Massachusetts Deer Hunting: October 13: The woods are primed for Bullwinkle.

Its October 13th, not a significant date of course, but I'm getting crazy excited for the MA bow season and the woods are priming up for action, depending on your area of course, the results were spotty my last two days in the woods. My findings from two days of scouting, checking and moving cameras is that you need to get out and check your areas if you're not already prepped for the season. With the leaves changing and beginning to fall you literally have a few days to get out and scout before the ground is covered with fluorescent yellow and orange leaves covering up fresh sign daily and making it challenging to see sign change over time in a given area. A few of my spots were red hot with multiple fresh scrapes opened up and fresh buck rubs, and each of those spots had bountiful acorn crops in the area, luckily for me my stands have been hung in those areas for weeks and I guessed right. A few of my spots had little buck sign to speak of, but still had decent activity on the camera with a good mix of day time pics, telling me their still not ramping up too much overall. And a couple other spots were pretty cold for buck activity, but had plenty of doe's feeding around, which in the big woods is a ticking time bomb for visiting bucks, better things to come. Like the acorn crop, buck sign has been all or nothing from what I saw, but what's most important to me is gathering more intel on my target buck as I'm constantly wondering what the hell is he up to lately given that he hasn't shown up much on my cameras in September, but he's been busy! Check out the pics below, some good scrapes and a couple good rubs I found, but most importantly my target buck Bullwinkle, two of which were day time pics of him rummaging around my tree stands. With as much room as these big woods bucks have to roam, something as simple as a night time picture of a mature Whitetail is huge to have the confidence they use your area. But to single out a particular buck or two like our cameras allow us to do, and then gather years of intel of which direction he heads, when he heads there, and what he does in certain areas all play a huge role in narrowing down your strategy to hunt them. This year is the year of Bullwinkle for me, I'm all in, 6 out of the 10 stands I hung this year are for him. 3 stands are surrounding his core area, something that took me 2 years of moving cameras around the outside of a major clear cut that is now 3 years old, prime for browse and cover. He's not necessarily a "giant" in terms of antlers, but he's well over 200lbs dressed, he's Pope and Young all day, and I have pictures of him dating back to 2012 when he was what I believe is 3 1/2 years old, making him 7 1/2 years old this year. I know his core area, have tons of day time pictures of him this summer in it, and I know his doe areas from the scouting and hunting I did all last season, which paid off big in my preparation this year. More often than not this year I've guessed right wherever I hung a camera and he usually walked by it. Only time will tell this season, I have more intel than ever confirming my game plan and the travel routes in and out of his bedding and doe areas, all I can do is hunt my stands with the right winds and wait him out. I have all season to hunt, multiple stands for multiple winds, I got nothing but time, time is on my side. Good luck to all the hunters taking Monday off to hunt, there's nothing the anticipation of opening day, this year more than ever, I don't even have to wait for the rut, my cameras are telling me Bullwinkle is killable during daylight right now, its on, and I'm more excited than ever.

Love when you go check your cam/stand and find a tree snapped in half!