The Best Place to Find a Buck Deer in the Early Season with Bowhunter Jerry Simmons
Day 2: Jerry Simmons Gives Some Early Season Tips for Bowhunting Deer
Editor’s Note: Nationally-known bowhunter Jerry Simmons of Jasper, Alabama, gives us more bowhunting tips for early-season deer.
Deer and Poke Sallet:
  When Jerry Simmons saw purple deer droppings before hunting season started some years ago, he tried to analyze what the deer had eaten to produce those purple droppings. "I found a trail in the woods and followed it to a fresh clear cut," Simmons recalls. "Out in the clear cut, I spotted a large patch of poke sallet, a plant also known as pokeweed that grows across the U.S., except in the western 1/3 of the country. The plant's purple berries have such a vibrant color that the juice was once used by early pioneers as ink. As I investigated, I found evidence that the deer not only were eating the leaves of the pokeweed but also its purple berries." Once deer season began, Simmons set up a tree stand on the edge of that clear cut and took several bucks as they went back and forth to feed on the poke sallet. "In the early season, wild grasses and shrubs are often the deer's preferred foods," Simmons comments. "I've consistently taken bucks in the early season when I find them feeding on poke sallet."
Early-Season Tips:
  In the early season, the deer will feel very-little hunting pressure from bowhunters in most sections of the country. Then later in the season, you'll find the most-productive places to hunt near or in thick cover, because the deer will move there due to intense hunting pressure. However, as Simmons explains, "Since I take more bucks in the early season by hunting the edges of openings created by timbering or agricultural practices than I do when I hunt in thick cover, I try to identify these areas before the season. Even green fields, planted early enough to be producing a crop, will be good spots to look for bucks in early bow season." To take bucks near openings, you must decide where to set up your tree stand or your ground blind. When the deer show-up in the openings, they'll spook very easily. However, the deer standing on the edge of the woods just before they move into the openings will act calmer. Because these deer stand still studying the openings, you more easily can get-off a shot.”
A friend of Simmons once pinpointed a persimmon tree about 10-yards from the edge of a field as an early-season feeding hot spot. He set up his tree stand to enable him to shoot accurately to the persimmon tree or to the edge of the field. Late one afternoon in the first week of deer season, a buck that measured 150 points on Boone & Crockett came to the persimmon tree to feed. “When you can find a soft mast crop that the deer prefer to feed on close to some type of opening, you've usually located a hot spot to taking nice bucks," Simmons emphasizes.
To learn more about bowhunting deer, get John E. Phillips’ new ebooks “Jim Crumley's Secrets of Bowhunting Deer,” “Bowhunting Deer: The Secrets of the PSE Pros” and “Deer and Fixings.” Go to www.amazon.com/kindle-ebooks, type in the names of the books and download them to your Kindle, and/or download a Kindle app for your iPad, SmartPhone or computer.
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