Thursday, November 03, 2005
A Slow Night During The Rut
It’s impossible to cover all deer travel angles during the rut. Several people hunted my Buck Pole Deer Ranch tonight, and everyone was placed in the best stands for the wind direction. Although all but one person saw deer, none of the buck sightings were close enough to offer a decent shot.
It was one of those nights: warm, squirrelly wind shifts, and for some, a lackluster pattern of whitetail movement. Three of the hunters reported seeing bucks hounding does, but the buck’s travels took them everywhere except in front of a hunter.
One man said he saw over 50 deer tonight, which is not surprising here, but none of the does managed to lead a tending buck close enough for a shot. And, although many hunters feel the rut is an easy time to hunt, the deer always have the ability to make us wonder what they will do next.
We can predict and project our theories of deer movement, but in the end, it’s the whitetails that choose where and how heavily they will move.
One hunter saw six bucks but all were trying to surround one estrus doe, and she was outnumbered in this situation. Bucks were sniffing around young does who may soon come into their first estrus, if not soon than perhaps next month, and the hunting tonight seems to have slowed a bit, and it’s quite likely that a last-minute quirky wind shifts and warm temperatures were the culprits.
I personally didn’t see much tonight. A couple of does and yearlings, but one or two smaller bucks were looking for an estrus doe. The odd thing is that in some areas the bucks were chasing does hard, and in other areas, there wasn’t much deer travel at all.
The rut often has its slow nights, and they seem to correspond to the temperature. It was in the 50s tonight, and we’ve often found that cooler evenings with a north or westerly breeze can be productive.
No one, no matter how they wish they could change the weather, has the ability to do so. The best thing any hunter can do is put sportsmen in proven locations, spots that have produced good bucks in the past, and hope for the best.
Tonight’s hunters were in ground blinds, elevated coops and tree stands, and nothing worked as we expected. Michigan has had a long history of unpredictable weather patterns and wind shifts, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand what happens when the weather warms up and the winds blow from the wrong quarter.
The result is heavy deer travel through open fields, little and late deer movement in thick cover, whitetails doing a sudden disappearance when the wind switches direction, and more fawns moving about than adult does. The buck movement can be medium to heavy during such times, but sometimes the deer fail to move near baited locations.
Hunters who were near funnels often saw deer, but such areas can produce late movement if the animals pick up any human scent. The wind switched to the northeast tonight, which is always bad, and it greatly inhibits deer movement in certain areas.
Hunters would do well to remember that the rut doesn’t always mean seeing bucks within shooting range, and when the weatherman fails to cooperate, it often means reduced deer sightings and less movement. Add warm weather to this mix of rutting woes, and hunters suffer from the curse of bad rutting weather.
The only solution is to ride it out, and hope for a weather change the next day. It usually works wherever whitetails are found.