Should You Be Deer Hunting In The Rain?

Hi, I'm Chris with Afflicted Broadheads, and today we want to touch on real quick about hunting in the rain. It's one of our most popular questions. A guy, especially a new hunter, is getting ready to go outside. Maybe it's their first time or their first opening weekend because of their work schedule, and it's raining. And so they simply ask, it's raining, should I go home? Well, hunting in the rain, as a lot of us season hunters know, can be some of the best times, especially when we're talking about before the rain, during the break of the rain, and after the rain. All of those have a little bit of a specialty to them that make rain a valuable tool for getting in and getting out of the woods and having success for a whitetail. But the question becomes is, if I'm going to hunt in the rain, what should I guard myself against? What are some of the things that I should or shouldn't do when it is raining? First of all, there's a big variable in how much rain. Are you going to be hunting in a real downpour? Is it going to be real miserable? Because not only will you be miserable if you're not in a blind, if you're in a tree stand, you're going to get real wet, but it makes for a real difficult tracking job. So you have to kind of weigh that out. If I'm going to hunt in the rain and it's a real steady soaking rain, am I going to be able to track my deer wherever it goes? Because that may get washed out real fast. And along with that, one of the other things that I think you really have to pay attention to when hunting in the rain is, being maybe a little more picky about your shot because you are running that risk of your blood trail washing away. It may not be raining too hard at the moment, but after your shot, if it does start raining, and let's say maybe you've taken a shot that is less than perfect, shall we say, or the deer ducks your arrow and you hit way high and you're not seeing a lot of blood, or maybe we're far back into the liver or even into the guts, where now you're gonna have to give that deer a lot of time. If it's raining later because you have to give that deer several hours to expire, you may not pick up that blood trail at all. And now you're just on a search mission. So when you're hunting in the rain, you gotta take just a few things into consideration. How much rain is there? Is it gonna wash away my blood trail? Is it going to rain hard after if I make a less than perfect shot? And most of all, if you are gonna hunt in a rain, light rain or medium rain, make sure that you are extra picky about your shot, getting in for that good double lung or heart shot so you don't have far to track no matter what the weather. Another thing that you need to be conscious of when it comes to rain and moisture of any kind, there's a big misconception that, oh, the rain's gonna wash my scent away. I won't have any issues spooking deer because of my scent. When in all actuality, what happens is the deer can actually smell you better. When you have that moisture in the air and you're concentrated, it really is to their benefit. So there's a little bit of a misconception when it comes to all my scent will be washed away. Unless it's a real heavy downpour to actually physically disperse and wash everything away, you're actually heightening their scents. So playing in the wind is really important. How you walk in is really important. You know, trying to make sure that you're not tipping off the deer because the rain will definitely not wash away all of your scent.