Went out this morning to my favorite spot. Its on the edge of a corn field surrounded by hardwood. The farmer has cut a 30yrd strip along the outside of the entire field. The deer have been hitting it hard... looks like a stampede went threw it with all the prints. Thing is, while I was out their this morning I didn't see a single buck out of about 20 does over a two hour period. Pretty sure the rut is over around here but I would expect to see at least one or two. Any thoughts on where they may be? Where do they go at this time of the year? I have already filled my doe tag in case anyone is wondering why I didn't take a doe. I have very little time to hunt these days so any help would be great.
We're seeing the same thing here. Between my dad and I, we are seeing between 5 and 19 doe and fawns almost every night, but nothing with any bone on it's head at all. Mornings are usually a bust with maybe 1 or 2 if we're lucky, but the evenings the doe and fawns are hitting the cut corn and alfalfa hard, but no bucks and no signs of them on the cameras. We had about 8 different bucks on the cams earlier in the season, mostly spikes and 3 points etc., but they have just disappeared. We have a ton of public land behind us that gets hard during the early part of gun season, so maybe they shot all of them. Doe tags are limited in this area and we heard a lot of shots early on so most of the shots were probably bucks. I have a doe tag but I'm hesitant to use it this time of year since they have probably already been bred. We are trying to be more selective with bucks but we are pretty sure a lot of them get shot behind us anyway.
I have been having the same luck. Try going out in colder temps and different times of day. Try doing something different than your normal routine and maybe you will have different results.
