Photo by P.J. Reilly.

Only a bona fide, dyed-in-the-wool whitetail fanatic would sit in a tree stand on an afternoon when the mercury is clinging to the century mark. Sweat pours out of every pore in your skin. Mosquitoes gnaw at you like a dog chewing on a soup bone. It's downright miserable out there.

Welcome to the early bow season!

But whitetail fanatics will gladly brave the late-summer elements because they know this is one of the two best times to tag a trophy buck all season. The other time, of course, is during the rut, when things typically are much cooler.

Hunters chasing deer in the early season will find bucks that are very predictable, in terms of where and when they move from feeding to bedding areas and back again. Also, if you find one buck in the early season, odds are you'll find several because at this time of year, the boys tend to hang together in bachelor groups.

It was a group of nine bucks that lured me to my stand on the edge of a soybean field for the opening day of the 2006 archery deer season. During the week before opening day, those nine bucks would wander into the bean field every evening and feed within spitting distance of my stand.

Among those nine bucks, there were three fairly nice 8-pointers, but there was only one buck in the herd I would shoot. It's going to be the wide, mid-140-class 10-pointer or nothing, I told myself.

About 5 p.m. on opening day, I climbed into my stand. It was hot and humid. Sweat quickly drenched my face, but I was determined to stick it out until nightfall.

About an hour before my quitting time, does and fawns began filtering out of the woods behind my stand, heading into the field on the trail that ran directly beneath my perch.

About 10 baldies were munching on soybeans before I spied my first set of antlers. It was one of the nice eights. He came out of the woods behind me and wandered into the field along a trail on the opposite side of my tree than the one taken by the does and fawns.

Please let all the others be with him, I thought as he passed through a shooting lane 10 yards from me.

Dutifully, two other 8-pointers followed him within seconds. I had easy shooting at all of them, but I wanted Mr. Big. The third 8-pointer had just entered the field when my attention was attracted to a group of deer in the middle of the field that I hadn't noticed before.

I grabbed my binoculars and looked out to see the big 10 chowing down alongside three smaller bucks, about 200 yards from my position.

He stayed there until dark, and I never got a shot.

Though I failed to connect on the buck I wanted that night, I saw seven different racks from my stand and had three decent bucks within bow range. Any day of the week, that's a successful outing in my book.

SCOUTING IS THE KEY
When it comes to taking a buck in late September or early October, the work you do weeks before the season opens will determine your success once you're finally on stand. Scouting missions will teach you what's going on in those woods you plan to hunt come opening day.