Article found here: https://www.bowhunting.com/blog/2019/10/18/what-is-the-pre-rut-and-when-does-it-start/ Curious on your opinions on recurring dates across this country. I'm down here in SE Missouri. Typically, I've always tried to make my transition from freezer queens to antlers on or around Halloween. On my walk in/out routes towards the latter half of October, I generally start seeing rub lines. On average, the first frost occurs in SEMO between the last week of Oct and the first week of Nov. That first frost tends to set off activity. I think it's clearly related. I don't want to call that rut activity, but everyone seems to have a different idea. Pre-Rut down here seems to involve bucks taking inventory of the "herd" and making their movement patterns and presence a bit more obvious. Tending to see them on hoof at dusk staging on or against edging and also a bit later on their routes back to bedding in the A.M. Bleat cans have worked for me over the years just prior to the rifle season but simply using your eyes and nose to find active scrapes will lead you to sitting on the "staging" areas to offer you the opportunity you seek. That's always been the strategy. 2023 holds a new factor for us bowhunters.. New kicker for MO. MDC has installed a new gun season at the end of Oct. For those guys filling the freezer who have limited ability/time to hunt, I respect their excitement but I'm not personally thrilled. I have a worry about how that will impact the pre-rut activity because we will naturally see a surge in hunter activity. As you can likely imagine, it's related to CWD. So, wrapping all of that up to ask this: Do you all think that it's dates in combination of weather, like a frost that surge the "pre-rut" into action or something different? And, in your opinion, do you believe that a surge in hunter activity (like with a new gun season in late Oct) will impact the rut activity by means of a delay or possibly encourage nocturnal activity to continue?
I think in your area and most of the mid west on your lateral line, the date is the most consistent indicato of rut. Peak rut there is Nov 12 if memory serves and I think you could set your watch to it there. It's all length of daylight. Cold weather is usually a great coincidence, since it just puts em on their feet in daylight hours. Hot, they just roam at night doing rut stuff. Here in western NC rut is all over the place. I hate it. But around Thanksgiving, we usually see tons of activity. There are tons of studies with empirical data out there and I bet there is no 100 percent agreement. My experience in MO was there is a very consistent rut period and somewhat predictable. All that said, I prefer pre rut any day and twice on Sundays.
Appreciate the input. I think you’re right in the response to my opinion on the frost causing an activity surge. MO rifle season almost falls in perfect time every year to allow bow hunters roughly a week of rut hunting followed by the opening weekend of rifle season. I didn’t consider daylight length being a key factor, so you’ve opened my mind a bit there. Again, I appreciate that. Sent from my iPhone using Bowhunting.com Forums
I'm just repeating other experts. Lol. Jeff Sturgiss with whitetail habitat solutions has some really good videos on YouTube about this topic and I tend to agree with him. There's a million different opinions on the topic of rut and rut predictions. My favorite day to be on a bow stand in MO is Halloween on a cold front. Buckle up butter cup.
Not exactly what you are asking but. My experience with this is that in Minnesota, the gun season is almost always the first weekend in November, about a week later than you are talking about. Any gun season will always effect how the deer move and act, for instance Minnesota has a 2 day youth season/early doe season around the second or third weekend of October and it seems like the deer are on edge from then on and throughout the rest of the season. The biggest impact that I see is that the bucks almost always go nocturnal and we don’t see the daylight activity because of that. Opening day is the only exception to this because they haven’t figured it out until the next day.
Yep. I agree with you on how the bucks react. I also think they begin to bed in an outpost manner, meaning in a frequented land scenario, they’ll bed up high with a view of the frequented entrances of human presence and then back their does up against hard edging. However, I believe they get out of those beds mid day more often because they can pattern us. They can hear hunters come in at dawn and watch them leave at 9:30. There’s an old fella I met down in TN who had the trophy room to prove his efforts. He’d show up in his van about 2 hours after daylight and sit in the parking lot until all or most of the hunters had called it quits for the morning. Very successful public land buck killer. I think this ties together. So, my attention this fall will be how the bucks react to the new gun season. Like mentioned above, I believe the bucks inventory the does throughout the latter part of Oct. Considering the new antlerless gun season, the visible buck sign that I would typically hunt on going into Nov may be null and void depending on the amount of antlerless tags filled by the new early gun season. Sent from my iPhone using Bowhunting.com Forums
Nossir. Strictly public Sept-Nov. I transition over to private (not exclusively) when rifle season opens up. That’s just the rule on the private land I hunt as the landowner and most of the guys do not bow hunt. I return to the public after rifle season depending on my tag situation as it’s much closer to home. Sent from my iPhone using Bowhunting.com Forums
Gotcha. Public is usually a goat rope any time the rifle hunters get in there and stays that way for a while.
