As fate would have it, overnight low pressures swelled up from the Gulf of Mexico, bringing in rain, 70-degree temperatures and humidity so thick you could cut it with a broadhead. For the next three days I saw a few does but not one shooter buck. Bad winter weather generally means frigid temperatures and snow in midwestern and northern states, and rain and possibly sleet in the Southeast. But these days, December heat waves aren't all that freakish. Whatever the reason, you have to be prepared for hot weather when you hunt whitetails during a late gun or bowhunting season.
Mature bucks seem to crawl into holes and disappear.
This in turn frames your strategy. More than ever, you need to set up in the right spots for those first and last 30 minutes of shooting light. To cut them off, try hanging a tree stand in a satellite thicket 100 yards or so off a swamp, an overgrown field, a tangled cutover or a similar bedding area. Play the wind, which typically blows somewhere out of the south when these hot spells roll in, and set up in cover where doe trails and buck tracks, rubs and scrapes are fresh. Sneak in and shinny into the stand an hour earlier than normal in the morning.