maybe hunting pressure screwed up the bucks.
Stopping the Rut
First real question.
I hunt in the deer capital of AR, Union County. Saw 9 deer cross the road on the way to work. 3 cars stopped both ways to let them cross. But it has been a odd year. Last weekend the rut was going good with nearly everyone on my 800 acre lease seeing bucks following / chasing does. This week and weekend nothing, not one buck was seen following a doe. Only one deer was seen eating corn (the 10point that was taken). I hink the deer are on the acorns but still...
It is odd. Never seen the rut stop and that is what some of the old timers are saying. Any ideas or can anyone explain this to me? Is it just that they have swapped days and nights? I didn't have a single buck on my trail cam even at night....
I said at the beginning of the year I am killing 4 does this year and I don't see where that is going to be a problem. But the buck hunters in camp are a little frustrated. Let me know what you think.
I hunt in the deer capital of AR, Union County. Saw 9 deer cross the road on the way to work. 3 cars stopped both ways to let them cross. But it has been a odd year. Last weekend the rut was going good with nearly everyone on my 800 acre lease seeing bucks following / chasing does. This week and weekend nothing, not one buck was seen following a doe. Only one deer was seen eating corn (the 10point that was taken). I hink the deer are on the acorns but still...
It is odd. Never seen the rut stop and that is what some of the old timers are saying. Any ideas or can anyone explain this to me? Is it just that they have swapped days and nights? I didn't have a single buck on my trail cam even at night....
I said at the beginning of the year I am killing 4 does this year and I don't see where that is going to be a problem. But the buck hunters in camp are a little frustrated. Let me know what you think.
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The rut starts and stops when it's supposed to (mostly based on hormonal secretions that are released by signals from the deer's pituitary gland when the rays of the sun enter the deers' eyes at a certain angle). This is called a phototropic event. But once it gets started, it can be affected by other conditions. For example, one year here in Montana, I hunted in absolutely prime mule and whitetail deer country, the Custer National Forest, during the rut. We saw tracks everywhere in the snow, but actually saw very few deer. The temps were unusually warm that year - it was the middle of November, and the coldest temp that we saw was 54 degrees at about 5 am. It should have been in the teens at that time of year. Anyway, the bucks had to have been rutting, but they were doing it at night because of the "extreme" heat. I managed to get a 4x4 muley on the last day of the hunt.
Here in Georgia, this has been a very strange year for the rut. People are saying it might as well havent even happend. One person told me that he typicaly see's a few bucks by now. He hasnt seen a single one. A buddy of mine has game cameras set on his 200 acres. Not a single pic of a buck.
What onehorse says makes great sense. Fri and Sat last weekend where cold. Lot of buck movement during the day on those days as well. Its warmed up here the past couple days and the daytime buck sightings has dropped quite a bit. I have still seen some good bucks on the way to or from my hunting spot on the sides of the road through my headlights. Some on early morning and some right after dark. One dude was strutting across a side street like he was just out taking a sunday stroll. This was on an evening hunt where 5 of us where hunting in different locations. (2 seperate countys) Didnt see any mature bucks on any of the sits but seen awesome deer movement in fields and such after dark on the way home.
Its colder in TN this wed and thurs morning. I am hoping the daytime buck movement is up since the cold (30s) will last till midmorning instead of being 60 and sunny at 9am.
Its colder in TN this wed and thurs morning. I am hoping the daytime buck movement is up since the cold (30s) will last till midmorning instead of being 60 and sunny at 9am.
It's colder in TN than it is here in NY. As of now the weather channel icon on my computer says 46 for my area. At this time 46 is supposed to be a daytime high temp and that's way above average. Normally 35 should be a daytime high. It's all jacked up here.
Hunting Pressure plays a key role in all this.
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