Photo By BillKinney.com

The last day of Virginia's late muzzleloader as well as deer season had come and was about to go as I pondered my options on where to hunt the first Saturday of January 2006. Finally, I decided to go afield behind my family's Botetourt County home on the 29 acres we own. Several times in recent years, including the final day of the 2001 season, I had killed deer that were moving through a thicket that lies on a ridge.

And so it was that I eased my way to a Virginia pine where I always take a stand when hunting the copse. At 4:15 p.m., I heard the sounds of some animal moving toward me -- but not in front of me as I had planned. Rather, whatever was approaching was coming from directly behind me. I slowly turned my head and began to mount the smokepole when the whitetail, which was just 10 yards behind me, snorted, ran, stomped and snorted several more times. That response set off a chain reaction among other deer in the area, as they, too, snorted and fled. All in all, a rather pathetic display of hunting prowess on my part.

I have diligently hunted the Old Dominion's late muzzleloader season since 1993 and have long found it the most difficult and challenging time to kill a whitetail. Yet, this time of year remains one of my favorite times to pursue deer -- precisely because of those reasons. I asked Dave Steffen, forest wildlife program manager for the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF), about the major decisions concerning tactics sportsmen will have to make now -- the most obvious being should strategies be based on a deer's food needs or reproductive drive.

SHOULD YOU FOCUS ON THE FOOD OR THE RUT?
"Food, no question," Steffen said. "You sometimes hear hunters talk about a secondary rut in Virginia. Nobody has shown that a secondary rut routinely exists, but what appears to be a secondary rut may be the result of very synchronous (occurring at the same time) breeding in does or just the tail end of a bell curve of the rut as a whole.

"There's no question that some reproductive activity does go on during the late muzzleloader season, but that activity largely has concluded by Christmastime. The timing and duration of the rut depend on many factors, including deer condition, sex ratios and age structure. Although all does don't usually come into heat at the same time, the peak of the rut typically takes place the week before regular gun season.

"But some does will cycle in before that time in October and some after that time. And some healthy doe fawns -- in Virginia about 20 percent of 6-month-old females will come into estrus on average in any given year -- will breed for the first time, often in December, after the peak. The presence of these late breeders is what prolongs the rutting activity in bucks."

Interestingly, the biologist noted that VDGIF staff and hunters do see very late born fawns and those were probably conceived in December or perhaps even later.