What a difference a day makes. Take today, September 1st. Yesterday it felt like summer, and now it feels like deer season, or at least the preseason. And what's a preseason without predictions? There's something about September 1st that holds not just the anticipation of another year's hunt but also the promise of the Main Event—of bucks tearing up the woods, cracking antlers, and trolling does right past your stand. So, what better day to roll out our picks for the 21st annual 7 Best Days of the Rut?
As we look forward to November, it’s easy to think only of the hottest action of the breeding season, with does ping-ponging through the timber and bucks crashing after them. Of course, it's not always like that. Some days are slogs and others are on fire. The question is: Which days? And the answers are below—our picks for the 7 days of the 2025 whitetail rut when you've just got to be in the woods. Should you hunt other days? Sure. But these are the ones you should on mark your calendar. Then you just need to get out there, hunt hard, maybe tag the biggest buck of your life when the whitetail woods are rocking—and think, What a difference a day makes.
Best Day of the Rut No. 1: October 25
Think of October 25th as the opening weekend of the 2025 rut. It's the Saturday before the Magic Month begins, and bucks are already raring to go. Testosterone levels are high, and there may even be the faint scent of estrous in the air from the odd early-cycling doe. Most are still a couple of weeks out, however, which leaves a bunch of antsy, frustrated bucks raking trees, pawing the ground, fighting amongst themselves, and generally spending more time on their feet during daylight. All of it means excellent hunting.
October 25th happens to be a red moon, too, if you're a Moon Guide believer. Either way, you can also think of 25th as the first day of what we've come to call Scrape Week, the roughly seven-day period preceding Halloween when bucks are making and checking scrapes frantically and often during daylight. You should get cell cams on the hottest scrapes well prior to this Saturday and watch them closely, because you're apt start seeing daylight visits right about now, tipping you off that it's time to snap the trap.
Field-edge scrapes can be hotspots now if bucks are predictably hitting fields and plots in the late afternoon or early evening. It's not unusual this time of year for unpressured bucks to step out into a major food source and proceed to hit one field-edge scrape after another. That said, if your scouting tells you that bucks are staying in the timber until dark, look for fresh spoor in transition areas just off the feed to set up an afternoon ambush. If you've avoided morning hunts until now, today can be a good time for your first one, as the job of freshening scrapes can have bucks heading for bed a little later than usual. This is the time to set up off a scrape deeper in the timber, between the spoor itself and a suspected bedding area. You'll want to be stealthy sneaking out of the woods at the end of your morning sit—that is, unless you're dragging a buck.
Related: How to Hunt Scrapes During the Pre-Rut
Best Day of the Rut No. 2: October 31
Okay, I'm not going to say that October 31st is going to be scary good. And I won't say one word about monsters or ghosts. I'll just point out that it's a little spooky (whoops, sorry) how consistently hot the hunting seems to be on Halloween. The last day of October is a bit of an in-between time—but in a good way.
The chaos of peak-rut activity hasn't yet begun, and the frantic sign-making of the prerut hasn't quite ended. So, what you have in this narrow window are bucks that are more active then they've been all fall, but not yet ranging so widely and so willy-nilly that it's tough to pin them down. Bucks are still moving more-or-less predictably in established core areas while making more frequent, though still somewhat tentative, forays into doe areas to seek mates.
This means that you can keep working some of the same core-area rub and scrape lines, staging areas, and funnels, only now you have a much better chance of catching a buck on its feet. Or you can focus on transition areas near doe bedding sites and on major food sources where both does and bucks (which are still feeding heavily at this point) will meet. And the icing on the cake is that bucks are very susceptible to rattling and calling right now, so be ready to make some noise.
Let your trail-cam pics, midday speed scouting, and sightings be your guide in terms of where to hunt. A core-area scrape line can still be money if the sign is hot, but so can brand-new rubs on the edge of a doe-bedding area or a feed field where bucks are suddenly showing up to sniff around the does. Do a little extra work to get the most up-to-date intel leading up to Halloween, and you might bring home a buck in time to hit up the neighbors for candy with the kiddos.
Related: How to Hunt Buck Rubs During the Rut
Best Day of the Rut No. 3: November 5
As a bowhunter, if I could only hunt one day of the rut every year, it would be in the middle of the first week of November. The 4th would be fine, and the 6th would suffice, but we've picked the 5th this year in homage to F&S's late, great whitetails columnist, Scott Bestul, who authored this annual story for more than a decade until he passed away this spring. November 5th was Bestul's birthday. (Happy Birthday, Scott!) He was obviously born to hunt the rut, and he never let his b-day pass without getting into the deer woods.
This November 5th also happens to be a Super Hunter's Moon. Does that mean the hunting will be better? Some think so. I think that the name alone—Super Hunter's Moon—pretty much requires you to get out there. The action should be stellar. Bestul used to point out that although seeking and chasing are both technically part of the same rut phase, there's no doubt that it starts with more seeking and ends with more chasing—and the time when more seeking becomes more chasing alway fell right around his birthday. He usually sat morning and evening, often without a break.
If you're a bowhunter, you probably should, too. You'll notice that we picked an overall best day of the rut below for all hunters. But if we were to pick an overall best day specifically for bowhunters, this would be it. Because bowhunters need to get so close to deer, the best rut hunting is when there's still a degree of predictability in buck movement and when the chase phase is not so advanced that you can't stop a buck for a shot. Bestul's birthday should be just about perfect.
