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about searching for food.
“It’s hard to sneak up on them,” said Utz. Deer can easily spot a figure moving through the woods. Also, the sounds of footsteps in rustling leaves will scare them off.
Worry over meat spoilage is another factor that keeps hunters home in warm weather. "The last time I went when it was hot, I lost the meat,” said Culpeper resident Dan Coffey. “I wouldn’t want to go more than two or three hours,” he said of leaving a deer outside in the heat. “It’s OK if you have a cooler, but most people are not that well-equipped.” Coffey goes hunting several times a year on a farm he owns in Botetourt County.
Many hunters will hang a deer in a tree until they are ready to butcher it. This allows the blood to drain from the animal and makes the skinning process easier. Some hunters say that the more they let the meat age, the more tender it is. “I like to let mine hang for a couple of days,” said Utz. Weather permitting, this is an easy way to temporarily store the meat.
Dylan Butler, a 15-year-old hunter who fives in Goldvein, said the warm weather prevented him from hanging nis deer long enough (“I got a real big one the other day”), so the meat wasn’t as good.
“I didn’t even go out the last day of deer season. It was too hot,” he lamented.
Vernon Bortz hunts every weekend of deer season. In Fauquier County the season runs from mid-November to early January. But Bortz is no fair weather sportsman. ‘The colder the better for me,” says
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