Anyone who watches hunting shows on their TVs knows those celebrity hunters aren’t hunting in Louisiana — and probably wouldn’t stand a chance in the thickets of our state. But here are some lessons from the Midwest that can help you bag more deer.
Chad Wall feels like hunters within a 100-mile radius of his home in Springfield are some of the best in the country.
And he should know.
As somebody who — along with his wife Dana — logs over 600 hours in tree stands every year as hosts of the Pursuit Channel’s Wallhanger TV, Wall sees things that most hunters never get the chance to.
Many of the stand hours he logs and much of what he sees is outside of Louisiana.
Wall regularly hunts Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Illinois and Kentucky, but he believes Louisiana hunters face a huge challenge in killing Louisiana deer.
One of the major challenges of his home-state deer hunters is watching deer-hunting shows on television and thinking they can employ the exact same techniques and tactics during their next hunt.
Sometimes they might work, but most times they don’t.
Wall has learned there are some things that work for him in the Midwest that he can never get away with from his home stand in Louisiana.
On the flip side, though, he has also learned that there are some things that work for him in the Midwest that he has been able to successfully implement here in Louisiana.
“One of the No. 1 things we do in the Midwest is implement food plots and food sources,” he said. “We were raised here with the idea that if we put anything out for deer it was just a little bit of rye grass.”
When Wall started traveling, he saw how important it is to have food plots for deer to eat all year long.
“If you’re trying to grow a decent, healthy herd, you’ve got to get some of these seed blends running 12 months a year,” he explained.
The proof in his pudding was when Wall figured out he could — in the course of a year — turn over a barren, Midwest farm with no food source into a place on which deer live and feed every day.
“I brought that home with me,” Wall said. “One thing that has surprised me with the hunting pressure being so high in Louisiana is just how well these food plots keep deer 12 months out of the year.
“Used to, we’d see few to no deer, but after implementing the year-long food-plot strategy here, we’re pretty much guaranteed to see those five to 10 deer that live there and set their schedules around our food sources.”
However, Wall has discovered after much food-plot frustration that some of the plants guaranteed to attract deer in the Midwest don’t get even so much as a sniff in Louisiana.
“When you’re talking about seeds,” he said, “one of the most dynamic north of the Mason Dixon line that is not worth your money here is turnips. There are a lot of varieties, and some do better than others, but the whole reason turnips work so well up north is they turn sweet when it gets cold.”
Unfortunately for the legion of Louisiana food-plotters who have tried turnips only to discover deer hardly nibble the new, tender leaves, it just doesn’t get cold enough here for all that sugar to appear in the leaves.
“Down here we just never get that cold,” Wall said. “We might get a cold snap, but it just won’t do it. I’ve actually got a line on a map to know where turnips will work and where they will not work.”
Rather than turnips, Wall suggested Louisiana hunters stick with beans and peas during the summer and change over to rye grains and wheat with just a sprinkling of brassica for the winter.
But that sprinkling of brassica is just for a touch of variety rather than a full planting in a four-acre field.
“Some brassica works well down here when they’re young and tender,” Wall said. “But it’s weird because they do OK in some places but they don’t do well at all in other places.
“If you want to use the broadleaf plants, use them to supplement rather than filling a field with them.”
Wall has also learned a lot about the rut by getting a chance to actually watch it happen right in front of his stands in the Midwest — about half of which, he says, he’s been able to apply at home.
“You just don’t get to see the rut down here like you can in the Midwest,” he said. “The only way we really know deer are rutting in Louisiana is if we might see a buck with a doe from time to time, or we might see their necks swollen up.”
In fact, growing up in Louisiana, Wall said he was of the belief that the rut lasted a month and a half. While the rut is obviously stronger in the Midwest, Wall said Louisiana deer still have to rut; does still have to cycle and come into estrous.
It’s just on a little bit different schedule.
“They do the same thing down here,” Wall insisted. “It’s just on a lot softer level in the night hours. They do it a lot when we can’t see and where we can’t see.”
Down here, our terrain is so thick we rarely get a shot much over 100 yards. Visibility might get a little better around St. Francisville, but it’s still nothing like the Midwest, where hunters can lay eyes on deer a lot better than here.
Even though we might not be able to see the actual rut in progress, Wall said it’s important to know when it’s happening based on the signs you are seeing and making longer sits if necessary when your chances of seeing a buck are higher.
“One thing I’ve learned is just how much the weather can affect the rut,” said Wall. “Three years in a row in Illinois, no matter what the moon phase, the deer rutted the same three days. We could see it visually.
