Now, the good stuff: THE RUT!
I was off work November 8-11 so I headed to the farm for the long weekend. We had NNE winds, which were perfect for most of our best areas on the farm. My uncle had found a bunch of scrapes on our south perimeter trail down below where our log yard food plot is located. In late October, he had an action packed hunt down there and shot a doe and missed a buck while managing to see 15 more does and an even bigger buck. I decided I wanted to hunt in that general area that morning so I took my climber in and slowly worked my way down the trail in the dark, looking for good trees to climb and waiting to see if the wind would hold steady for more than a minute or two before I climbed up. I finally got to a point farther back than I really wanted to go, but I at least had a somewhat steady wind direction. I climbed up and waited for daylight. I was in an edge type habitat where mature hardwoods butted up against 20 year old hardwoods and I expected the deer to be pinched down to the area I was located due to the steep hardwood ridge that ended just to my north, and the rocky bluff to my south. Just after daylight, a young 8 came off the point of the ridge and crossed the trail just behind/ downwind of me. He was not amused by my scent and spooked back up the hill. A little while later, I heard another noise behind me and turned to see a doe coming up from the bottom to cross behind me as well. She was on edge, presumably hiding from bucks, so when she hit my scent stream she quietly tucked tail and ran away back the way she came. It was prime time and I had lost all confidence in my spot. I decided to head back the way I’d come from and try again to find a spot with a consistent wind closer to the area I knew the deer were spending a lot of time.
I made it probably 200 yards back out the trail and caught a flash of movement. Before I knew it, a nice 3.5+ 9-pointer was cruising by me at 20 yards. I tried to get an arrow out of my quiver and get drawn, but got busted before I could get a clean shot. Not sure if I recognized that buck from any trail camera history, but I distinctly remember it having an extra long G3 on his left side, probably close to 11”. I continued another 150 yards or so down the trail until I felt a somewhat consistent wind direction and proceeded to climb up again. Within minutes, I had does and bucks under me, but within minutes, the wind switched and I had does and bucks running from and blowing at me. Dejected, I climbed down and vowed not to setup again until I could find a spot with a wind direction that stayed constant for 5 full minutes.
Well, I did a lot of creeping around and never did find that spot with a consistent wind. I did find a spot with what I would call a 85% good wind. It was on the lower end of a different finger ridge, right along the edge where mature timber met 20 year old timber. The problem was that if I climbed up in the mature timber, I wouldn’t be able to see very well into the younger timber due to the denser foliage up off the ground. For this reason, I opted for a setup on the ground. I found a tree with a small beech tree directly behind it providing back cover, kicked the leaves out of an area for my feet to stand on, and attached the top half of my climber to the tree to use as a seat:
At 10:45, I look up to see a buck following a doe down off the finger ridge headed towards me. The doe gets to 30 yards and the buck is hanging back off her right flank about 10 yards behind her. I watch as he lifts his nose and clearly smells me. He looks my way, and nervously trots back up the hill into the thicker cover. Luckily, the doe is just upwind enough to never smell me. She stays put. Within a few minutes, the buck starts working back down toward us but is clearly hanging back in the cover. Then, I notice another deer working its way in from upwind. I am happy to see it is a young buck (spike or button buck, can’t remember because I was so amped) that is also very interested in the doe. As the young buck comes in and puts his nose to the ground and trots up to the doe, the bigger buck can’t take it anymore and charges down to run the other buck off. Then, he apparently forgets about me. The doe slowly works her way in front of me with the buck right on her tail. I draw as his head passes behind a tree, and stop him broadside at 20 yards with a soft mouth bleat. I am relieved after I release the shot to see that it is a great hit. The buck] runs back up the hill into cover and I watch him go down. I was pretty sure the buck was at least 3.5, so I was truly grateful. When I got him back to the barn, he dressed out at 160 lbs. I weighed pitchfork (7.5 yr old) on the same scale a few years back and he only dressed 165, so I am pretty confident this buck was 3.5. I saved his teeth so I suppose I could know for sure at some point; maybe I’ll take pictures and post later.
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