Large Whitetail Doe Harvest

doe dateline: Friday, December 30, 2006 at 5:22 pm

I harvested a large whitetail doe yesterday. At 3pm, the rain had stopped from an all day soaking. It was still overcast with clouds, which is always good for whitetail deer hunting. The overcast helps it get darker earlier, so whitetail deer start moving earlier in the evening with the onset of the early darkness. The overcast not only shields the earth from the sunlight, but starlight and moonlight also. Whitetail deer activity increases in these reduced lighting conditions.

This whitetail doe had been coming out from the east on a number of occasions during this deer hunting season. The doe had walked briskly through the area on the previous two occasions. This time the doe came out of the brush earlier than normal (20 minutes before the end of shooting hours) and stopped to browse on some shrubs. As previously mentioned, due to the overcast cloudiness, it was darker than normal and she was very hard to see with the naked eye. But even with cheap optics, this whitetail doe stood out. In this cover of pre-darkness, the doe was content to stand in the cleared shooting lane and browse.