The Rut CAN"T be on...

I sat 4 days for 12 hours each day and only seen 6 deer.

I seen a little spiker chasing a doe with fawns twice, But that was the only buck. Seen other does but they were by themselves. Just no movement what so ever.


We got about an inch of snow last night, i did a big walk around the 100 acres at 11am and didn't cut one fresh track. I know they are around but they just aren't moving. I had prime wind today and -5 things should be rolling good by now.....Hardly any shots in the distance all week.

I have talked to lots of other guys around here as well and most aren't see the deer #'s. Gangs with 8-10 guys and only one or two does hanging.

Going to another spot tonight about 20 miles away, Seen a big buck on halloween, Hope he;s still around. 100 acres of beans that is half combined.

Heating up where i am in 77c. I rattled out a big boy last evening only to have a stair down for a minute and couldn't put the sheds down to shoulder the gun. When he didn't see any deer where the sounds came from he twisted around and headed back for the swamp. Worst feeling ever. Never spooked so he'll be back if he isnt on a hot doe yet.

The full moon is not helping much either.

92B I hunted on Oct 31st & seen 6 deer including the 10 point buck I shot with the bow... :)

I am tagged out so I have no other reports...

We have our party hunt black-powder week coming up on Nov17th week & hope they are still moving in my area...

I hunt 87

Past few days I have had two bucks and one doe come in to my grunt call. This full moon is a PITA! Didnt see a thing today but I have seen deer every day this week. I have been passing on the small ones as we have one tag left and don't care if we fill it.

Others i have spoke to haven't seen a thing one group down the road shot a big 8 Tuesday which took three big guys to haul it it out. And they havent seen anything since. They aren't hunting Saturday because of it being so dead.

Rut might be inching up in my area but who knows..

be good to bow hunt next week!

I saw a 6 pointer on thursday last week and called him in, but too dark to shoot. Had a friend shoot an eight pointer last Saturday and shot a 6 pointer Monday and saw an eight pointer while gutting the deer. Once shotgun season starts the deer who have not been shot figure out pretty quick not to move during the day. After next week once things settle down and all the orange army leave the bush may get better. Also found that here are less deer out there in my spots. The winter did knock the populations back. I am not picky about big bucks and do not pass deer unless there are fawns involved. Once the gun hunt finishes properties that have been pressured may found deer become night time feeders. So don't be surprised if you see less deer. I have seen tonnes of rubs and scrapes and bucks are cruising . But pressure can impact deer movement plus the weather has been crappy. Too much damn wind this week.

I took a small buck on Tuesday that had only started to show himself in the day on the trail cams last weekend. He also had started to make a scrape in the center of the food plots and a few rubs and scrapes have showed up on my land around the edge of the fields. WMU 65.

Things are rocking here. Try another spot.

Goose smasher

84 seems dead, still lots of corn though, I had 8 does in a 100 foot circle around me Wednesday Nothing since.

55 A- we are starting to see a few scrapes showing up and being tended to. Mid to end of next week should be right on.

3 bucks on camera, all at midnight, sat from 530 to 2 all week and only saw 3does fifteen mins before the end of the controlled hūnt here in 78a...not even seeing deer moving around anywhere...

The rut hasn't fired up here yet wmu 56 very slow this week only seen one scrape so far. I'm pretty sure the number of deer here might be as low as half of what I'm used to seeing not good

It is in crazy full swing down here around chatham, I've seen about 10 different bucks in the last few days and got chased by a frisky buck that thought I was his girlfriend.

Signs of rutting started last Sunday for me, rattled in 2 bucks, couldn't close the deal. Rattled in a big 9 pointer on Tues who made it to the meat pole. This upcoming 2 weeks bow hunting should be crazy busy with activity. This week it appeared a lot of younger bucks were hanging around the does. Tagged out for shotgun, but still have an additional archery tag left.

The rut starts within the same few days every year. Always has, always will.

Unless someone knows how to shorten or lengthen how much daylight we have at this time of year?

