Speaking of farming: Don't overlook the magnetic appeal of fields of standing corn. Deer may pay them relatively little attention while white oak acorns and persimmons are plentiful on the ground and lush food plots fertilized into verdant visions beckon them, but once the acorns are gone and your quarry has developed a healthy dose of fear of heavily hunted food plots, look to those cornfields.

Agricultural food sources in general merit your attention; farmers may not intend to raise crops for deer, but whitetails benefit from them all the same, and the hunter can thus benefit from them, too. In particular, be alert to the fact that deer -- bucks especially -- tend to be far more nocturnal in their habits now than a few weeks earlier, and can be caught easing into such feeding spots at dusk and out of them at first light.

WORKING WITH THE WEATHER
With days whose portions of sunlight are the shortest of the year, December is notorious for unpredictable weather. The month frequently brings prolonged rainfall, and often sees the first heavy snows. The gloom so often associated with the month's lean, mean times frequently offers a hunter all the excuse needed to stay home curled up in a favorite chair close to a comforting fire -- and that's understandable: The leap from a comfy recliner to a tiny seat atop a wind-blistered lock-on stand is a big one.

Yet it only takes one glorious opportunity, a momentary squeeze of the trigger followed by an overwhelming sense of triumph, to convince you that the latter place is precisely where you want to be.

You can profit from adverse weather in several ways. For starters, make every effort to hunt during periods of bitter cold. The colder it is, the more the deer have to move and feed. Fortunately, modern hunter attire is designed to enable you to stay in the deer's element at such times without being uncomfortable.

Another example of weather's potential to be your ally is revealed when a prolonged spell of driving rain finally breaks. If deer have been bedded down and enduring the wet misery as well as possible, you can count on them to be up and moving once a strong front drives the clouds away and high skies and sunshine take over. Deer need to feed, certainly, but it's also as if, like humans, they want to celebrate the return of good weather. Study weather systems, and don rain gear if necessary -- but be there when skies turn fair.

HELP FROM OTHER HUNTERS
Late in the season, you generally face less competition from other hunters than is the case in the weeks immediately following opening day. But it's worth remembering that those hardy souls who do persist can actually be your unwitting allies. Typically, those who do venture into the field at this point in the season do so only for a couple of hours in the morning or late in the afternoon. Yet their movements -- leaving stands at midmorning or moving to them in midafternoon -- can work to your advantage. When doing this, hunters often spook deer, and if you have sufficient gumption to stay in place later in the morning or get there earlier in the afternoon, others may move a buck your way.

Better still (although it may seem to be asking a lot), give some thought to spending all day in a stand. If careful scouting tells you that a fine buck uses a given area on a regular basis, your single best bet for coming to grips with the animal is to outplay it at the waiting game. Make sure that you have a comfortable stand, suitable clothing, plenty of food and water, and a position in which the wind's right; then, just settle into place and do your level best to stay alert. Sooner or later, what veterans describe as "building time" will pay handsome dividends.

This may come about simply because you played the waiting game well, but there's also the quite real possibility of other hunters serving, in effect, as "drivers" who spook a deer and move it your way. The disturbance might involve driving an ATV to cover part of the distance to a stand or to retrieve a downed whitetail, or nothing more than walking to or from a hunting spot, or engaging in some other type of human business. Whatever the case may be -- and this is especially true if you belong to a club or hunt on public land where there is considerable pressure -- make a point of studying how the activities of others can give you an advantage.