The author took this 131-inch 8-pointer in early December on a bitter cold day in Georgia. Hunting during bad weather in the late season really pays off—if you’re prepared for it.

Late season can be feast or famine. After several hard weeks of vigorous rutting activity (usually throughout November in most parts of the country) mature bucks have a way of getting extremely scarce. As soon as the peak of the rut has waned, and receptive does can no longer be found, older bucks usually stay close to their daytime bedding areas or sanctuaries.

Because of this curtailed movement during the post-rut period, daytime sightings by hunters usually go way down. However, hunters have one thing going for them: All deer have to eat--big bucks included. If the weather is cold and nasty, mature buck sightings tend to go up. In fact, the nastier the weather, the better the hunting usually is. If it's warm and clear, sightings go down. Something about bitter cold weather seems to make mature bucks head to nearby food sources in the late season.

A number of years ago I worked as an elk-hunting guide in Colorado. Elk season lasted from mid-September until mid-November, so I effectively missed the November whitetail rut in my home state of Georgia. Even though I knew that post-rut hunting would be a lot tougher in early December, I was anxious to get in the woods because I hadn't been able to hunt whitetails that season. As soon as I got home around Thanksgiving I started hunting with a vengeance, making up for lost time.

In early December, Leon Scott, a good friend and hunting companion, invited me to his club lease for a Saturday hunt in Crawford County. It just so happened that he and I had visited the property the previous August to do a little pre-season scouting. I had found a potentially good area to hunt along a creek drainage where I'd discovered several big rubs with old scrapes from the season before. I knew that if the buck that had left this sign was still alive, he'd be a good one. However, since I was an invited guest on a property with a number of other club members to contend with, I also knew that I probably wouldn't have a choice where I would hunt. Luck was, however, on my side that day.

Leon and I arrived at the gate about an hour before daylight on Saturday morning. Three or four days earlier, a late-season storm had deposited several inches of sleet and snow across central Georgia. Most of the ice had melted, but the temperature had plummeted. On that cold, Saturday morning, it was around 12 degrees. I had been hunting another tract in the ice all week, and before my luck turned around on that memorable Saturday, things had not gone well at all.

First, my climbing tree stand was stolen. I had left it leaning against a tree in the woods late one weekday afternoon with the intention of using it the next morning. A thief had seen my tracks in the ice when I walked out to the road, and after dark, he had back-tracked my trail to the stand. When I entered the woods the next morning, before daylight, I saw his tracks in the ice on a logging road going in and out--I immediately knew what had happened and, sure enough, my stand was gone.