Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Deer Hunting in Steady Rain?

Yeah, I'd agree with that. It's probably not much louder that the rain hitting everything else, but it beats the hell out of being soaking wet.

we skipped opening day this saturday due to the steady rain, I've got about 3 more months to hunt so why bother. We went out yesterday afternoon after the son finally came out and saw 15 deer and a big pic. Probably the first opening I've missed in 30 years.

Stay dry sitting in the Scottsdale, be sweet if she had power windows.

The old guys around here call that a Detroit blind

Add me to the list of having had good success hunting in a light rain. Especially when it rains just hard enough to send the other hunters packing and I have the farm to myself...

I have an old barn and sit up in the loft in rain , its been a lucky spot when I don't take a nap .

I have hunted in rain. Deer move good in light rain and they move good after a heavy rain. They lay low during a heavy rain.

We always hunted in the rain when I was growing up. We were 20-25 miles inland from the Oregon coast at the base of some mountains where the clouds were forced upward, cooled, and dumped. It was pretty normal to get 3-5 inches of rain a day toward the end of deer season. Didn't know there was any other way to hunt. I'd generally wear a tee shirt, flannel shirt, and maybe a light vest, and jeans under neoprene bibs and an neoprene jacket. Head gear was a cowboy hat with a plastic rain cover. One of my buddys painted his cowboy hat with Thompson's Water Seal.

I don't really like hunting in the rain anymore but it can be very productive. IMHO the first day of rain sucks. The deer keg up in the dry spots. You need to give it time to soak through so everything is equally drenched. After that, they give up and go back to doing what they do but they can't hear you over the rain and it also takes away your scent.

Rain is not your enemy. Wind is a bigger problem, at least hunting brush, because everything is moving making it harder to detect moving deer.

If you really want to learn about hunting deer in the rain, talk to the guys who hunt Sitkas along the SE Alaska coast and blacktails on the Olympic Peninsula. Wet as we got, I think we were pikers compared to them.

If you understand that you approach the after shot stuff differently, IE Correctly. Its not that hard to find a deer without a blood trail. Of course our dog makes that much easier and fun too, but without dog you just have to make sure you leave em alone IE don't go look AT ALL, and give em time, and then they usually aren't far off, just go look.

Good deal.