Whats the deal?

[MUSKY18]

This year was good and bad for me. Good in the aspect that I shot the biggest buck of my life and could have arrowed my first deer with a bow had I chosen to. That being said, for the amount of time I put in on my stands, both bow and rifle, the number of deer that I saw was down. Many sits that yielded not a single deer seen. Our rifle area was moved up from lottery to managed this year and I have no idea why. Granted the wind on opener was terrible, but compared to years past, the sign/tracks that we found was minimal at the very best. We have stands that we have shot deer off of every year for the past 8-10 years and didn't see anything from them. Pressure isn't as great in that area as in other areas. Saturday night of opening weekend, we went into town and had supper. On the way back to camp we counted 18 deer in the ditches/fields, so nocturnal for sure. On Sunday of opening weekend I counted 7 shots for the entire day. Way below normal.........

[Musky Buck]

Very odd year, I think some we're speaking with forethought in our minds will this be the norm or will next year be a lot like this one, we're kinda thinking aloud, but just going off road kill and I'm on the road a ton, way way way fewer dead on the road, each of the last 5 years seems to be fewer and fewer road kills and I even bagged a road kill of course. Throw all of that out and why did they get they become nocturnal so early in October this year ? Warmth ? No real need to pack on any calories, so few fronts that packed a punch, very few frosts, soft ground, I'm emptying the kitchen sink here guys, but then November 17th comes and I have 11 come out plenty before the end of light, a truck even stopped to look at them, they paid no attention, I did I thought he'd maybe fire so 2 days before we got nearly a foot of snow they were out and about ? Weird year.