Just got home from the cabin outside of Kincardine. Not many scrapes or rubs, hunted in a valley were that has always produced bucks- last year took a ten and eleven pointer there. Not one sighting! A good number of our deer went down due to winter die -off last year and most of them are now hanging in the standing corn. Stopped at an accident last night. A women hit a buck and you could smell the musk on him. He was rutting hard. Should be good the next 2 weeks.

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Originally Posted by ch312

The rut starts within the same few days every year. Always has, always will.

Unless someone knows how to shorten or lengthen how much daylight we have at this time of year?

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Bingo! It doesn't vary year to year give or take a day or two.

It's on you just haven't seen many deer.

Are you kidding, i saw a nice buck standing beside the 401 tending a doe 200 feet from 8000 cars going 120 its on 100% just need to get a good spot. Its always on first 2 weeks of nov for sure!

Yesterday was very strange. Almost as if they have gone into lockdown.
Saw a couple nice 8s hot on does Saturday, and in the days leading up a few here and there.
Yesterday I counted or bumped near 20 Does....Not a single buck anywhere and I covered a handful of area's/spots from open fields, to woodlots to thick gnarly spots.

Not a single buck seen or bumped despite lots of Does around

I hunted 92C the fist week. On Mon., called in a spike horn. On Tues., only does and fawns. On Wed., a 6 pointer weighing 230 lbs. On Thurs., an 8 pointer weighing 200 lbs. That filled our tags. Thur. morning showed a ton of fresh tracks and activity in a tilled field from the previous night. Mondays spike horn answered a buck grunt. The other 2 answered doe bleats, came looking for the does and were not very cautious.

Looks like the Rut in areas is heating up!

We shot a doe last sunday and she wasn't even close glands on her back legs were only slightly coloured and she wasn't puffy at all.
this morning I saw a giant buck tending a group of does but not chasing at all
this was all in 78E

Dan

slow around here 92 A , a few bucks are chasing, most are still hold up in swamps and deep woods, rubs and scrapes, but scrapes are not being revisited much by bucks or does. bucks hesitant to come to rattling or grunts. All are extremelly skittish now since the ml/sg early november

well nw portion of 92A i should say

Heat of the rut is on in 55's

Oh, it is ON! The one I got today has really stinky hocks and a thick swollen neck. He was trying to find the doe that I made him believe was in he area.

I had a 140-150" 10 pointer 70 yards in front of me last night....Right on a trail a doe took 2 minutes before. He grunted most of the way.....Too far for the bow....Why couldn't he come last week during gun season? LOL

Father in law called me this morning saying a big buck was out back of his house racing around sniffing around. By the time I got there it he was gone

I don't know. where I am the rut is definitely in full swing if anything its winding down

Any more updates on the rut? I would think things should be cooling off a bit now this late in November...

Over the years I've come to a few conclusions about the rut that may well be at odds with popular (mis)conceptions.

There is a tendency, fueled by TV shows and outdoor writers, to "stopwatch" the rut into predictable on/off segments, and as far as this old hound is concerned, that's not how it works.

It starts with understanding that not all does give birth within a few days of each other around the beginning of June. I've found newborn fawns in mid-May, and as late as the 20th of June - and I'm sure there are births before and after those dates. The point I'm trying to make is that even if first estrous happened exactly "x" number of days after birth in every doe (more on that in a minute), you'd still have about a five week breeding period.

But estrous doesn't happen exactly "x" days after birth in very doe. Just like boys and girls, some young deer are going to reach maturity earlier than others. So, some of the does born in early to mid-May will come into estrous earlier than others, and the same thing happens to the does born later in June.

To address the notion that there are only a few days of intense activity in and around Remembrance Day, and a bit of a resurgence in early December, that's not been my experience. About eight or ten years ago I shot a buck stuck tight to a doe on Hallowe'en, and the one I shot last year was hot-tailing a doe a week before Christmas.

