Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Is The Rut Really The Best Time To Hunt?
This is a question put to me all the time. Many hunters are told the absolute, no-doubt-about-it-greatest time of all to hunt is during the rut.
Well ... there is no doubt that it can be a very good time. The bucks are moving, the does are moving, and there are a bunch of things happening in the deer woods.
However, if a person has done a good job of scouting before the Oct. 1 bow opener, and hasn’t managed to spook the deer in the process, it would be quite easy to give the “absolute best” vote to Oct. 1, the first day of the bow season.
Say what? Many people don’t agree, which is OK, but those who do little scouting and bet on a bit of rabbits-foot luck to shag a deer in their direction, have no basis for argument. Think of it in a different light.
Deer move all summer unmolested. The animals arrive at the food source by the same trail every evening. They generally use the same trails today as they did yesterday, to head for the bedding areas in the morning. Each day, except for weather and wind, is about the same as the one before it.
These animals are in their summer mode of travel. Pinpoint those times of day when deer move, especially in the late afternoon, and it will be about the same time tomorrow. Each day the travel time changes a tiny bit as the number of daylight hours and minutes slowly gets shorter.
Watch the deer in August and September, pinpoint those travel routes and times, and come Oct. 1, you can climb into a ground blind or tree stand downwind of the active trail, and sit back to wait. You can almost set your watch to the time when a buck will appear.
Deer can’t read calendars. They don’t know the difference Sept. 30 and Oct. 1. It’s that summer mode of travel, and unspooked deer follow the same runways and trails daily. They are as predictable as nature allows them to be.
If you’ve located a buster buck, and haven’t spooked him or any of the does, he is easier to shoot than a buck that has been hunted often. The rut changes a few things, but it’s wise to disregard those old wives’ tales that say bucks lose all their caution during the rut.
And, as long as we are at it, many hunters believe the week of pre-rut (before the actual rut), offers even better hunting opportunities than the actual rut. This is the chasing phase, and bucks are after the does that aren’t quite ready to breed. The bucks stay real close to the those deer during this time period, because for larger bucks who have been through the rut before, they know what is coming soon.
This is a time when some bucks fight to establish their last-minute domination over rival bucks, and they can be called and rattled in close enough for a shot.
The actual rut can get pretty frantic and intense as small bucks try to move in to poach a doe while the dominant buck is driving off another larger buck. The does will seldom stand for the small buck, but once in a while he gets lucky.
I’ve seen quite a number of does get bred by a big buck, and the whole act is rather short-lived. A dominant buck may breed a doe several times, and if the big boy goes dashing off after another doe, another buck may also breed that doe.
The great thing about bow hunting whitetail bucks is there are so many different times when a good buck can be taken. Obviously, a buck can pass a hunter anytime during the season, and catch an arrow in the ribs, but the four best times to hunt are as follows:
Oct. 1 is probably the best day of all if the bucks haven’t been spooked by preseason scouting. The next best time is the pre-rut when bucks are chasing does all over the fields and woods. The third best time is during the peak of the rutting activity when bucks can get a bit goofy. And lastly, for those who love December, try hunting about 28 days after the peak of the rut when the secondary rut kicks in.
The action in early to mid-December isn’t hot, but late-blooming does are coming into estrus, and surviving bucks will be dogging their tracks.
Take your pick. All four are great times to hunt, and I’ve yet to find a bad time to hunt whitetails. It’s just that a few times of the hunting season are obviously better than others. â??â?? The Whitetail Wizard