Hunting is an exciting and daunting venture. The challenge worsens when your target remains the keen and agile mule deer. Mule deer are not only fascinating members of the Cervidae family but can also be hard to hunt whether you are an amateur or an expert at your craft. You would need to beat a few odds to register successful hunting expeditions.  

As challenging as it looks, you can still crack the code and solve the puzzle. To be a successful mule deer hunter, one must know how to identify them from the rest. Such aspects as their physical traits and appearance, their preferred habitat, and how they compare to other deer would edge you above average deer hunters.  

A latitude of knowledge about their biology can also prove reliable in telling their behavior, which is one of the hunter’s most valuable hints.   

Here are some of the key insights that help you conduct successful  hunting by capitalizing on the mule deer behavior: 

1. Scoring a Mule Deer 

A mule deer’s score is a valuable way to describe how large the deer is. This is very significant to a hunter. Scoring is typically done on the antlers, and there are many well-grounded reasons to be obsessed with this measurement of the rack an animal carries.  

One reason for scoring a mule deer is that citing a score pins down the description much more precisely. This can help you to conceive a mental picture of the animal. Another benefit of scoring a mule deer is that it is a useful piece of biological information and can give some insights into genetics, age, and nutrition.  

Finally, whereas a score cannot directly correlate to age, a deer scoring higher usually represents an older animal in practice. All these could be very important to a hunter, depending on the purpose of their hunting expedition.  

So, how do you score mule deer? 

Scoring is essential to everyone keen on hunting mule deer and can be done using some specific techniques and measurements. While most experts just do field judging by simple observation, some technical tips can be considered. Such aspects as the time length score, main beam score, mass, inside spread, and symmetry of the antlers give critical metrics for scoring a mule deer.  

2. Conduct Top-Notch Scouting 

Blind hunting over vast geographical space is not a good hunting strategy and is a particularly terrible approach for mule deer. Scouting has to do with preparing yourself for the hunting exercise. It also helps you be specific with areas you must prioritize as you jump into the exercise.   

Besides helping you with the location where you will be prioritizing while hunting mule deer, scouting also grants many privileges of learning the habits of the deer you’ll be hunting. Knowing the general habits of the mule deer is priceless.  

Like most deers, a mule deer is very consistent with their behaviors. They maintain their watering as well as hang-out zones. You will likely find mule deer in the exact location during the hunt, where they roamed during the summer.  

Marking out these details after detailed scouting will help to be on the upper hand when you get back ready to accomplish your mission.  

3. Practice Scent Control 

Like all members of the deer family, Mule deer are equally exceptional with human scent and will be scared away by human scent. You can make a huge difference by being keen on the direction of the wind since it has the potential to blow your scent away. You can avoid perfumes and scented detergents on your hunting clothes. 

4. Take Advantage of Their Rutting Season 
 

The deer rutting season starts around the middle of October to early December when deer mate. Deer behavior changes a lot around this period, and hunters must adapt to those changes to register more successful kills.  

Generally, during this time, competing males, jampacked with testosterone, will engage in a sequence of displays to show off to the females and establish dominance over other stags. 

Rutting season is a good time to conduct hunting, as stags compete for dominance, and an astute hunter will watch out to bag them. It calls for more care and keen attention to detail and being omnipresent, especially at the peak.  

5. Attention To Weather And Moon Phases 

Thinking about weather and moon phases and relating them to mule deer hunting sounds ancient. Fortunately, this trick is still viable and makes a huge difference if one is to make a failure or success in their hunting engagements. Weather patterns and moon phases still mean the same thing to the mule deer despite the change in time. 

How do weather and moon phases affect mule deer?  

As the moon increases in capacity from a crescent to a full moon, all these greatly influence the behavior and availability of the mule deer. It is not much of an appearance of disappearance but a substantial behavior adjustment.  

This is especially pronounced during the full moon, where it is common to see a deer that fed under the moonlight the night before walking carefree and feeding in the middle of the day. Paying attention to the moon phases and adjusting your hunting exercises accordingly will increase your success. 

The change of weather is equally a telling clue. Few things can beat a cool, overcast, light rain kind of day in drawing deer out into the open to feed. A consistent forecast of afternoon downpours could be a call to grab your rain gear and go out hunting.  

After the rain, mule deer will likely venture into more open spaces to nibble water-soaked vegetation. Such weather patterns could, therefore, present opportunities to have an all-day-long hunting spree.  

6. Be Particular With Your Hunting Gear  

Putting on specific hunting gear is a universal hunting technique that works across the board. Mule deer are exceptional for keenness and refined abilities to locate distant predators. When dealing with them, you have more reason to be stricter with your hunting gear. A camouflage attire will help you to evade their keen eyes and get closer to a shooting range before shooting your shot.   

You can also make the hunt more successful by carrying powerful binoculars to help you survey from a long range to ensure you exercise more care and avoid scaring the target away. You can also ensure you have special hunting boots to prevent tripping or instability on slippering grounds as you get closer.  

Bottomline 

Mule deer hunting can be adventurous and highly challenging. Nevertheless, knowing what to do always makes a huge difference and makes you more successful in taking on these elusive members of the deer family. Focusing on their behavior can prove indomitable to gain an advantage over the average mule deer hunter.