3 Hot Weather Deer Hunting Myths

Hot weather hunting isn’t easy, and it definitely isn’t always fun. It has a way of perpetuating common deer hunting myths that makes many hunters feel better about sitting out the early season. If you’re not careful, you might fall prey to those same misconceptions.

While this myth could probably apply to the entire season, it’s a common one a lot of hunters believe to avoid sitting in hot conditions. It’s true that deer are crepuscular animals and that they move mostly near dawn and dusk, but that doesn’t mean they don’t move throughout the rest of the day.

On one of the hottest opening weeks I can remember, I killed a doe while still hunting just before 11 am as she slipped down to a creek bottom to get a drink. It hadn’t rained in weeks, and the temps that week hung out in the mid-90s. I also saw multiple deer that week doing the same thing, including a mature buck, at different times of the day—not just the golden hour.

For the sake of not relying on anecdata too heavily, a study out of Mississippi State University’s Deer Lab shows that deer movement isn’t non-existent outside of prime shooting hours. You might not expect to see deer moving freely in the middle of a bean field around noon, but that doesn’t mean they won’t use edge cover to browse, eat acorns, or, in the case of that doe, find a cool drink of water.

You should certainly consider hunting water in the early season, especially if the conditions say as much. Hot, arid, or drought-like conditions mean that deer probably factor water into their daily rhythms, and you should too. But that doesn’t necessarily apply to every situation. If you hunt a place that gets plenty of rainfall or typically holds water, like a lot of southern states, you probably should look for another limited resource.

If you aren’t hunting dry or drought conditions (good for you), you can probably focus on natural browse or hard mast in cool, shaded areas. These can be good target areas any time of the day, especially if you’re hunting close to bedding or natural edges that get a lot of traffic. At this point of the year deer have more cover options, so while they might not move a ton, they do have plenty of bedding and browsing options.

You might not have to sit over a water hole or a specific section of creek to find deer, but riparian areas can offer a lot more than just water. If you don’t have access to lush bean or alfalfa fields, fear not. There’s a lot of natural browse that hunters tend to overlook. Creeks, river bottoms, and other areas that tend to hold moisture in the soil will have green shoots this time of year that deer will browse. You can also find early dropping acorns, persimmons, or even apples, depending on your location.

A lot of hunters believe that bucks, especially mature ones, don’t move during the day when it’s hot. This is factually untrue. If that were the case, they’d die of starvation down in my home state of Mississippi. You can also watch them mill around in open country if you’ve spent time behind a spotter in the Plains states. Again, they might not cross a country mile, but they will move, despite long-perpetuated myths.

For the past few years, I’ve gotten a bachelor group of bucks on camera in the same spot in September. Not only do they move at various times throughout the day, but they also bed in a cutover that gets sun all day. They get up from their beds, mosey into the timber to munch on acorns, make a few rubs, and bed back down. The deer might not cover an entire creek system in a day, but you don’t need them to if you can gather such intel.

On the flipside, if your trail camera isn’t in the right location, you might assume that the deer aren’t moving. This errant way of thinking has kept a lot of deer alive. Sure, it’s hard to persuade yourself to hunt when you have to replenish your electrolytes and bug spray, but consistent pictures of big velvet bucks might just convince you otherwise.