When the bucks shed their velvet they nearly turn nocturnal... They're a real pain in the butt to kill.

If you have buddies find patches and make pushes through them into a clearcut and have a shooter in the clearcut... You've got to push them out of their beds.

If you are solo hunting it is so important to have the wind in your favor (use a breeze squeeze) or something alike and hunt slower than a turtle... My rule is take 2-3 steps and wait 15-20 seconds... It's amazing if you can stay quiet with the wind in your favor how close you'll be when deer stand up when they finally hear you.

You'll find the smaller blacktails from time to time with the does in this early season but it's extremely rare to kill a big one..

The rut is the answer, you need them bucks up looking around for the does.... Personally, that's why I've gone to Archery for deer this year. We get Nov 20th-30th in a heavily populated blacktail area. They'll be on the move at that time. Anywhere from November 5th through the end of November but the peak of the rut falls November 18th or so....

Good luck out there.

Keith

Thanks for the tips. I actually pretty much arrived at the same conclusions. My hunting buddy asked me what should we do different next year in the early season, and I told him basically what you said (stlhdr1). No more glassing edges for hours on end. Glass first light, last light, and then arrange to push brush out to shooters in the open.

My late season starts on Nov 26 in the 6-5-1, so I hope we will be getting the end of the rut, but it goes through Dec 15th. I have heard that there is a second rut for the does that did not get any. I got a long lecture at a wedding a couple of months back, about how WA has a really poor buck/doe ratio and that there will always be a second rut because there is no way for the bucks to service so many does.

The muzzleloader season we used to hunt now starts Dec 1st and runs through the 8th. We have killed good sized bucks with the does in the first week of December. It was apparent they were still rutting although not as dumb as the typical mid November blacktail....

Good luck with the late hunt, and don't give up mid-day. We've shot a lot of our bucks from 10am-2pm that time of year up and moving around with the does...

Keith