In the Outdoors
The Lull: Quiet prelude to The Rut
With Oak Duke

Every once in a while during archery season, we seem to be at the "wrong place at the wrong time" and experience a spell of zero deer movement, it's what bowhunters call "The Lull," a complete cessation of whitetail activity.

It's more than being in a bad stand.

We all do that.

And it's not just making the wrong choice of a hunting area on any given day.

We all do that too.

This is different.

The bonafide Lull is when we sit in our stand, seemingly forever, (in reality a couple days) and deer movement is non-existent; not a tail, a snort, or a foot stomp. And our deer hunting buddies concur, and say the same thing.

Or ask the same thing, "Where'd the deer go?"

There may be minor brief "lulls," and we all experience those in the deer woods too.

And these may be caused by recent changes in land use, other hunters, ATVs, weather, etc.

But in this specific context, "The Lull," is a special, annual, and unique behavioral phenomenon of the white-tailed deer.

Ironic as it may seem, The Lull would be as important for the bowhunter to be able to predict as The Rut.

Why is that?

We all know that The Rut is the high point of whitetail activity. And common hunting knowledge proclaims that The Rut is the best time to be in the woods because we have the best chance to have "an encounter of the whitetail kind."

If we can predict The Lull, as we do The Rut, then theoretically at least, we can then know when not to be in the woods.

That is, if in fact the deer are not "moving" or "on the move" during The Lull.

Ironic too that it is not "a given" that this premise that deer do not move during The Lull, is true.

Now some may say, "If the deer are not moving, then it would be a great time to scout."

And others may say, "Just hunt, any time; you never know. The deer are always there."

Okay.

But a valid assertion here, without getting too distracted from our point, is that it's just as important to "rest" your stand, at least in the deer woods of the Southern Tier of New York state and the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania, as spending agreed upon marginal time in it.

The number of whitetails seen from a free-range deer stand declines in direct proportion to the number of consecutive days spent in that stand.

Hunting all the time can be counterproductive.

Hunting is not a benign activity.

Every moment that we are in the woods, especially scouting and moving around, finds us laying down scent and alerting deer to our presence, not only where we are but where we have been.

And don't think that whitetails don't check out our stands after we climb down and leave the woods at dusk.

Regardless of the success we see the TV hunters, shooting from their elevated cabins have, hunting wild, free-range whitetails is a different ball game. "It ain't that simple."

And a few savvy bowhunters during the preseason actually spend time in the woods adjacent to where they are hunting.

This pre-hunting season human activity pattern (working dogs, cutting wood, hiking, scouting, etc.) lays down scent and "forces" the deer to move through the preferred area in an adjacent woodlot where the stands are set up, but left alone for weeks.

This tactic, not very common, sets up the stand for confident deer movement.

The possibility exists to evolve a successful strategy for hunting The Lull.

But there has not yet seemed to be a Lull tactic espoused in the popular electronic (that's a joke) or print literature for hunting The Lull.

If we could predict The Lull, then maybe our time would be better spent at home finishing up the yard work and paying other "honey dues," or much better yet, wingshooting.

Many avid bowhunters, over the year would concur that The Lull occurs every year in the deer woods during archery season, as sure as The Rut does.

And we know that The Rut is timed partly by photoperiodism or the amount of light striking the whitetail's pineal gland in their brain, affecting the release of hormones and other glandular secretions and behavioral modifiers.

Could The Lull be also partly affected by the amount of light striking the back of the eye too?

If The Rut is the high point, could The Lull be the low point in time?

We are led along this line of reasoning to the point that The Lull would be about two weeks prior to The Rut (actual breeding time.) And this falls into the normal time period of the Pre-Rut, when many bow hunters prefer to be in the woods.

During a period of time in the Pre-Rut, bucks in a bachelor group hang around does that appear to be coming into estrus. This is the time when we might see half a dozen bucks, from one three-and-a-half year old eight-point, a couple two-and-a-half year old bucks and maybe a couple yearlings, chasing a doe around her sisters, female cousins, and fawns.

That doe does not run far, maybe just around the field. The bucks grunt as they half-heartedly chase, hook branches on the edge of the field, and spar with each other.

Deer in this behavior pattern don't act out there breeding roles with the intensity that they evidence during The Real Rut.

It's more like play, or acting out rituals.

Maybe this is part of the way they get "cranked up" for the real thing. Or it's a pre-rut ritual, designed by nature to set the stage for the real rut. Maybe they need to interact as part of their social dynamics. They "act out" roles.

This group, comprised of from six to 12 or so deer "moves" along from a feeding area to a bedding area and is quite unique.

For this short period of time, this "coed" group comprised of all age classes; does, yearlings, old bucks, old does and even fawns of the year.

It's about the only time of the year that both bucks and does move together. Other than this time, bucks move together in bachelor groups and does of course hang out in their small family groups, or in winter, herd together with a couple older does grouping up, combining their small units.

Yearling bucks, the "wild cards" often orbit the Coed Group, or strike out on their own. They are the exceptions. Researchers even have a term for this one and a half year old behavior; yearling dispersal. When we see a yearling buck, it tells us nothing about what is going on.

And that's when it is "feast or famine" out there.

I've run into a number of these "Coed Groups" over the years while bow hunting. The bucks and the does are not simply hanging together in a "staging area" but are slowly moving from their nighttime feeding area to a bedding area. Or they leave the bedding area and move towards the feed. This is not to say that every single one of the deer in an entire hunting area are grouped up in one spot.

But there seems to be a pattern here just before the rut or the "chasing time" kicks in; and call it The Lull.

Feast or famine. If we are in the action, it's great. But if we are not, which is much more often the case, we call it The Lull.

It's the quiet before the storm.

The whitetail's gun is loaded, and nature is ready to pull the trigger on the deer's biological imperative. We call that The Rut.

(Oak Duke is the publisher of the Wellsville Daily Reporter and writes a weekly outdoors column)