I hunted for myself for the first time all year yesterday to take advantage of the peak rut action which always occurs on Nov. 15th. I'm really bummed about next year and the nonexistent fawn crop we're going to have at our place since the rut didn't happen. Did the rut happen where you guys were hunting or are you also looking at a dismal fawn crop?
Yes, you missed it. I'd suggest you do a better job of scheduling except I scheduled accordingly and it didn't happen. So I'm not sure where that leaves us?
I hunted all day Saturday and Sunday last weekend and didn’t see a buck cruising or any type of rut activity. One guy on our lease killed a nice 10 but he was just easing through the woods. This was in southern yell county. I’ll be hunting in Howard county this weekend. Hoping for a better show of rut action.
From the 29th thru Halloween I seen more chasing than I have ever seen in Arkansas...multiple bucks on one doe...just crazy! Most aggressive and earliest I have ever seen in this part of State.
Saw one chase a doe across the hiway south of Woodlawn this morning. His younger was dragging the road. Hope he caught up with her. He deserves an a for effort.
Had a whole herd out in the field in front of me about to get a deer orgy going, but then it started raining and they all just up and left. I figure our club will drop everybody's limit to one deer next year to let the herd recover.
I know in Jefferson county I hunted sat thru Tuesday and seen some young bucks chasing and grunting but the only shooter I seen was at 10am Tuesday morning and he was just cruising no doe around him but seen over 30 deer in the 31/2 days I hunted don't know about the rest of the state and last week I hunted central Ar on Friday morning and seen close to 20 deer young bucks chasing does all over the place so I'm going to say it should be good anyway now from my observation in the two areas I have hunted in the last week
Please dont kill the messenger, but the rut occurs when does go into heat. It's not one partiuclar day of the year, rather a time frame of a few days. Whatever day that hot doe is active around your stand is the day the rut occurs. for me in the ozarks, the chase phase starts around halloween & rut takes place a week later around Nov 5-10th.
the rest of the state where the mosquitos rule, will have a rut on the upcoming full moon as long as theres a few cold nights during thhe moon phase.
Dont give up man, wait them out. I'm already into post rut here but they will have another mini rut in a few weeks in december.
I saw a photo of a monster 12pt bedded down in the bushes with a doe in fayetteville. I want to day it was on the 8th. This was in town right next to his archery target. The buck was laying right beside the target, under the limbs of the brush. That tells me that east arkansas & south arkansas will be a few weeks behind.
The full moon is December 2nd, that means November 27th to December 2nd will have other does going into heat.
Have you not heard about those transgender deer that have been born during the past few years? They don't know what they are and they are screwing up the rut.
My spot in Jackson county the rut was about a week before muzzle loading season you could smell the scrapes in the woods they was everywhere.My lease in Cushman didn't have anything going on until about Halloween up till the youth hunt now in both places the leaves are about 4" thick on the scrapes.I killed a 7pt. Sunday at Cushman you could smell his tarsel glands as you walked up on him but he didn't have the swollen neck like they do in the rut.All he seemed to be interested in was the feeder.
This is a great morning laugh realizing how many don't see the sarcasm from the OP. There's a FB group that has like 30,000 people from AR that are convinced it's a scheduled 1 day event.
I had a bunch of deer feeding in front of my camera and as soon as it hit 12:00 am on 11/15 it was on. It was a wild 24 hours but now it is over. Time to pack it up until next year.
@silentassassin don’t fret man. You missed out on Arkansas but still have a chance for some good action in other states. Tennessee set their rut for November 22, Texas is December 3, and Missouri is December 23rd. You still have plenty of time to make plans.
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