Deer Hunting after a large amount of Rainfall - help please

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bydabeav

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Wiarton, ON
This will be my second year deer hunting. Last year there was little fall rain and it did not rain at all during the week. I just checked the weather for this year and the area is expecting rain everyday from now till Oct 31, this is abnormal for this area. My question is, what might this large amount of rain do to normal deer behavior?

Feeding patterns different?
Call Responses affected?
Might they be more/less aware of my presence?
With rain is putting scents such as buck jam out a waste of money?
Anything else that may be affected?

Interested to hear from some of you that are more experienced

Thanks
 
Funny as it may sound, the only thing that will be affected is their movement because they will tend to go around deeper water if they can. I hunt a lot of swampy areas and the best years is when there has been a lot of water. The swamps channel the deer. They may also move/eat more to keep warm depending on the overall temperature. My experience anyways

Remember

As soon as you say deer always..., they wont
As soon as you say deer never..., they will
 
I am in agreeance with yomamma on this. (sounds funny don't it?) Last time it was real wet in my neighbourhood it steered the animals around all the low spots and sloughs. Which allowed us to set up some good ambush points we wouldn't normally have. In really dry years I like to set up near water.
 
Yeah, the guys above are right, but it depends on the deer themselves. Some seem to like to hunker down in thick cover and wait out storms, some seem to not care what it's doing out and just go about their normal business regardless of the weather.
 
Here on the wet coast I wait for the pouring rain days to hunt. Not sure if ON whitetails love rain as much as BC blacktails but its not like deer have houses to go into, so they pretty much have to carry on with life..... :)
 
I've taken my biggest blacktails in the crappiest of coastal mountain weather. Loves those drizzly gusty days for ambush hunting.

The biggest mule deer I've taken, a 175 ish 4x4 typical , was during a hellish wind/sleet/hail storm that swept through BC from coast to interior, back in '05, rememberance day. Trees were coming down constantly LOL and raining/hailing. Was ridiculous but successful.
As far as my hunting experience to date, be prepared to hunt those crappy days, they often produce big deer :D
 
Always consider the wind of course.

It seems the rain keeps them stirring, maybe due to less ability to hear danger so maybe they fear setting in one spot(bedded down)
If it's a slow steady rain, I'm hunting.

I also like to hunt the evening before a big storm/front blows in.

High wind days have always been good for me. I think they can't hear danger and their nose is compromised by the currents so they move a lot from fear of something sneaking upon them.

The higher and fuller the moon is after dark(especially when it's up until dawn) like it is currently, I like to hunt midday 10-3.
 
They still eat, sleep, breed, in the rain. My Father told me if it's a dry year, hunt wet areas, if it's a wet year, hunt dry areas.If you want to shoot a buck don't shoot at does and fawns, if you want a big buck, don't shoot at little bucks. Deerdr
 
One of the biggest bucks shot in our camp was taken by a young fella in the pouring rain, The buck was on the move in mid afternoon crossing a cut over. Like mentioned above they were born and raised out side so life goes on despite the weather.
 
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