On opening day, most deer are running for their lives, and finding them is often a matter of setting up in the right travel corridors. As the weeks progress, however, and the relative calm of the late season sets in, deer begin once again to structure their lives around finding food.

But the pressure of hunting season is still ever-present, and most hunters know it has a predictable effect on deer patterns. Bucks quickly become ghosts. Many times all you'll see are their tracks. You know they're around, but you never see them. Rarely will they venture out of their security cover during the daylight. It only takes a few encounters with hunters before a buck seemingly goes underground, and this often happens shortly after opening morning.

There is only one thing that will occasionally bring a big buck (or any deer) out before darkness--the need to feed. The good news for hunters is that with winter closing in, that need grows more urgent every day.

Our bodies have an internal thermostat that requires us to burn more calories when it's cold in order to maintain a core temperature of 98.6 degrees. This raises our metabolic rate and, in turn, our appetite. A deer's metabolism on the other hand decreases as winter takes a firm grip, and it actually eats less. However, there's a period of adjustment during which the animal's endocrine system gradually slows its metabolism.

The first cold snap of winter generally coincides with the late season in most parts of the United States, and this starts deer's physiological slow-down, but the process takes many days, even weeks, to complete. During this transition period, cold temperatures force deer to feed heavily in an effort to fuel their still-high metabolic rates. This additional activity often forces deer to compromise their security by feeding before nightfall.

We'd all love to hunt a buck that's relaxed and approaching his feeding area during daylight hours, but in some cases you may wait all season for that to happen--especially if the hunting pressure doesn't drop off or if it never gets really frigid. In any case, your hunting strategy should be dictated by the animal's behavior.

The first step in deciphering this behavior is to understand that food is king. Where you find the food, you find the deer. It's usually that simple. Whitetail food falls into three categories: browse, mast and agricultural crops.

Noted whitetail researcher Dr. Harry Jacobson once said of deer, "It is easier to say what they won't eat than it is to say what they will." Deer can consume all manner of leaves and stems, and nibble their way along as they travel more or less randomly through the forest.

The only place where eating browse becomes an exploitable pattern is when it is the only show in town--when there are no agricultural fields or mast nearby. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense in most areas. Random deer movement and hunting success don't go together.

It's often much better to concentrate on mast. Starting in the month of June, mast (soft and hard) becomes a growing portion of a deer's diet. As a percentage, mast utilization peaks in November and then begins dropping off again in December. When given a choice of food sources, deer will select mast over almost every other food source available. Where I live in the Midwest, deer swarm to acorns as soon as they begin falling.

Though deer prefer white oak acorns, they will eat acorns from all of the oak subspecies. You should study the ground in thick oak groves to see how many acorns remain of oak subspecies that dropped in early fall. Deer will continue to come to these areas to feed until the supply is depleted.

Honey locust pods are another preferred hard mast found in many areas of the country. Deer will hit these hard throughout the fall. Locust pods aren't as attractive as acorns, but deer will eat them when it's convenient.

Don't overlook soft mast, either. In fact, it would be smart to find every berry bush, apple, pear, plum or persimmon tree in your hunting area. All of these will draw bucks like iron filings to a magnet during the early season.

If you are wondering how to identify all of these various trees, log on to the Internet and type in "Trees of Michigan" (or whatever your state may be) in a popular search engine and you'll quickly find several identification guides.

Finally, clue in on agricultural crops in your area. Alfalfa, clover and winter wheat are best in early to mid-fall. Corn and beans, where available, tend to be better during the late season. Barley is another good late season food source in areas where farmers grow it (primarily in the north and northwest).

Once you've located food sources it's time to find a buck. After the regular gun season has been over for at least a week, deer start to calm down and once again venture out into their feeding areas.

This process speeds up in northern latitudes where deer will bunch up near preferred food sources as early as late November. Focus on known feeding areas on the properties you hunt and start looking for a nice buck that's coming in to feed.