The "They're off" phrase is often thrown around - as if a starters' pistol full of hormones was fired into the air at a certain hour on a given date to start the Buck-on-Doe Sweepstake. When you think about it, we always say that the rut is in full swing when we start seeing bucks chasing does...but there is a danger with thinking that those sightings confirm the start of the rut...because we only see in daylight. A more accurate assessment would be that the daytime temperatures are (finally) sufficiently cool to permit the daytime continuation of breeding activity. In 2013 I saw a lot of intense activity in the first few days of rifle season because we had cracking cold temperatures. This year things didn't cool down until towards the end of the first week, so sightings of rutting activity were delayed - but I'd be willing to bet a good sum that there was a lot of hanky-panky going on in the bush and fields once the sun went down.


And as far as the lament I'm hearing (again) this year, "there are no more big bucks", I have this to offer. First of all, that isn't my experience. My sightings and trail-cam photos tell a different story. However, it is quite understandable that mature buck mortality might have been higher in some areas. It was a long, cold winter that started around the first of November and didn't seem to relax it's grip at all until May. I saw a few big bucks in the early New Year that were already in very poor condition. Those that didn't have standing corn and/or loggers in the area would have had a really rough time making it...some of the wolf kills I found were certainly older bucks.

So just like the sun comes up and the tides roll in, the rut takes place every year...with pretty much the same intensity. I think it's only the viewing times that change...some years have more matinees than others.

Timing of does in estrus if supposed to be determined by photoperiod (length of daylight), not age of deer - which (in theory) could synchronize this. Also - if you live in a house with a bunch of women - you'll have a bit of insight into this synchronousness.

All that said - I'd agree that the rut and it's 'predictability' is much overhyped - but do you think a guy trying to sell his TV show is going to come out and say 'heading out hunting today...don't know what to expect'? Heck no - he wants to tell you he knows it's exactly 2 days, 3 hours and 42 minutes past the peak of the rut. There are enough other 'random factors' which affect deer behavior that make the predictability of the rut - well pretty hit and miss.

As far as the 'shortage of big bucks' - I'm not seeing that this year. Still haven't got one yet though.. But something's leaving huge tracks at 4 different places I hunt.

"So just like the sun comes up and the tides roll in, the rut takes place every year...with pretty much the same intensity. I think it's only the viewing times that change...some years have more matinees than others."

About sums it up.

I think you got the right idea .are scrapes seem to have gone cold but I am still seeing bucks trailing does every night .are shotgun hunt starts on monday and every year the first week of December we push bush and always find bucks bedded in with the does ,if the breeding was done the bucks would be off on there own .looks like we are going to have a good hunt but we still have a lot of corn standing as the snow and rain really slowed down the harvest .Dutch

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Originally Posted by werner.reiche

Timing of does in estrus if supposed to be determined by photoperiod (length of daylight....

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Yup. I've heard that too. And I'm not discounting it as a partial factor. But if that was entirely the case, it isn't very useful to explain why some does come into estrous a month or so later than others. I've arrived at the conclusion (perhaps wrongly) that photoperiodism has a greater effect on bucks.

So the moral of the story is get out there and wait it out!

Working around the yard yesterday , I saw an nice 8 pointer walking across the partially ploughed corn field approximately 200 yards away.
I had time to get my binoculars and look him over closely and noticed the swollen neck and counted his 8 points, he was obviously trailing a doe in heat as he walked very slowly with his head down to the ground sniffing and periodically looking up , nice buck and from appearances the rut is still on.

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Originally Posted by Ridger

So the moral of the story is get out there and wait it out!

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Yep....pretty much.:goodstuff:

And don't make noise, don't stink, and don't let 'em see you! :santa:

This site is informative:

http://www.trmichels.com/RutDates.htm

http://www.trmichels.com/Image21.jpg

Rut activity chart for Minnesota (similar climate and latitude as much of Ontario):

http://www.trmichels.com/Image20.jpg

trmicheals lol.....Havn't seen that name in a while. He used to be on ALL hunting forums....Could never figure out if he was just a troll or a informative guy,,,,,

That's a great chart... this warm weather sure isn't helping our cause!