Did you miss getting that prized buck you had your eye on last year?
Good news! He’ll likely be back in the same spot this year.
Keep your eyes peeled, because year after year, the same buck will visit the same areas. He’ll use the same trails and scrapes. And he’ll do all of this at relatively the same times each year — often right down to the same date.
Dan Cole, writing in North American Whitetail, says hunters far and wide have been spotting, hunting and consistently killing mature bucks on a pattern they noticed a year ahead of time.
Cole calls whitetails “creatures of habit”.
“Given a stable environment with no pressure influences, a deer, whether young or mature, can be counted on to predictably stay within a relatively tight schedule,” he says. “Of course, what it does on any given day is generally influenced by wind direction, available food, terrain features, time of year and disturbance, such as from predators and/or human intrusion.”
Cole describes a specific 7-day period during which, in many cases, a buck is repeating his travel location and pattern, sometimes for several years straight. As noted, this is far more than a theory — it’s an actual pattern that has proved itself accurate and dependable on many mature bucks. And, according to Cole, once you learn it, your approach to hunting big whitetails will forever be changed.
In theory, The 7-Day Rule works like this: A good buck walks along a certain trail and visits a scrape, and you either see him or get him on trail camera. One year from that date, he should be visiting the same scrape and walking along the same trail. That’s the premise. If all of the mentioned influences remain the same, or relatively so, the buck will be on this same predictable travel pattern within the same week year after year.
As hunters, we need all the help we can get. We use a lot of aids from powerful binoculars to modern deer stands with custom windows, so why not use the deer’s own travel patterns to boost our odds for success?
Deerview is the hunter’s friend. At DeerView, we manufacture windows solely for use in deer stand/blind applications. Our goal is to be the best in the industry in providing visibility to your hunt. All of our windows and doors can be custom-made to fit your specific openings, or you can select from our standard sizes. We have the style of window best suited for your particular blind’s needs. Check out our product pages at https://www.deerviewwindows.com/ to determine which style of window is best for your particular blind’s needs, and let us give you a free quote.
And, remember all of the miscellaneous items that you may need, like deer blind tower brackets, T-post game camera mount, camo mesh, and charging port.