You can also get out and scout for sign. Without snow, however, it can be tough to find tracks because winter temperatures can keep the ground frozen solid. Talk to farmers, mailmen and game wardens to find out where concentrations of deer have been spotted.

Keep glassing and looking until you find something interesting. If you get down to the last week of the season without seeing a good buck at a feeding area, you will need to pick the area with the most food and the most sign and take more aggressive action. However, it pays to be patient.

What you see or don't see while glassing feeding areas will give you all the information you need to create the proper strategy. When deer are entering a late season feeding area during legal hunting hours, stand hunting is the best bet. However, if the deer aren't visible during the day--if they are converging on the field after dark--still-hunting is a better option.

The last thing you want to do is barge right in and mess up the spot before you even have a good chance to pattern the deer using it. Remember, these are extremely wary deer. With the first hint of human intrusion, the buck will be back on a nocturnal pattern faster than you can say "wasted tag." If not alarmed, however, the deer are likely to continue to display much the same behavior for several days, at least until there is a major weather change or shift in wind direction.

Choosing a location for your stand is a delicate matter. Bucks won't use the same exact trails to enter their feeding areas each day, (in fact, they don't always come out before dark each day) so you'll have to play it conservatively. With a gun that is a lot easier than it is with a bow. But even at that, late-season hunting is a waiting game.

Make sure that you can get out of the area after shooting time expires without alarming a single deer. If you can't, you've got the wrong stand location.

Smart bucks (a workable synonym for all late season bucks) will often wait to arrive last at a feeding area, following all the does and immature bucks. So even if you only spook a couple of does while heading back to your vehicle, you've made it more difficult to tag the buck on future hunts. The does will become wary, and their body language will warn the buck that there may be trouble brewing.

To conserve energy, deer often bed very close to their feeding areas. I've walked in to set up a stand for a late-season hunt only to find the entire herd of 25 deer that were using the field bedded five yards from its edge. Of course, they saw me too and took off. Not surprisingly, I never saw a deer from that stand for the two remaining evenings I hunted it.

The best setup serves two purposes. Primarily, it should be located in a place where you can watch the entire feeding area from downwind. This way you can verify what is happening from a safe distance without blundering into a bunch of bedded deer. Second, make sure it's a spot that offers some hope of deer passing within gun range.

If deer simply aren't coming out in daylight hours and you want to keep hunting from a stand, you're left with only two choices: move to another area where the bucks are more cooperative or take your ambush deeper into the cover in hopes of catching deer shortly after they rise from their beds to feed.

The first option is a good one, but the second is very risky. If you are going to take the chance of pushing close to bedding areas, you may as well take full control of the situation and switch to still-hunting instead of stand hunting.

Despite the fact that it offers mobility and the chance to "make things happen" when deer are traveling only after dark, still-hunting doesn't always work. It requires specialized skills--and a hunter with intense concentration and patience.

Your goal, of course, is to spot deer before they spot you, and a good pair of binoculars can make a big difference. They let you look right through a brushpile or fallen tree to see what hides on the other side. They can also turn what you thought were branches into the antler tines of a bedded buck.

The route you use when still-hunting is just as critical as the route you use to get to a tree stand. You can't let a single deer know you are in the area or they will be on their feet running and that will take the rest of the herd right out of the area.

Once you get close enough to be heard or possibly seen, you'd better be in full stealth mode or the hunt is over before it starts.

One quality of a good still-hunter is a well-planned stalking route through the timber. Once you've still-hunted an area a few times you'll learn which streambanks you can sneak behind and where to peek over to see if a buck is bedded on a nearby ridge.

You'll figure out which blowdowns to stop behind and which ridge tops to ease over very slowly. A great route is based on scouting and experience, and it is the key to still-hunting success.

Late-season food source hunting is for loners and tough guys--deer hunting's iron men. Rarely will you see another hunter, and the weather can be the harshest you'll ever face. However, when you put it all together, the satisfaction you gain from doing things the hard way will more than repay every tooth-chattering minute.