“The next year a warm front came in and literally shut down the activity. We thought the rut was later, and the weather got better a week after that — but we still didn’t see it.
“The next thing we knew, it was the end of the month and we were left wondering where the rut went.”
Wall concluded it still happened at the exact same time — the deer just did it at night and changed their patterns up to deal with the warmer weather.
“Down here, that applies to our conditions,” Wall said. “They’re going to be doing a lot of rutting at night just because of our weather.
“But you still better be there when they’re doing it, because that’s when it’s happening whatever that peak time happens to be in your part of the state.”
Although warm weather might have some bearing on nighttime rutting activity in Louisiana, Wall believes it has more to do with our immense hunting pressure.
“Deer have adapted to our being in their environment, and that’s why most activity takes place at night.” Wall said.
And speaking of the rut, Wall has learned that one thing that can work wonders in the Midwest that might just be one of the worst things you can do in Louisiana is to rattle.
“Now in North Louisiana there are some areas that have a little bit harder rut, and their buck-to-doe ratio is better,” Wall said, “so rattling might work. But for most of us, rattle horns should stay at the house.”
Calling, on the other hand, is something Wall has discovered works extremely well in Louisiana.
Although he has some 70-year-old friends who have never heard a deer grunt in Louisiana, Wall has heard them and has come to understand that deer are a lot more vocal than most hunters realize.
His two most successful calls in Louisiana are the grunt and bleat calls. With that combination, he has been able to bring in deer from October all the way to January.
Another thing that has worked well for Wall in the Midwest that has just about never worked in Louisiana is setting up a stand hundreds of yards away from the closest thicket or clearcut.
“Down here that won’t work,” he said. “In the Midwest, you might be able to set up in the middle of the prettiest oak flat you’ve ever laid eyes on and kill a big deer. Heck, I’ve got one spot that has a single tree in the middle of a 100-acre CRP field. I can get in that tree with a bow and arrow and kill whitetails. You’re not going to do that down here.”
To kill deer in his home state, Wall said he has got to get tight to bedding areas because these deer are more in tune to what we humans are trying to tell them.
As a result, they rarely decide to leave their bedding area until right at dark — and if you’re 400 yards away, you’ll never see it.
“I’ve got a buddy in Albany who called me about a big deer he had trail cam pics of about three years ago,” Wall said. “I told him to figure out where that deer was bedding and get as close as he could get, and to set his stuff up where he felt like he had his best chance of killing that deer but to do it in August and wait for the first decent cool snap.”
Although all of these observations have allowed Wall to kill better deer when he hunts Louisiana, he said learning how to be a low-impact hunter has probably had more impact on his success.
“I’ve found that low-impact hunting is key to these Louisiana whitetail,” he said. “If I go to a piece of property, I’m not going to bush hog everything I can drive a tractor over. I’m not going to cut right-of-way shooting lanes with a chain saw.
“Instead, I’m going to slip in and get my setups where I need them outside the food sources or bedding areas and break a couple twigs.”
In a state where every hunter has an ATV, the deer have gotten to the point where they aren’t terrified of them. They’re not going to hear you coming and leave.
But they will hear you coming and wait.
“They have nothing to do for 24 hours a day other than just be there, eat and do their thing,” Wall said. “If they can go into that food plot an hour before dark and feel comfortable, that’s fine by them. If they hear or even sense the slightest thing, it’s nothing for them to wait until 9:30 to do the same thing.
“It doesn’t matter to them at all.”
Wall now rifle hunts in the same low-impact way he bow hunts.
Everybody in Louisiana with a rifle that can shoot 300 yards wants to be able to see 300 yards, so they set up on the edges of open fields or lanes where they can see forever.
“Nobody wants to hunt close with a rifle,” Wall concluded. “A lot of my bow hunting setups allow me to see only 20 or 30 yards. A rifle allows me to get a little farther back, but I’m still going to treat my rifle hunting the same way I treat bow hunting — very much low impact.
“But at the same time, I’m still going to go in there to try to kill him. I’m not going to so sit out on some field and wait on him to get there before dark.”
With Louisiana’s liberal season and liberal limit, there’s no better time than now to go out and put some of Wall’s lessons he learned on the road into practice.
If you mess it up, just remember you’re hunting the most-challenging deer in the country.
And — unlike Ohio, Iowa, Kansas, Illinois and Kentucky, where you might only have next weekend — at least here in Louisiana there’s always next month.