Hunting these hills

The ground

Dillsboro sits in the Dearborn Uplands: steep oak-hickory ridges, laurel-less hollows, and the Laughery Creek bottoms. Deer bed on the leeward side of a ridge, feed in the crop edges and oak flats, and travel the benches and creek crossings. They do not live in the middle of a 40-acre bean field at noon.

Most meat here comes off private ground. Ask once, in daylight, and offer a share. Public options within a drive: Crosley FWA (Jennings), Versailles State Park does not hunt like a FWA, and the Ohio River bottoms have mixed access. Know whose line you are on.

Tip. A paper plat map in a zip bag beats a dead phone. Mark the house, the creek, and the neighbor who said yes.

Deer, 2026–27

Hours are one-half hour before sunrise to one-half hour after sunset. Hunter orange is required in firearms and muzzleloader. Tag and check as the DNR requires while that system exists (gooutdoorsin.com). Bag limits change — do not guess.

Rut in these hills peaks the first two weeks of November. Bucks cruise benches and scrape lines on the downwind edge of a bedding thicket. The week of firearms you will hear every ridge. Sit still, or hunt the far side of the property at midday when other people go to lunch.

Warning. Chronic wasting disease is in Indiana. Do not shoot a thin, stumbling, or unafraid deer. Leave brain and spine out of the kitchen. See Process → Deer.

How to hunt a Dearborn ridge

1. Read the wind before you leave the truck. Thermals fall at dawn (scent goes downhill into the hollow), rise mid-morning, fall again at dusk. A stand that is perfect at 7 a.m. is wrong at 10.
2. Enter below the deer if you can. Walk the creek or the field edge, not the ridge spine they use as a highway.
3. Sit a funnel: a saddle between two knobs, a fence corner, a narrow bench, or the trail off a south-slope oak flat after a frost drops the acorns.
4. Morning: face the bedding. Evening: face the food (beans, clover, white-oak acorns, persimmon). Midday in the rut: sit the travel.
5. A first frost plus a north or west wind after three still days is the best daytime movement of the year.
6. If you shoot, wait. Mark the last sight. Then take up the blood. A gut shot in 70°F weather is a race — see Process.

Tip. White oak mast years, hunt the oaks. Poor mast years, hunt the bean and alfalfa edges. Look at the ground, not last year’s memory.

Turkey

Spring Apr 22 – May 10, 2026 (youth Apr 18–19), one bearded bird. Hours start one-half hour before sunrise. Fall archery is statewide; fall gun is only in listed counties — check the current map before you carry a shotgun in October.

They roost in big timber (sycamore bottoms and ridge oaks), fly down to benches, and strut in the first opening that catches sun. Do not sit under the roost tree. Set 80–120 yards toward the strut zone. Call less than you want to. A hen that comes silent is common here.

Rainy mornings they stay on the roost late. After a storm they often walk logging roads and field edges to dry.

Squirrel and rabbit

Gray and fox squirrel: Aug 15, 2026 – Jan 31, 2027 (5/day). Five a day. Do not shoot leaf dreys. Hunter orange from Nov 1 on. Hunt hickory and white oak at first light in August–September; they cut so loudly you can walk to the sound. After the leaves drop, still-hunt the sunny sides.

Cottontail: Nov 1, 2026 – Feb 28, 2027 (5/day). Five a day. Walk briar, multiflora edges, and grown-up fencerows after a skiff of snow. Kick the brush piles. Wear glasses. Cook wild rabbit through — tularemia is uncommon and real. Gloves to clean.

Tip. Squirrel is the teaching hunt. If you cannot sit still for a fox squirrel, you will not sit still for a November buck.

Safety that keeps a crew

1. Treat every gun as loaded. Muzzle down or up, never at a person, never at a truck cab.
2. Know what is beyond the deer. These ridges have houses in the next hollow.
3. Orange in gun season. A blaze hat is not pride; it is how you come home.
4. Tell someone which ridge and when you will be back. A whistle beats a dead phone in a hollow.
5. Climbing a stand: pull the unloaded gun up on a rope. Fall-arrest if you have it. Most deer-camp funerals are from trees, not bullets.