There’s something about sitting in a tree stand and hearing the far-away announcer of a Marian football game that puts me in a sentimental mood. The sound of the announcer takes me back to my high school days, when a Friday night Pottsville football game filled the stadium.

Ah, youth! And right on cue, youth appear. It seems that I am running a nursery school here, with all the young deer cruising around. These two must have only recently lost their spots, because they are the size of whippets.

But finally, I hear a sound I’ve longed to hear – a combine harvesting soybeans. The farmers almost always harvest the beans first, with the corn to follow shortly. That’s when the archery hunting begins to improve, when those giant corn field hiding places are cut to the ground. Yes!

Soon the bucks’ minds will begin to unravel, and that’s when I like them best, sleep-deprived, weary, focused on one thing and prone to making unwise decisions. For most of the year, I am a button buck magnet; during the rut, I hope to have a chance at a buck that’s been around long enough to become big and smart but is currently completed distracted.

The bucks are hunting the does and we should also be hunting the does. The does’ routine will be unvaried, unless she is being chased. She will travel from bedding to feeding, feeding to bedding. The young bucks may start to harass her, but she will circle back to her regular routes.

The bucks want to check as many deer trails as they can, but instead of traveling on the deer trails they will cut across an area, intersecting as many trails as they can and scent checking each one.

I remember being on a hunt in West Virginia. My good friend Dr. Dave Samuels had been invited to a place which had long been known as a plush corporate retreat. The property had hundreds of acres, and new owners wanted to use it as a hunting lodge. They invited Dr. Dave, asking him to look over the property and help them choose areas for stands. Dr. Dave got them to invite me, and I was happy to go there to hunt.

I remember we hunted the first morning and returned to the lodge at midday. The owners had brought in a huge topographical map, enlarged, showing the boundaries of the property. It didn’t show types of trees, or anything like that, just contours. Dr. Dave stood silently looking at the map, for so many long minutes that I think people were starting to wonder what he was doing. Then he reached out and put his finger on one spot in all that hundreds of acres.

“Right there,” he said. “That’s where you want to be during the rut.”

The West Virginia land was a lot like ours, lots of ridges. Dr. Dave had chosen a spot where there was a dip in a ridge, an area also easily reached by raised fingers of land that ended at the same spot. We jumped into a couple two-seaters and went there.

The area was torn up with rubs and scrapes, and smelled like deer, lots of deer. It was definitely a major message area for all whitetails in the area. Even during the rut, deer don’t want to work any harder than necessary – the bucks will use the easiest way to check the most trails.

Now that the food source has returned to the forest, the does will be traveling those routes. The does are focused on eating as much as they can as winter approaches. Meanwhile, the bucks are focused on the does, and checking their trails. Find those dips in the ridges, and multi-trail intersections, and hunt all day if you can.