Outdoorsmen who take advantage of the two extra weeks afforded muzzleloader hunters have excellent chances to score on the bucks of their dreams.
While attending a JAKES Day put on by the National Wild Turkey Federation in Monroe a few years ago, I was asked if I wanted to sign up my son for the JAKES program. To sweeten the pot, the guy selling the membership told me that all the kids who signed up at this event would be put in for prize drawings at the end of the day.I was already planning on signing him up anyway, but when I looked at the prizes they were giving away, I reached for my wallet just a little bit quicker. The two main prizes were a TV/VCR combo and a muzzleloader. The winner would get to choose which of the prizes he or she wanted, and I knew that Matthew would like the TV/VCR if his ticket were pulled.
After spending the day watching dog demonstrations and catching some pond-raised catfish, it was time to gather all the kids for the drawing. Plenty of smaller prizes were awarded before the two grand prizes, and unfortunately, it looked like some of my horrible luck was rubbing off on my son.
“And the first Grand Prize winner,” announced the man pulling the ticket, “Matthew Ginn from West Monroe. Come on up here, Matthew, and tell us which one of these prizes you want.”
Since Matthew, 3 at the time, was not really sure what was going on, I knelt down and explained to him what was happening. Matthew walked up to the table so he could see the two prizes.
“Pick which one you want,” the man said.
Needless to say, being a self-respecting 3-year-old boy, Matthew walked up to the table and immediately identified the camouflaged muzzleloader as the prize he wanted. And thus began my foray into the world of hunting with a black-powder rifle.
One of the first things I learned about muzzleloaders is that Louisiana offers two extra weeks of gun hunting for those who don’t mind getting a little primitive. A full week before the gun season begins and a full week after it closes gives muzzleloader hunters that many more days in the field with a weapon that has more reach than a bow.
The earliest hunters can hit the woods with their muzzleloaders this hunting season is in areas 3, 7 and 8, which all open on Oct. 13. Area 2 opens the next weekend on Oct. 20. Since deer season dates are based largely on the peak rut in certain areas, these are the four areas in which the deer rut the earliest, with areas 3 and 8, the westernmost areas in the state, featuring the earliest-rutting deer in Louisiana.
“All the muzzleloader seasons basically open a week before the regular gun season opens,” said former LDWF Wildlife Administrator David Moreland. “Originally, muzzleloader season began as a Monday through Friday deal. Then we added the weekend to make it a full week before gun season. After that, we added the week at the end of the season.”
Moreland explained that deer in Northwest, West-central and Southwest Louisiana rut the earliest. That makes sense since areas 3 and 8 run the length of western Louisiana. So why is area 7 around Avery Island also one of the areas that offer early October muzzleloader hunting?
“When deer rut is a genetic trait that has been passed down through the years from deer to deer,” said Moreland. “The deer in the western section of the state in Areas 3 and 8 rut early because they haven’t had to worry about dropping fawns in the middle of a flood during May and June.
“Move over toward the Mississippi River, and those deer rut later because they are programmed to drop their deer later in the year. If they dropped their fawns in May and June, those fawns would drown.”
Deer in the Atchafalaya Basin are actually some of the latest rutting deer in the state with January and February being the rutting season. Before levees ruled the Mississippi River, it would overflow into the Basin and push out as far as it could go. As the Mississippi River receded, the Atchafalaya Basin remained high and was the last to drain.
If the Atchafalaya Basin, which is primarily encapsulated within area 6, has the latest rutting deer, we’re still left to wonder why area 7 immediately to its east in the Avery Island vicinity is one of the first muzzleloader seasons to open.
A closer look reveals the same general location, the same kind of habitat, but not the same kind of river-water influence. These deer were genetically programmed to avoid dropping during another type of catastrophe.
“The mind-set down there is that these deer rut early to try to avoid dropping fawns in the peak of hurricane season from July to September,” Moreland explained. “Really, it’s more than just not wanting to drop them then. It has a lot to do with needing to drop their fawns early enough to give them enough time to adapt before the worst of the hurricane season. It’s all about survival of the species.”
Moreland went on to say that a DNA study by Mississippi State University has shown that the timing of the rut, thus the timing of the hunting seasons, is determined by the female genetics. It’s the doe side of the equation that determines when you can shoot those big old bucks.
Another consideration the LDWF has to take into account when they determine hunting seasons is the practice of stocking deer into certain regions of the state. Many of the stocked deer came from the Red Dirt National Wildlife Management Reserve near Natchitoches.
“What we’re seeing with some of those deer is that they maintain the their historic breeding schedules based on what they were in, which would be area 2,” Moreland explained. “We’ve got some deer in East Feliciana Parish in Southeast Louisiana that have an area 2 rut even though they’re in area 1. They’ve maintained that genetic trait even though they are surrounded by area 1 deer that are breeding in January.”
