I've always heard that hunting in heavy rain and wind will produce the most BT sightings/opprotunities. I consitantly recommend that type of weather to other BT huntes. Me though - Ive never experience that at all. I've sucked it up for years, sitting in pouring rain glassing cuts, still hunting big timber, rain running down my neck and back, and working isolated clearings that should all have produced a lot of deer in my vision. My reality - nada! THe majority of the bucks and doe I've seen have been on calm quiet days, both in the cuts and in the timber. Based on all discussions I"ve ever heard, I still recommend hunting in the rain whenever possible while personally knowing that rainy weater isn't all it's cracked up to be when hunting BTs, at least in my book.
From all my readings, listening to hunt stories, and general understanding of deer biology and behavior, BT hunting should improve in rainy/windy weather due to the sensory overload that a deer experiences with all the noise assoicated with the massive amount of noise that wind and rain create in the timber.
To expound on fishngamereaper's comments - A deer's primary defense against predators is it's nose/sense of smell. Heavy wind and rain knock down scent particles in the air and heavy prevailing winds reduce a deer's smell to only areas directly upwind. Secondary deer defenses include their sensitive hearing that can pick up on unsusual/potentially threatening sounds in the woods when all is quiet. Their keen eyesight that is extremely sensitive to movement, which also protects them from predators. When the weather is really bad, wind and rain make so much noise in the woods that the deer can no longer use their ears or noses to protect themselve from predators. That leaves only their remaining defense against predators - their eyes.
Their options during a storm are to either stick it out where they are or head to a clearing where they can use their last defense (their eyes) to protect themselves from approaching predators. Their "clearing" options for a buck are either a clearcut, especially in a sheltered spot or on the lee side of a ridge where wind is less, or for some older smarter bucks, they may have a hidden clearing in the woods where trees failed to fill in, leaving a space where the buck can stand when the weather is insane, attempting to use it's eyesight to capture any movement that might indicate an intruder is close. When it gets really windy and limbs are crashing to the ground, I suspect that the deer head for wide open space with no overhead danger (as I do).
