I’m writing a book called 52 Week Season featuring a hunting or fishing experience for each week of the year.

From dove in September to rockfish in October to the whitetail rut in November, below is a rundown of the fall months.

Read the full Interviews here.

SEPTEMBER

Week 27. Dove

At high noon on September 1 every year, guns across the region are unloaded, and doves fly for cover. The fields are thirsty by this time of year but if you can stand the dust and the heat and the chiggers, hunting doves is a fine way to spend a September afternoon. 

Week 28. Marsh Hens

The closest thing you can get to the mix of flats fishing, upland hunting, and waterfowling is rail hunting. “The best way to hunt them is to walk the bank of a 20- to 50-foot-wide creek that ends at a point and try to drive them to the point,” says Pete Wallace of Chincoteague Hunting and Fishing Center. “Rails’ first choice to avoid being captured is to run, second choice is to hide, third to swim, and the last choice is to fly. Your best shots will be birds trying to fly across the creek. The higher the tide, the more successful the hunt.” 

Week 29. Teal

Mid-September brings the first cool nights, which are signals to blue-winged and green-winged teal to begin their journeys south. These pint-size birds are among the first migrators to stop over to feast on the seeds of wild rice, millet, and pondweeds in our ripe freshwater marshes on their way south. “Blue-wing teal arrive very early, because they winter in southern North America and Central and South America, farther south than most other ducks,” says USFWS Atlantic Flyway Representative Paul Padding. 

Week 30. Elk

“Elk are grazing animals, more so than deer which are browsers. Ideal elk cover would be about 30% forest and 70% grasslands, with limited human access,” says Appalachian Wildlife Foundation president David Ledford.  “Some mined landscapes provide thousands of acres of this type of forage.” Boone himself might recognize some of the native landscapes around the old mines.  As for the best time to hunt, “the last weekend of September into the second weekend of October is generally the peak rut,” says Ledford.

Week 31. Sika Deer

Sika deer’s unusual story began about a century ago, when a fellow named Clement Henry stocked a handful on James Island, a spit of land off Dorchester County that once supported a community with a Methodist church but is now not more than a bushy sandbar and some flooded timber. Eventually those deer made it across to Taylor’s Island and the mainland. They’ve cozied in to the thick wooded wetlands of Dorchester County and Blackwater NWR and earned the nickname the “ghosts of the marsh” for their elusiveness. The best time to hunt them is during the rut in the fall. “I’ve heard them bugling in September, but mid-October is when the rut really peaks,” says Pradines. Hearing the sika bugle in the morning, evening, or the middle of the night — it makes your hair stand up on your neck.”

Week 32. Wood Ducks

It’s mid-October, and the foliage is nearing its peak in the hardwood groves overloooking the Chester River. What better time to hunt woodies? The wood duck drake is among the most brilliantly-colored ducks, with a red-green hood, speckled chestnut hackle, caramel flanks, and bolts of white streaking and curling across its head and body. Its head, shaped like a mullet haircut fresh out of the shower, is a rich emerald with violet and rust hues.  The first duck season split is a week in mid-October, which "is really a wood-duck season," says Tyler Johnson, who runs one of the oldest and largest hunting operations on the Eastern Shore.

Wee 33. False Albacore

They say not to bring a knife to a gun fight. Well, don’t bring an undersized rod albie fishing. It will get snapped. Pound for pound, few fish pack the raw power of false albacore. They school up in the fall like rockfish or blues but have the sheer muscle of tuna. Like “true” tuna (which, as the name implies, they are not related to), albies are ocean-going, torpedo-shaped fish with large forked tails and tight metallic skin, but at the same time, they stay close to shore to feed on frenzied bait balls. Albies migrate south in the fall and will congregate for epic blitzes off the Outer Banks in the late fall. 

Week 34. Rocktober

Late October is primetime on the Chesapeake. Temperatures start to drop steadily, water clarity improves, days shorten, and striped bass feel the primal urge to fatten up for the winter ahead. This the best time of the year for constant action on rockfish. This is Rocktober. Stripers can be caught for most of the year somewhere in the Mid-Atlantic in endless different ways, from trolling to surfcasting to soaking bait, but it’s hard to beat chasing them on light tackle or the fly rod during the Rocktober blitz. 

Week 35. Steelhead

Steelhead are ocean-run rainbow trout native to the Pacific Northwest that were introduced to the Great Lakes in the 1800s. Keeping one on the line is like driving a speeding Mack truck down a cluttered alleyway.   Late fall brings the kind of persistent cold rains that make the Great Lakes feel like British Columbia and triggers steelhead to run up swollen rivers.  Mid October through November "is our bread and butter!" exclaims Greg Senyo of Steelhead Alley Outfitters. "Steelhead start to show up mid-October with the change from summer to fall. … This is the best time to catch a Lake Erie steelhead in peak physical condition."

Week 36. Whitetail Rut

For whitetail hunters, months of preparation come down to moments in mid-November. “I think about deer hunting all year,” says Jeff Phillips of Star City Whitetails. “I think about it 365 days. On a hot, muggy, horrible day, I often think about what that big buck is doing, or on a 2-degree night, my mind goes to that buck, and what he’s doing!”

The timing can be slightly dependent on weather and local conditions, but for the most part peak rut is around November 10-20. “If I could only hunt one day all year, I would pick cold, clear, frosty morning during the first weeks of November,” says Pennsylvania whitetail writer Tyler Franz. “The bucks cruise the ridges between doe bedding areas looking to pick up the scent of a doe coming into estrous.”

Week 37. Fall Harvests

Oysters spawn in early summer, which leaves the meat watery and bland, but by late November, they are hitting their meatiest and most flavorful. Towns up and down the Chesapeake, like Urbanna on the Rappahannock, are hosting oyster festivals. “Tonging for wild oysters starts October 1, and dredging is November 1, but I don’t think that the Maryland oyster is really at its prime until January 1,” says JD Blackwell of 38 North Oysters. 

Week 38. Woodcock and Ruffed Grouse

Aldo Leopold once remarked, “There are two kinds of hunting: ordinary hunting and grouse hunting.” The first frost in the Virginia Piedmont is, on average, the third week of October, and peak foliage comes around the same time in the mountains. Both are good reference points for when grouse hunting can start to get good. “It’s that really golden time in the fall, when the leaves change and they start to drop,” says grouse hunter Tripp Way. “You get the crunchy forest floor and you can now see through the thick regenerating cuts that they drop in. And that's the prime time.”

Week 39. Whitetail Rifle

When Pennsylvania was still just a colony, General George Washington’s Continental Army recruited 13 new rifle companies. Nine were from Pennsylvania, and they organized into the Pennsylvania Rifle Battalion, the first rifle battalion in U.S. history.  Over two centuries later, the Pennsylvania riflemen still show up in force, but these days it’s as the “Orange Army” on the state’s legendary opening day of firearms season the Monday after Thanksgiving.  

"Opening day of rifle season is one of the most storied traditions in Pennsylvania," says Tyler Franz, a Pennsylvania wildlife writer. The Keystone State today has nearly a million hunters and maintains one of the richest hunting heritages in the mid-Atlantic.  "The Monday after Thanksgiving is the holy grail for hunting in Pennsylvania -- the first day of firearms deer season."