Bucks move more and become less secretive as we march closer to the rut, making them easier to hunt and more susceptible to being caught in daylight..#TheHuntingPage #RutTracker2017 with Stealth Cam Wildlife Research Center, inc.
Posted by Hunting on Monday, October 30, 2017
Rut meter 17%
If you were planning to hunt the rut this week, forget about it! We pulled some 40,000 pics this past weekend and very little is happening rut-wise. Plenty of young bucks, but the old bucks are still very much nocturnal. No hard signs of rut activity yet; we’re still a few weeks away.
Many of you have started seeing new bucks showing up on the cameras. Bucks, shuffling for the big show to come, have had a lot of new faces showing up. Some of the first does should be coming into estrous this week, and increases in mature buck visibility should begin to rise. Most bucks are still staying tight to cover and are rarely exposing themselves to feed in the early dawn and just before dark.
According to reports coming in from our rut trackers and hunters, bucks are becoming interested in does and are acting aggressively toward other bucks, littering the countryside with rubs and scrapes. This shows that the bucks are ready to rock, but the does, for the most part, are not receptive quite yet.
Landscapes are beginning to change for whitetails. Food stops are changing from primarily soft mast to harder mast acorns and hickory nuts. Agricultural grounds are being combined and, hopefully, being topped with a cover crop or left alone for deer to clean up.
In general, deer do not venture out much when the temperature is above 50 degrees. Now is a perfect opportunity to capitalize on a buck that is bedded near a food source. It’s also a good time to switch to hunting funnels or ridges between feed and bed, in hopes of intercepting a buck trying to fill his belly or in search of the first available does. Despite what many people may think, the rut has nothing to do with colder weather conditions. Estrous and photo-period are the driving forces behind the RUT.
When you begin your mock scrapes in early fall, the bucks are not yet rutting, which means they aren’t laying down as much scent as they will be in a week or two. Active Scrape, from Wildlife Research Center® (http://www.wildlife.com/), is a full spectrum scrape formula that will boost your mock scrape and keep it active. You can switch to another scrape scent, such as Golden Scrape or Hot Scrape, once the deer begin working the scrapes heavily before the rut kicks in. Mock scrapes are prime locations to take inventory of bucks in the area from our Rut Tracker Cameras at http://www.stealthcam.com/.
