Climbing trees is a safer activity in daylight hours and it's easier to be stealthy when boarding an afternoon platform. How many times have you heard a deer in the darkness bounding off as you gained your seat? You hope it wasn't the buck you were hunting.

The upside of all this condensed movement means shorter; more action-packed sits because there are more deer on their feet in the average habitat in the last hour of daylight than there are in the first hour. Let's face it, like those Wisconsin potato eaters; whitetails can't resist the call to get on their feet just prior to dusk, and head for the food.

EASIER TO GET TO A STAND Morning hunting sucks for several intractable reasons: you must rise with Orion, it's darker than the inside of a whale and it's the coldest time of night or day. But the real bugger about morning hunting is that if you have to go any distance, and you don't have a well-defined trail to follow, it's darn painful getting to that hot stand. Not painful in a hurting way; rather it's painful in a wincing way -- you know, that wince that you get when after a few hundred yards of absolutely flawless footfalls, you crack a large stick and alert everything in creation, especially the deer, that there's something in the woods that doesn't belong. Then there's the "wince" when you're traveling along so well and suddenly an unseen animal is snorting at you and won't stop. This especially happens along field edges, which seem the perfect path to a stand, but happen to be the most dangerous routes of all.

Afternoons are better. First, if you get a good, early start to your stand, deer are generally bedded at this time of day. You can avoid known bedding areas, pick your way slowly and carefully to your stand and mount the structure with few surprises (there's nothing worse than the sound of metal on metal when your roped bow inadvertently strikes a climbing stick or tree stand in the dark).

Once on stand, guess what? It's daylight! You can glass a bit, study the woods, range a few objects in your shooting lanes, and you may even spot a deer. I've climbed quietly into afternoon stands to find deer bedded within sight. That hasn't happened to me in the morning. If it's a new stand, and the coast is clear, you can practice your draw in a few shooting positions that take advantage of your shooting lanes. That's hard to do in pitch darkness, and dangerous when the light is right for a deer's eyes, but not for yours. I hunted with the guys from PSE once down in Mississippi and one of them used the first hour of an early afternoon to take a practice shot from his stand, just to see where his bow was hitting from that elevation. He drilled a deer from the same stand an hour and a half later.

THE R FACTOR Afternoons are the warmest time of day, and evenings are generally warmer than mornings; that's the good news, and the bad news. Afternoons can be comfortable for you (you don't have to wear as much clothing, or shiver as much) but mid-season, they're usually uncomfortable for the deer. Deer have grown their winter coats by mid-season in most regions, and a warm afternoon will have them waiting until darkness and cooler temps to move. Afternoon hunting requires cool weather.

Biting cold weather make's afternoon hunts even better. A deer's coat may have an R Factor that keeps it warm, but when the bitter cold comes in northern states, deer are looking for the warmest time of day, rather than the coolest. This is when afternoon hunting takes over. At this time of year, usually December, deer are concentrating on food sources. In daylight, they generally bed during the coldest time of day (morning) and get up to feed during the warmest time of day (afternoon). Hunting these periods was my specialty when I was younger because I knew the bucks would be with the does and that they would be showing up to feed well before dark. I also lived in an area that had a strong mix of agricultural land, primarily corn and soybeans -- crops that are deer magnets when cold sets in.

This buck was spotted in Jay's hunting area on the morning of the day he shot it. He returned in the afternoon to an existing stand and killed it about a half hour before sunset as it followed a doe.

Continued -- click on page link below.