One hunter who has made the most of the early and late muzzleloader season is Ronnie Wilkinson from Pineville. Wilkinson, who actually claims to be more of a dog hunter than a gun hunter, killed the Louisiana state-record muzzleloader typical deer on private land in Concordia Parish in 2002. The deer scored 170 3/8, and Wilkinson can vividly recall the day he shot the deer.
“I went on a Wednesday after my buddy had to wake me up just to get me started,” said Wilkinson. “I had been hunting hard for the entire season, and was just about ready to call it a year. He insisted, though, so off we went. We wound up getting to our spot a little late. I wound up seeing a good deer chasing a doe round and round a bunch of palmettos.”
Wilkinson watched the buck chase the doe for almost two hours before he finally decided to climb down and get a closer look. Admittedly not thinking straight, Wilkinson realized that it wasn’t just one doe that the buck was chasing. It wound up being a bunch of does standing there staring at him from about 25 yards. Needless to say, Wilkinson didn’t get a shot at this buck on that day. If he had, he said he never would have gone to the woods the next day.
“It wound up raining all night on us, and the first stop we made the next morning was at the edge of a cornfield where I had been seeing some sign,” Wilkinson continued. “I went in and saw the place just torn up — it was all brush-hooked with some giant pawings that this deer had made that night. There must have been 25 pawings in one acre, and 50 big bushes that had been hooked. I told my buddy to leave me right there because I was going to climb a tree and kill this buck.”
Wilkinson wound up killing a great 12-point buck that afternoon, but it wasn’t the one he was after, and he knew it. He decided he wasn’t going to hunt anymore, so he went home. He couldn’t get the deer he knew was there out of his head, though, so he went back on Jan. 25, which was his son’s birthday.
The first evening he went back into his area, he noticed a lot of bear sign, but he dismissed it as he settled into his stand. He wasn’t there 20 minutes when he heard what he described as the most awful sound he had ever heard coming from the other side of a nearby briar patch.
“I thought it was the bear, but it wound up being this buck,” Wilkinson recalled. “He was pushing through the briars like a bulldozer. You can’t imagine how thick these briars were, and he was plowing through them like they weren’t even there. When I saw him, he was uprooting briars with his horns, and tearing them to pieces. He looked up at me with briars draping from his horns, and froze.”
Wilkinson had already stood up in case the noise wound up being a hog or a bear, and he had left his muzzleloader propped up against the tree. Several failed attempts by the deer to make Wilkinson move or flinch failed, and an approaching car on a nearby road eventually distracted the big buck.
“I pulled my muzzleloader to me inches at a time every time that deer looked away toward the road,” Wilkinson said. “He squatted down one of the times he looked at the car. I jerked my gun around, got off a shot and hit him right on top of the shoulder blade. He never even knew what hit him.”
Even though he is a self-avowed dog hunter, Wilkinson stays in shape by practicing with his Super Knight .45-caliber so he can take advantage of the two extra weeks of deer hunting with a gun even though he much prefers the later season rather than the early one because of the comfort factor.
“I like the non-traditional ways of deer hunting,” Wilkinson explained. “To me, hunting with a muzzleloader is more challenging than hunting with a powerful rifle. And it used to be that you could hunt less-pressured deer during the special muzzleloader seasons, but that’s starting to change as more and more people learn about the extra opportunities it provides.”
Wilkinson used to shoot a Knight Wolverine, which had about a 75- to 80-yard range. Now, with his Super Knight, he feels comfortable making shots out to 200 yards.
“This Knight will shoot a 3-inch group at 200 yards,” he said. “I keep sharp by shooting it often, and make sure the bullet goes where the scope says it should.”
Muzzleloader hunters hitting the woods this month in areas 3, 7 and 8 might be confused about what kinds of guns they are allowed to hunt with. Moreland said the confusion has come about a bill in the Legislature recently to allow the traditional 45/70 metallic cartridge rifles that are legal in Mississippi.
“These are the pre-1900 rifles that used black powder rather than the smokeless powder,” Moreland said. “Some people might call them buffalo rifles. This bill did not pass the Legislature. Therefore, they will not be legal this hunting season like they are in Mississippi. In Louisiana, you still have to ram everything down the barrel of your muzzleloader.”
In the end, there are several hunters who aren’t going to really care why certain areas open earlier for muzzleloader hunting than others. What they really care about is that the muzzleloader season means it’s the first opportunity to hunt with something other than a bow.
I’m kind of glad Matthew chose that muzzleloader because I’m going to take advantage of those two weeks. And this year, I think I’m even going to take my son with me. It is his gun after all.
