Late October looked promising, then the weather screwed us. There has been reports of good post rut activity though, which i haven't been able to experience because of work and school.
It's not been November, here, temps are too warm. I say the rut is happened/happening.... but possibly all at night. But that being said I've seen one of the biggest bucks Ive seen this year and he was cruising on Nov 14. Never seen him since. I shot a nice mature doe yesterday.... her glands were as dry as summer time.
It blew here in Illinois on nearly all of the ground I could hunt. We had just too much standing corn. Thousands of acres of it.. EVERYWHERE! It's great if you're the guy who gets to hunt on it... but none of my ground has it. I did get to hunt just outside of a small chunk.. and I saw quite a few deer go into it. Good news was my spot in northern Illinois near my home doesn't have Ag fields within 2 miles of it.. so it didn't matter there.
Standing corn, rough work schedule and warm temps all lead to me having a boring bow season. Very little activity seen from the stand for me.
Rut? What rut? I seem to have missed it despite being in the woods as often as possible. From the beginning of bow season on Oct. 3rd until now there has been at least one member of my hunt club on the property every day. No one has seen chasing. Was it nocturnal? Was it on another property? Is it yet to happen? Who knows, but I'll continue to get out as often as I can from now 'til the season end on January 2nd. And if I have tags left I'll hunt our late ML only season for 2 weeks in January.
Oh, and what is this standing corn you speak of? In Texas corn is a verb meaning -"to bait deer with yellow kernals. Primarily done with spincast feeders although "hand corning" is know to take place."
I almost got mounted by a BB one night on the way in, a story best told in person. I seen very little chasing, very little rut activity. Scrapes were down, but rubs were waaaaaaay down for some reason.
Rut was virtually non existent for me. Too much standing corn. Looking forward to second rut for sure.
I have had better rutting activity in years past but this year was not to bad. I did see some pretty good chasing going on but it was short lived. I have never heard of rutting activity going on in March in these parts (Southern Indiana)