Yep. Once our 11 day gun season has run it's course the deer are so rattled it's difficult to even see one where we hunt in Mark Twain National Forest. That's when I usually focus my efforts on my little home place or transition to Arkansas.
Having hunted in @LittleChief's camp with @Ridgerunner3 as well, I would agree with their assessments of SE MO. The couple of times I have hunted there I left the Friday night before the gun opener. If I could selfishly change the MO season dates, I would push back the gun opener to the Saturday before Thanksgiving and give the bowhunters a little more time in peak rut activity. I think this would make the MO hunting even better both immediately and in the long run.
You have my vote there pal. MDC could really win some folks over if they even considered doing that in the southern counties in the bootheel. Sent from my iPhone using Bowhunting.com Forums
So from what I am tracking is the only changes are the 2 day rifle hunts in early Oct (6-8) and 4 days in late Nov (22-26). They arent claiming the Oct hunt is for CWD, but knowing some guys that work there it’s seen as a benefit to combat CWD. The late Nov one is completely a CWD season. I guess my thoughts are it sucks to affect movement but something has to be done. MDC is one of the better conservation depts out there and puts more money into research than most states. I feel I have the ability to say that since growing up in Missouri but living in all 4 time zones and hunting in as many states as I have with interactions with all those state agencies and looking how they do stuff (Washington state appointed a zookeeper to their WDFW board of directors…). I know this probably stirs up a hornets nest with the CWD and opinions on both sides but doing nothing will kill a lot of deer which will affect hunting in some way shape or form (and god forbid it jumps to humans) so I prefer some proactive conservation in this. I think we as hunters may miss out on some opportunities and that is unfortunate. I don’t like when the orange army shows up with their terrible weapons handling and atrocious woodsmanship, but the rut also makes deer make mistakes. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I worked with a bunch of guys from MO and they always talk about how stupid illinois gun season is. I guess if youre strictly a gun hunter it is. But its broken into 2 parts. 3 days (weekend before thanksgiving) and 4 days weekend after thanksgiving. I really like the way its done. The gun guys are still getting the tail end of the peak and during “second season” getting a good shot at some straggler bucks seeking the few does left first weekend in Dec. I’ve experienced some great gun seasons both weekends. This allows the bowhunters ample time to get something done as well before the orange army burns the woods down.
Great input Wedes. I haven’t called many time zones home but living in MO most of my life, then AR, TN and back to MO, I definitely agree about our conservation department. They take better care of their hunting areas than other states I’ve seen, and they put out good communication. Any dept catering towards bowhunters only would fail. My posts above turned more into a rant thread but realistically what I’m curious about is how the bucks will react. Like you said, it’s a short season and from what I originally understood it was muzzleloader in Oct, similar to what AR does. Basically, to sum it up, I’ll still do my pre-season mumbo jumbo but after that weekend, I think it’s key to pay close attention. Heck, it could even be a good thing. Plenty of guys I know are freezer fillers with their rifle tag so they may go with that season and get their chore done and avoid the colder months this decreasing Nov activity. Grasping at the positivity straws here.. CWD- who knows man. That probably calls for it’s own thread and I’m sure everyone has an opinion. There seems to be a lot of research out there and every state in this area is doing the same thing; increasing tag allotment. I went down a rabbit hole of prions and their lifespan in soil alone a while back and I realized I went into deep water without a life jacket with my hands tied.
I’ve heard the same thing more often since moving to Cape and being a few minutes from IL. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve brought out the .270 to avoid tag soup plenty of times. I’m all for legal methods of take. I’m also glad more folks may have an additional opportunity to get into the woods this fall. I know several guys that work at the plant all want to take off the same Nov dates and fact is, they all can’t. So this will give them more flexibility and more opportunities. That’s only fair. MO has also increased archery tag allotments so it’s not like they aren’t equally increasing opportunities. Do you think a change like this could impact the 2024 pre-rut and rut activities or do you think it takes a longer period of time to impact behavior like that? Keep in mind, in my 20 years, MO has never put forth an early gun season to my knowledge to this is completely new. Sent from my iPhone using Bowhunting.com Forums
One thing that may benefit from the new set up is less ppl shooting does after the rut which means less pregnant does getting killed. We try to do that at our place. We kill plenty of does, we just don’t want to kill pregnant ones. It makes sense in my knuckle dragging brain. I’m there that week of October and will be bringing my bow but may grab the rifle and have my 4 year old get his first experience with hunting in a blind one of the mornings. I got a new can that goes on the .308 so I wanna try it out haha Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Solid point there! Hey goodluck when you’re here. Reach out if you need any help dragging one out if you’re in the area! Sent from my iPhone using Bowhunting.com Forums
The “shooting a pregnant doe” debate has surfaced on here before. My take on that has always been “What’s the difference?”
