By Jeff Holmes

Overall activity status: Western landscapes were hot with rutting bucks and receptive does over the Thanksgiving holiday. Rampant rutting is still the story most areas of the West, and rut activity is at or nearing a peak. The biggest of bucks are becoming active during daytime hours, and some are falling, like this four-point behemoth with a split-brow tine. This buck is undoubtedly the biggest four-point western whitetail I have ever seen in a photo or on a wall. He was killed while wildly chasing a does just before the end of legal shooting light in northern Missoula County, Montana, on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.

Dale Manning is a world-class taxidermist at Custom Bird Works and the Big Game Connection  in Missoula. He measured the deer’s inside spread at 24 inches. “This is the widest whitetail I’ve ever measured,” he said. Manning and I have both heard absurd stories of much wider bucks, but such deer are almost as rare as Bigfoot.
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By Eric Bruce

More than a month ago, Josh Earp was hunting on the opening day of Georgia's muzzleloader season in Taylor County. He spotted a buck following a doe and eventually dropped the buck. The giant 12-pointer (above) weighed 236-pounds dressed and scored 187 inches.

Why was this monster buck trailing a doe on October 15, when the peak of the rut for Georgia is in mid-November?

Bucks are ready to breed as soon as their antlers harden, but they have to wait for the does to enter estrus. Some eager bucks will check out does hoping one will be early, and sometimes they are. Throughout the fall we get reports from time to time of bucks chasing does and related rutting activity. I reported earlier that a South Carolina hunter saw five bucks chasing a doe in early October.
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By Eric Bruce

Bucks are rutting and many are being tagged by hunters in South Carolina, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Georgia. From all accounts, it is prime rut time in these states and the bucks are on the move. Hunters who are in the woods have an excellent chance of seeing a good buck now.

If a buck is in the area but not in range, a few grunts on a grunt call may bring him close. Rhonda Compton, left, of Lexington, South Carolina did just that on her low country hunting property.

Bruce Compton reports on Rhonda’s hunt: “With low temperatures on a crisp morning, she got settled in and started with low grunts and got an answer back. An 8-point buck came out to see if there was another buck moving in on his territory. Coming in to investigate from downwind, he stepped out at 100 yards broadside and offered a good shot. Rhonda ‘ground-checked’ him with her Savage 270. The buck weighed in at 130 pounds with a 15 ½ inch inside spread.” 
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By Will Brantley

Overall Activity Status: The rut’s still cranking in most of the Mid-South, but deer activity has slowed significantly on the fields the past few days, and that’s often a sign of “lock down.” My good hunting buddy Tim Daughrity shot the big buck in the photo Saturday morning near Murray, Kentucky. Tim began the morning in a ground blind on the edge of a picked cornfield, but decided to change his strategy after sitting 45 minutes without seeing a deer. “It just didn’t seem to be happening in the fields,” he said, “so I took my climber and eased into the woods near a thicket. I wasn’t up there any time before the first doe came through.”

Another doe walked through a short time later. Tim expected a buck to be following somewhere behind the does, and before long, footsteps in the leaves and a glimpse of antler through the thicket confirmed his hunch. Tim wasted no time filling his Kentucky buck tag.
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By Jeff Holmes

Overall Activity Status: Reports of harvested bucks are coming in at a quickening pace, and every source I talked to this week had seen or shot a buck or knew someone who had just shot one. The big bruisers aren’t consistently up and moving everywhere, but lots of young deer and some mature bucks are harassing does. The one pictured above, harvested near Livingston Montana by one of Keith Miller’s clients at Montana Whitetails, was doing just that.

Deer activity is increasing across most of the West. In parts of northern Idaho, the rut is just getting started, and old bucks don’t yet seem to be moving much. Uncharacteristically few deer have been turned in to Coeur d’Alene taxidermy shops so far suggest this, which is bound to change very soon. Northern Idaho is home to some very old, trophy animals, one reason Troy Pottenger sticks so many big ones.
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By Brandon Ray

Overall Activity Status: I have a mixed bag of reports this week. Some sources in north Texas report good movement and multiple buck sightings, while others report few to no sightings in the same area. Bucks that disappeared have reappeared on trail cameras, and frequent faces are missing. During the rut, virtually every buck will make at least one excursion outside its home range, traveling anywhere from 1 to 5 miles. So it’s possible to lose track of familiar bucks and see new bucks you’ve never seen before. Hunting can be hot in one area and ice cold just a few miles away, ice cold. Most folks in north Texas and the Panhandle agree the rut is on and gaining momentum.

Fighting: I’m hearing no new reports of actual fights, but many reports of quality bucks missing tines. Any time you hunt in an area that has a close buck-to-doe ratio, there’s going to be more competition between bucks. Broken tines are the result.
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