By David Draper

Overall Activity Status: A cold front pushing out of Canada mid-week brought temperatures below freezing for much of the Great Plains region, with some of the northern states catching a dusting of snow. A second front is scheduled to move through over the weekend with more much-needed moisture in the forecast. I got into a stand for the first time this season, though I'm just south of the Kansas border in Oklahoma. Still, what I'm seeing here isn't much different than what most of my other contacts are reporting--bachelor groups are all but broke up completely, with bucks striking out on their own in preparation of the rut. I saw two different mature deer from my stand Thursday night about an hour apart.

Rubs/Scrapes: Studies have been keeping South Dakota college student Spencer Neuharth from the stand for the most part, but he did make it out last weekend only to find two new rubs pop up near one his stands. Down in southeastern Kansas, Nathan Oehlert had a close encounter with "a giant" while filming a buddy this week, but couldn't put it together. He did report seeing some new scrapes opened up recently.
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By Mike Bleech

Overall Activity Status: Just normal for early October, deer are keying on food. This could be just a feeling, but it seems that bucks are becoming a bit interested, maybe curious, about the does.
 
Fighting: Still no one has talked about watching bucks in a serious fight. It is happening, though. More lone bucks can be seen now.
 
Rub & Scrape Making: Rubs are all over the place, but in many areas there are not as many as usual. More scrapes are being seen, but there have been no reports of the sudden appearance of numerous scrapes that precedes the serious part of the rut. The long-held notion that the bigger bucks rub the bigger trees has a lot of merit, so watch for it. Look for tine marks on those trees. Also look at the ground by the tree. More mature bucks will be increasingly enthusiastic with rubbing, and they may dig up the ground with their hooves. Young bucks probably will not do this. [ Read Full Post ]

By Mike Bleech

Interesting how the way we look at things changes once the hunting season opens, when we become working predators. Like all predators, we look for weaknesses in our quarry that might give us an advantage. Our excitement level rises sharply the instant we realize a pattern in the movements of a buck that may provide that advantage.

The first major change in deer behavior happened when bucks shed the velvet from their antlers. Before that there was a period of relatively little change. Now again there is a period of relatively little change. Bucks have been ready for a doe to come into heat since the antlers hardened, but that is not likely for a couple weeks, at least. Things seem to be happening at unusual times this fall, so perhaps this stage also will be early, or even late. During this period bucks may fight. They will scrape and rub. All of this is in anticipation of the rut, probably not something they think about, more so nature preparing them.
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By Eric Bruce

Overall Activity Status: Archery season finally began (October 1) for Mississippi hunters and the remainder of Louisiana that wasn’t already open. Some hunters are seeing deer and some are not. It depends if you’re near a food source. The rut is creeping closer in some areas and hunters are starting to see slightly more buck movement. Mike Files of Arkansas says that “with the rain and cooler weather, things are fixing to pick up.” Indeed those two factors will help stimulate more activity.

Fighting: No major fighting is occurring yet. Files reports seeing four bucks traveling together, and two eight-pointers butting heads--kind of wrestling, he said. This is not the serious rut-time fighting, but light sparring in preparation for more battling to come.

Rub making: Some rubbing is going on here and there. I saw one small sapling that had been ripped up by an aggressive buck. With bucks not traveling extensively yet, rubs should indicate a buck’s home range for now.

Scrape making: Scrapes are sporadic, you may find one here and there. Most likely places to find them are along oak ridges or edges of fields where bucks... [ Read Full Post ]

By David Draper

As we inch our way towards prime time and, hopefully, a once-in-a-lifetime encounter with that buck of our dreams, let’s take a minute to check our nerves and get a handle on that wonderful spike of adrenaline known as buck fever. Despite the stone-cold-killer demeanor that seems to be so fashionable among hunters today, I bet there’s not a one among us who doesn’t suffer from jangling nerves, if not a total freak-out, when we draw down on a deer. If anything, that burst of excitement should be one of the reason’s we’re out there in the first place.

Still, to make the most of that encounter, we’ve got to get a handle on our nerves, as illustrated by my friend Ramsey Mills, who took this nice Nebraska buck on opening weekend. Now, Ramsey works at Cabela’s and is a pretty experienced hunter, but he’s new to bowhunting and this is his first bow-killed buck.
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By Jeff Holmes

Overall Activity Status: A warm, dry September is in the books, and some nice bucks were taken throughout the region. The bad news for farmers, ranchers and wildlife, however, is a regional forecast calling for more warm, dry weather. Whitetail movement across the West has been limited by warm temperatures, and in some parts of the region, so has deer survival.

Nowhere out West are whitetails reeling harder from successive warm, dry summers and rough winters than far Eastern Montana and Northeastern Wyoming, while whitetails are on the upswing across the rest of the two states.

Winter losses were severe in the northeastern portion of the western region over the last two years. Drought-ridden summer landscapes have compounded losses, concentrating whitetails around diminished water sources, leading to sporadic outbreaks of epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD).
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