The science says the October lull isn't real. I still don't hunt my best spots for the first three weeks of October. Both of those things are true, and this week I untangle them.

Researchers have been putting GPS collars on bucks for decades, and they don't show a broad drop in movement through October. If anything it builds toward the rut. But about a third of a buck's movement happens in daylight, so two thirds of it happens when you legally can't shoot. That's not a lull in deer movement. It's a lull in deer sightings, and those are two different problems with two different solutions.

Why you stopped seeing him: the acorns drop and his commute disappears. Deer shift off open food in October while our stands are still sitting on open food because that's where we hung them in July. He moved. We didn't. Add three or four weeks of human pressure stacked up on the ground, and you get the same amount of movement at a different address, mostly in the dark.

Then the part that's more opinion than science. Why I think the first three weeks of October are the cheapest weeks to give away and the most expensive to spend, and why I'm not skipping them so much as loaning them to November. Plus what to do with that time instead of sitting a tree.

And the youth hunt and early antlerless season, because nothing I just said should talk anyone out of either one. If you've got a kid, put them in the best spot you've got.

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Explicit language.