Be setup in your hunting position one hour to an hour-and-a-half before the Ideal Hunting Time. It's that simple.
The Ideal Hunting Times occur when the moon is either directly overhead at your location or directly beneath your feet (behind the Earth). These times are known as Transit and Anti-Transit, respectively, and are key times for deer activity. When Ideal Hunting Times occur, you should to be setup and ready in your hunting position.
Plan on being in your hunt position between one hour to an hour-and-a-half before the Ideal Hunting Time. You need to be in your hunting position when the time arrives, so BE EARLY.
Twilight is the time of day when the sun is below the horizon, but darkness is not yet absolute. There are three types of twilight: civil, nautical, and astronomical. Civil twilight is when the sun is between 0 and 6 degrees below the horizon; nautical is 6 to 12 degrees, and astronomical is 12 to 18 degrees. We are only concerned with civil twilight because during this time there is still enough scattered sunlight to hunt with. Twilight is commonly mistaken as being only in the evening, but it actually occurs in both the AM and PM as "dawn" and "dusk", respectively. The duration of civil twilight is usually about one half hour. Note that in nearly every U.S. state, it is illegal to hunt more than one half hour before sunrise and one half hour after sunset. The Hunt By MoonTM hunting calculator automatically accounts for dawn and dusk at your hunting location. When transits and anti-transits occur too far outside of civil twilight, we do not display an Ideal Hunting Time.
This is typically the least productive hunting habitat. Your prey will be utilizing higher ground and the security shelter of thicker vegetation. If you need to hunt bedding areas during the middle of the day, be sure to follow the best times presented by the Hunt By MoonTM hunting calculator. Be aware that your odds of success will be less in this habitat than in transition corridors and feeding areas.
Transition corridors are the established pathways that deer use to travel between bedding and feeding areas. These corridors afford hunters a better opportunity for a kill than daytime bedding areas. This is mainly due to the fact that your prey will be out from daytime cover and on the move, either travelling towards nighttime feeding areas or returning to daytime bedding from their evening activites. This is a very good reason to be setup in your hunting position well in advance of this moon-influenced movement period. Morning transition corridors will present greater opportunity for success than those in the evening.
Open feeding areas yield the most productive results and the most success stories. This habitat can also be the most difficult to hunt because its coincidence with a best time always occurs during dusk or immediately before. This presents a narrow window of opporunity to make a kill. However, since deer are driven to feed, are pre-occupied with their activities, and are sometimes grouped together, your chance of success in this habitat is much greater. With these increased odds comes a price: moon-keyed feeding areas occur on only several days out of the month. Make sure to identify these best-time / open-feeding-area combinations by using the Hunt By MoonTM hunting calculator and mark them on your personal calendar. You won't regret it!