Unusually Slow November Kick-Off: ‘We’re In An Atypical Funk’

Overall Activity Status
From the bow shop to the hunting talk forums to my own personal observations from sitting in the woods and checking trail cameras, the activity report in this region for the first of November was unusually slow. I hunted Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and though I saw deer each day, the pace was lackluster to say the least. I don’t have a Kentucky buck tag right now, but it wouldn’t have mattered if I did. The only buck I saw from the stand was a young 6-pointer that was focused on acorns.

Fighting
A few contacts reported some rattling success over the weekend. My buddy Tim set up over a decoy on Saturday morning and hunted most of the day. He hit the horns frequently, and rattled up one small buck. He saw a few bigger deer, but said they basically ignored – or even shied away from – his aggressive setup.

Rub making
Still holding steady.

Scrape making
There was a noticeable decline in fresh scraping this weekend. Scrapes that were active only a week ago were covered in leaves.

Chasing
I saw a couple bucks chasing does alongside the road while driving the countryside, but it was a far cry from the chasing activity I was seeing this time last year.

Daytime movement
Deer are moving a bit. The weather has been seasonal, and I saw deer every sit over the weekend. My wife says she’s been snake-bit this season, having hunted an estimated 40 sits without filling a tag. But she managed to break that streak by killing a young doe shortly after climbing into her stand Friday afternoon. Still, the activity seems to be as much food-oriented as breeding oriented right now.

Estrous signs
More than one of my hunting buddies believes much of the breeding is already taking place, and that the best chasing occurred a week ago, over Halloween. The big ones are already locked down with does, they say. Personally, though, I’m still seeing lots of does traveling with fawns. We’re in an atypical funk, no doubt, but I believe it’s we’re still a couple weeks early for lock-down.

X Factor
It’s still November. This report seems a little doom and gloom, but I genuinely believe we have some good days ahead. And so does Carl Doran, owner of Snipe Creek Lodge, which is rapidly gaining a reputation as one of the top outfitters in western Kentucky.

“The rut is much more exact than people believe,” he says. “Consistently, our best days in camp are Nov. 14-17. When you’re hunting and getting your activity reports from a few buddies, it’s fragmented. But we’ve been running at least 30 hunters a day during gun season for several years now, and we’ll be up to 60 hunters a day this year. When you’re getting that number of reports, you learn a lot. And that timeframe is when we always see the most shooter bucks in this part of Kentucky. It’s not over yet because it really hasn’t even gotten started.”