If you have access to a field of standing corn, by all means, dive in. Deer love to bed in standing corn. One of the best times to stalk through a corn field looking for deer is when it’s windy. The wind will mask most of the noise you will make and, with all the stalks and leaves blowing around, it will be harder for a deer to pick out your movements.

When you hunt standing corn, walk into the wind perpendicular to the rows. Step from one row to the next. Before you enter each row, poke your fully camouflaged head through the foliage and look right and left for bedded deer.

Stands of evergreens are also good areas to stalk for deer when it’s hot. Get into the thick, dark cover and you’ll feel the temperature difference. It’s cooler in the shade of those conifers. That’s why deer like it there when it’s hot.

CALLING ALL DEER
Just because it’s September or early October and the rut is still weeks away doesn’t mean you should be afraid to do a little calling when the heat is on. Deer are vocal creatures all year, not just during the rut. That said, however, their vocalizations are different early in the season than they are when the rut rolls around. Say the right things and you could reel in the buck of your dreams.

Many bowhunters today carry the popular can-style estrus bleat call. Turn it upside down and it produces a perfect estrus bleat every time. However, my advice is to leave that call at home early on when the weather’s hot. It’s not time for that call yet.

Instead, get yourself a regular doe bleat call. It will look very much like a buck grunt call except it produces the higher-pitched doe bleats. Unlike the estrus bleat, a regular doe bleat is shorter in duration. It’s very similar to a buck grunt except it’s higher pitched.

Does emit bleats in the early season to keep track of their young and other members of the herd. It’s a very social contact call and hunters would do well to mimic it.

Buck grunts also are effective calls at this time of year. But early-season grunts are different from rutting grunts. Generally, they have a softer pitch. Think of a hot-weather grunt as a grunt without the territorial anger of the rut behind it.

One year, on the second day of my state’s archery deer season, I was sweating in my stand on an afternoon hunt when a nice 6-point buck and two does entered the woods from a field about 70 yards to my left. The deer were heading away from me, so I picked up my grunt call and uttered a series of five soft grunts. The does paid no attention and kept on walking, but the buck stopped dead in his tracks, turned around and walked to within five yards of my tree. His antlers now hang on my wall. Had I not called to that deer, he would have just followed the does right out of my area.

Rattling is something that many hunters associate with the rut. But during the heat of the early season, bucks will occasionally lock antlers in mock sparring matches. Again, there’s no anger behind these duels. It’s like two boys wrestling playfully in the schoolyard. To imitate this sound during the early season, all you need to do is lightly tickle your rattling horns together. Don’t crash them together or shake them vigorously -- that’s being too aggressive for early fall and will actually alarm deer because it’s not a natural sound.