Greetings all! I'm a new bowhunter and am looking for tips from you experienced guys for hunting the rut. Things have been relatively slow here in Missouri (Fort Leonard Wood). I had an 8 pointer totally ignore my code blue and couldn't care less about my buck roar grunts. So please share with me those "I wish I knew then what I know now" tips to help a new guy get his first set of antlers! Thanks and happy hunting!
If you know where they bed you have a great shot of setting up on a buck. 1. Set up between doe bedding areas or downwind of a bedding area. 2. Set up between bedding area and food source. If you hunt on a food source you might see some smaller bucks but the bigger, more mature bucks will likely hang in the woods or in smaller, more secluded food sources. Also, don't rely on scents or calls. Sometimes a grunt will turn the buck but using that stuff does not make up for sloppy hunting. Be smart with the wind, control your scent to the best of your ability and have good entry/exit routes. Anything can happen during the rut so stay in the stand and have a killer mentality from dawn to dusk. Good luck.
In prerut or prior to breeding I have more sightings in the evenings. As soon as the first does start breeding, late October mornings are better in my opinion. Shortly after the week window of breeding i once again see evenings being better. I concentrate on doe bedding areas, travel corridors adjacent to bedding. I pretty much forget food sources once breeding begins, I look for thick cover a bucks going to lock onto a doe in.
Know your Does and then things can fall into place and bucks follow. Early in the rut hunt adjacent to known doe beading areas...BUT does often break away from there groups when they come into estrus. When you start seeing adult does alone away from family groups, or young without does...that's the time I stop hunting stands near doe beding areas and I move into funnels, saddles ect. Many does move slightly out of their core areas for a short time before and while they are in season....when that happens the best place to be is in stands that capitalize on topography that funnels deer. Sent from The People's Republic of New York.
Persistence and lots of patients! You got to put your time in. Last sunday I sat on stand for 7 hours! Had a lot of deer move thru all does and young bucks. Got Friday off, so I will be back on stand for an all day sit! Maybe mr. big will make an appearance.
During the rut, I primarily hunt the downwind side of bedding areas or travel routes between multiple bedding areas. I try to hunt all day if possible. I've taken more deer in what I would consider mid-day during the rut than I have during the early morning or evening hours. Here's 3 of the last 4 years... I took this past Saturday during the MO gun season opener at 10:40 AM. I took this buck last year around 3:15 PM. This one in 2010 at 10:30 AM. In 2011, shot a 2-1/2" year-old 119" buck that I wished I wouldn't have...I talked myself into shooting him because it was my first year videoing my hunts and I wanted to get a buck kill on camera. I shot him at 10:30. I hit him a little low and didn't see him go down so I stayed in the tree for an hour before getting down. I was packing my stuff at the base of my tree around 11:30am. The wind was blowing pretty hard. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned to my left and a 145" 8-point was checking a scrape not 30 yards from me. He never saw me as windy as it was and was upwind so he didn't smell me either. He walked right on by. So that's 4 bucks in 4 years moving mid-day during the rut. I sit all day if possible during the rut.
