How do you hunt bucks during the peak rut?

How do you hunt bucks during the peak rut?

My favorite tactic for hunting the Peak Rut is to take a stand between well-known doe bedding areas during the morning hours, and on the downwind side of food sources during the evening hours.

How do you lure big bucks during the rut?

An estrous-based scent smells like a doe that’s ready to breed. Bucks cover lots of ground searching for that odor, so use it to your advantage. Dominant-buck scents smell like a mature buck, which can make other bucks aggressively seek a fight. Mock scrapes can also work during the rut by attracting curious bucks.

What is the best time to hunt during the rut?

Often the oldest, most mature bucks can be found in daylight hours during this time of year as they are seeking that very first doe in estrus. This is the time of year you can start to get aggressive. All signs point favorably to an early morning hunt coinciding with the super new moon on November 4.

Is the rut a good time to hunt?

Such good stuff, in fact, that the early post-rut has become my most productive time to hunt. “The weeks following the rut can be great,” he says. “Some years I see more old bucks in late November than at any other time of year, especially if it’s cold. They are on the hunt for food and the very last receptive does.”

What is the best deer attractant during rut?

During the rut doe estrus is by far the best scent to be using if you’re hunting bucks. Bucks go crazy when they think they smell a doe ready to mate and will take a lot of risks to find her.

Should I hunt field or woods during rut?

During the seeking and chasing phase of the rut, bucks love to run back in the woods (usually about 15 to 30 yards) from the edge of a field (harvested corn is my favorite) as they use their eyes and nose to search for any doe offering even a hint of being near estrous. Often, bucks will cut the corner of the field.

Do bucks eat during the rut?

Fact is bucks do eat during the rut, just not as much. That’s why nourishment sources, such as food plots or crop fields or areas with abundant acorns, can still be good spots to hunt even during the breeding period. In fact, feeding areas are good spots for bucks to visit between does to pick up a new mate.

What time of day are most big bucks killed?

When is the best time to shoot a buck? Research shows, be in your stand before daybreak and stay there until around 1 p.m. Most deer are taken between 10 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. with a few larger kills stretching into the period around noon.

Do deer stop moving before rut?

The science about peak buck movement rates is reliable – no matter what you’ve heard about a lull or a “lock-down phase.” There is no distinct “phase” of the rut where all bucks stop moving and you have less chance of seeing one.

Where do big bucks go during the rut?

In farm country, rutting bucks will take advantage of any bit of cover as they move about the countryside. Irrigation ditches, hedgerows, fence lines and creek beds immediately come to mind. The hottest ambush point is the untillable land found at the intersection of two, three or even four property lines.

When will the whitetail rut begin?

The rut can start as early as the end of September, and can last all the way through the winter months. Bucks usually begin to start this process when the velvet is falling off their antlers, and it can last all the way until they start to shed their antlers.

What do you know about the whitetail rut?

10 Facts About the Whitetail Rut Photoperiod, or daylight length, is the trigger for the rut. Deer are short-day breeders. Deer communicate by chewing on licking branches and urinating over their tarsal glands while standing in a scrape. The rut is broken down into three phases: seeking, chasing and tending.

When do white tailed deer rut?

Whitetails are rutting somewhere in their range from August through February. Amazingly, they breed over this seven-month period just in the state of Florida!