDENSED MOVEMENT Besides the fact that most of us have jobs that require us to be at work first thing in the morning (yet steal out for a couple of quick hours before dark), there are many good reasons to value an evening hunt. Primarily, I like evening hunting because deer movement is condensed into a shorter burst of prime activity. Especially in areas with normal human activity, deer tend to stay down during the afternoon waiting for things to quiet down. Farm workers, loggers, construction crews, school buses, playing kids and barking dogs all start to knock off in early evening. Remember, deer are better at patterning us than we are at patterning them. The result is a rush of deer movement just before dark. I remember a bowhunt in far northeastern Wisconsin a number of years ago with my friend Tom Perrier. Deer were numbered at about 65 per square mile in that area and when the sun would start to drop it sounded like an army crunching through the fall woods as deer stormed toward the potato fields.

Bucks aren't immune to this activity. They, too, will be shadowing the movements of other deer. On paths from bedding areas to feeding areas bucks are some of the last to move. Hunting stands on these routes can be productive in the evening if you hunt toward the bedding side of things. I've found that the closer you stay to the beds, the higher the odds of encountering a buck before darkness sets in. Expect them to be late. Far from fields, I've been pinned in my stands in the moonlight waiting for bucks to clear my trails after legal shooting time. Bucks move late, it's the nature of their game.

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