Best Day of the Rut No. 4: November 9
You know those rare days when the deer woods turn electric with activity—when does crash and bomb through the timber and bucks file past in a train, tongues lolling; when deep grunts echo through the trees in every direction, and each time you think its over and that you might climb down for a break, another buck cruises past with its nose to the ground? Well, November 9th, should be one of those days.
This is when things get crazy. It's the peak of the chasing phase, and the good news—great news really—is that you're bound to see a lot of action. Even if you sit all day (which is a good plan for today), you may never have to battle boredom. The not-so-great news is that today's deer movement is apt to be unpredictable, and any buck that's on a hot doe is not likely to leave her to swing by your stand. If you're a bowhunter, you might need a little extra luck to get a shot off now. On the other hand, these conditions are perfect for gun hunters, and some firearms season will be open on November 9th, which is also a red-moon day. It should be a great day of hunting no matter what you're carrying, but if you're allowed to carry a gun, you should be chomping at the bit to get into your stand.
Bucks will be covering a ton of ground, so you'll want to take a stand in a good funnel between doe feeding and bedding areas and wait it out. If you can't bear the though of sitting in the same stand all day, focus on a doe bedding in the morning, then take a short break and move to a stand near a hot doe feeding area in the afternoon.
Overall Best Day of the 2024 Rut: November 15
Anyone who has hunted deer long knows that, throughout much of whitetail range, mid-November means you are flirting with the dreaded lockdown. Peak breeding. The period of the rut when the largest percentage of does are in estrous and the largest percentage of buck are too busy breeding them to walk past your stand. In this sense, November 15 is a bit of a crapshoot. But it can still be great.
First off, the exact timing of lockdown can vary significantly even within the same region. Bucks can be ghosts on one farm, and bouncing all over the woods on another just 10 miles down the road. Also, at any time during lockdown, there will be a number of mature bucks that have finished tending one doe and are off to find another. Finally—and the reason why this Saturday in November is our overall best day—firearms seasons are either open or opening across much of the country, and increased hunting pressure will put even locked-down deer on their feet.
The bottom line is this: A whole lot of hunters are going to fill their tags on November 15th, not necessarily because it'll offer the hottest buck action of the year, but because it will deliver solid deer activity at a time when scads of both bowhunters and gun hunters can take advantage.
In terms of where to hunt, you've got two good options today. Either sit in a sanctuary area where deer behavior will go on pretty much as normal and where deer are apt to seek refuge if bumped, or set up in a macro funnel with good cover, which will attract both bucks that are in between does and searching for the next mate and those fleeing pressure. You should see solid action in either spot and have a great chance at getting it done.
Related: The Best New Rifles of 2025, Tested and Reviewed
Best Day of the Rut No. 6: November 26
If November 15th will be good partly because of hunting pressure, November 26th will good because of the lack of it. With the peak of the rut over, a lot of hunters will be either tagged out or ready for a break. And many who plan to get back out there will wait for the long Thanksgiving weekend to do it. In other words, there's a good chance you'll have bucks all to yourself on the Wednesday before the holiday—bucks that have likely seen little pressure since the previous weekend.
So, you might asking yourself, If the best of the rut is over, and there won't be many other hunters to get deer moving, won't the action be slow? And the answer is: Yeah, kinda. The truth is that you're not apt to see a whole lot of deer this time of the season, as young bucks and does will spend a lot of time on their belies, recovering from the rut's peak and avoiding trouble. But November 26—another red-moon day—isn't one of our best days because you'll see lots of deer; it's because if you do see a deer, it may well be a stud of a buck.
The rut is still going, as a handful of does will come into estrous late, but it's mainly mature bucks that have stamina to keep trolling for them. They’re also the ones most likely to have the survival skills to have made it to this point in the season. For those reasons, November 26th should be one of the best days of the year to take a buck of lifetime—one you can show off to the whole extended family when they show up on Thanksgiving day.
Related: 54 Expert Tips on Hunting Late-Season Deer
Best Day of the Rut No. 7: December 7
There will be two things going on simultaneously on December 7th—another red moon—that should get you to bundle up and leave the warm house for the deer woods. First, both bucks and does recovering from the main rut and facing a long winter ahead will be nothing short of desperate to fill their bellies and put on some fat. Meanwhile, mature bucks in particular will be looking for any opportunity to breed the smattering of late-cycling does and first-time-cycling fawns that will come into estrous now.
It gets better, too, because all you have to do to take advantage is set up on a hot late-season food source. That's where all the action will happen. So, spend some middays speed scouting the most promising grub, looking for feeding sign, of course, but also fresh rubs and scrapes. You might even take an evening or two off from hunting ahead of this day to glass and confirm your findings before taking your shot.
If you are a big-woods hunter and there's snow on the ground, this day should be prime for tracking. Mature bucks will be leaving prints as they move to feed and find those last few cycling does. But unlike earlier in the rut, they won't be covering huge swaths of ground. They're tired. And that means you can catch up with them. Find a good track now and odds are the buck that made them will be bedded not to far off. Even if you bump that buck, just take a break, get back on the track, and you should be able catch up to him again—and maybe find yourself dragging out big-woods beast on the last best day of the 2025 whitetail rut.