PHOTO BY DUNCAN DOBIE

For a serious deer hunter, the deer season never ends. Yes, there's a long period of time when we can't tote a gun. But scouting, stand preparation, deer movement knowledge and other factors are all part of the recipe for venison steaks in the freezer. Just because it's the dog days of August and the season doesn't open in your neck of the woods for a few weeks doesn't mean you don't have plenty to do.

Moreover, if you are a Lowcountry hunter, you'd better already be prepared to hunt. You should be done with about everything except the final sighting-in of the rifle and letting the wind direction on opening morning help you determine where you'll hunt opening day.

The more you accomplish in advance of the season, the better your odds of success will be when the opener arrives.

A good friend of mine is one of those year-round hunters. Even during turkey season, he's scanning the woods, dirt roads and fields for deer sign. He'll usually find some antler sheds of a buck that made it through the previous year that will become a focal point for the next season during this time. As summer progresses, he repairs stands, builds new ones, limbs trees where he may want to use climbers later in the season when the rut kicks in. In short, by mid-August when his season opens, he's got a strategy for the entire season ready to be implemented.

Granted, things change as the course of the season progresses. But his "homework" allows him to compensate for the ill winds that Mother Nature may blow in or a simple change in deer movement patterns. The key is to always be thinking about two steps ahead of where you are actually at during the course of the season.

Whether you have an opportunity to harvest a buck on opening day or opening week is usually not a factor of luck, it's how much and how well you prepared for the season before opening day. Granted, we all know of a few hunters that have lucked out by slipping into the woods for the first time of the year on opening day and bagged a nice buck. And there will be some hard-working hunters who don't connect on opening day.

But over the long haul, I'll put my money on the guys who log in the pre-season time. If you want to have success early in the season, you need to be doing the right things at the right time well in advance. While Lady Luck can smile on anyone, she tends to favor the hunters who prepare the best and work the hardest.

In our situation in South Carolina that means doing vastly different things in different areas of the state in preparation of that opening day and week.

For example, we're into August now and the deer-hunting season opens in the Lowcountry midmonth. For those hunters, it's crunch time and they need to be finishing up final preparations. For hunters in the Piedmont and Upstate in the mountains, there are still a few weeks of time before the season opens, but there's plenty that must be accomplished between now and then if you're keen on upping your odds of success.