How was the rut in your woods? Kinda disappointing in my woods. I saw flickers of chasing over about a 3 week span from right before Halloween through mid November. I saw lone bucks pushing single does on 3 occasions, 1 buck pushing a group of 3 does one evening and then saw him by himself the next morning, then saw 3 small bucks chasing 1 poor doe all over the woods. That was all of the chasing I saw but I did see A LOT of small bucks cruising the woods during those 3 weeks, not really on a doe at the time.
Most of the big bucks I saw during the rut were after dark. Didn't see much movement during the day except for the small buck I shot. On one property I hunt, I didnt see a single buck during the daylight at all this season. Other parts of the state were hot while others werent. This year was definitely not as good as last year, at least not around me
Very slow around here. I saw no chasing at all while the Pa early archery season was in (our season ended November 12th).
Pretty disappointing in mine as well. No daytime scraping or cruising that i saw. Alot of nighttime breeding/chasing.
Pretty much what you reported John. From October 20th until I killed my buck on November 9th I only saw a handful of bucks chasing, including the buck I killed. I rattled in a few bucks, and had close encounters with 3 of my 4 target bucks. Overall it was a big improvement over last years rut.
I thought it was a little slow this year, but then again I didn't get as much time in the woods as I did last year. I rattled in a small buck, a decent 10 and my brother in law rattled in his 9 pointer. I think doe numbers were down because of blue tongue which made the rut look different than it had in years past.
I've got to go with the consensus, slow and uneventful. Trail cam definitely showed daytime activity and cruising while I was not on stand. I had multiple pictures of several bucks but never seen one of them while on stand. Seen two chasing, one was mature the other looked to be 2 1/2. Seen multiple 1 1/2's. Not many bucks were shot that I have heard where I hunt, only think 2 were shot on the land and know of 3 others on the neighboring properties. Don't know what to blame it on, but I'm betting the doe population may be a bit higher and not sure exactly what EHD did to the herd. I've still got 4 archery tags, 2 of which are either sex. Wouldn't mind taking another couple does if possible but cam showed some younger bucks moving during daylight hours again so maybe the secondary is showing signs.
It was kinda slow around here too. The best time was about two weeks before first shotgun season and kinda died after that. There's been four deer taken on farm I hunt. On up side tho did see more bucks this year and more overall deer than have the past couple years. And saw some good up and comers that should be good next year. Got a lot of info this year and learned a lot about the herd running the farm. The activity has pretty much stopped but with the warm temps probably had a lot to do with that, went out Friday afternoon and seen group of does but no bucks. Still hoping for best the rest of season.
This was the best season I've had in some time in terms of rut activity. The bucks in my locale showed signs of the rut from about the 2nd week on, with bucks chasing uninterested does from that week on through the end of the season (Nov. 12). I saw more bucks cruising, earlier in the season for some odd reason. All in all, this was a season that I'll never forget.
I won't be able to give a report on this until sometime in January if we are lucky enough to see it in January. Hope it will be earlier than last year. I don't think we had a full swing rut last season until February.
I would say NY was good......nothing amazing, but solid. Had a couple days of multiple bucks running does around and saw some good deer on their feet during shooting hours. Not as many small bucks as years past but our land seems cyclical in this area anyways. I was able to take 2 nice bucks during our rutt so it's hard to complain.
Wasn't too bad here. We didn't have good food sources this year (the food plots got burnt up then ate down) so we didn't see many 4 year old bucks. But the 2 year olds and yearling certainly had their go at things for a while. 3 year olds were pretty visible on camera as well. My biggest complaint this year during the rut was the weather. For about three weeks straight we had high pressure lows in the upper 20s low 30s and highs in the low 50s. Which is fantastic rut weather, but there was no ebb and flow, no drastic weather change to get mature bucks up on there feet and really acting goofy. Instead of there being a 4-5 day stretch where things got white hot, it was like the bucks just kind of picked and chose when they felt like moving.
Saw some chasing but with the exception of some very young bucks, I saw no cruising prior to the chasing. Blessings.........Pastorjim
rut was terrible on long island, no one i talked to really saw anything, the entire rut mostly seemed like pre rut action, my brother saw some six pointers sparring, but as far as chasing, none
1st year that I saw no chasing, very slow and disappointing but, was still in the woods so it wasn't all bad.
I didn't get to bow hunt the rut at all this year, save for maybe 2 days that both had horrible weather. But I did spend a significant portion of time in the woods from November 5th thru the 10th and saw a good deal of rut activity, despite being in a low density deer area. Numerous cruising bucks and decent chasing going on. In there area I was, I'd say it was pretty good.
Still waiting for the rut to hit here in Alabama, really hoping that it cools off by late January when the rut starts. Sunday morning it was 68 degrees at 5 am on the way in to my stand, yuck!
One thing I forgot to mention was the fact that here, with the weather staying so consistent, I saw quite a few really good buck on camera late at night. Never laid eyes on several monsters that I had pics of, but I know they were in the area.
Wasn't worth a crap around here. All I've seen this year are little fork horns. Seen plenty of those! Forkies were chasing does, but not like you would expect for the rut. I wonder if EHD didn't wipe out most of the big boys? I didn't even hear close to as much shooting during shotgun and muzzy seasons. Fairly disappointing
