This past week, buck activity was just beginning to turn the corner, with scraping activity and daylight movement beginning to rise. Warmer conditions caused some mixed reports, but this week’s lower temperatures and calendar dates are sure to move the needle forward and keep hunters at the edges of their seats.

Here in Wisconsin, hunters I’ve talked with have reported some new bucks showing up on their trail cameras. There is still a good amount of nighttime activity around food sources. And, thousands of acres of corn are still standing in the region, so deer remain quite concentrated around those easy food sources. If the corn comes off in the next week, the timing will align with when bucks habitually begin cruising around checking for estrous does, and it could create the perfect storm for those who’ve allotted time off for the final week of October.

Joe Conyers of Conyers Outdoors, an outfitting business in Cuba, Kansas, offering whitetail and turkey hunts, said rut activity is climbing daily.

“Scraping and rubbing are full bore right now,” he said. “New bucks are starting to show up, and older bucks are appearing in the daylight now. They are bump-checking the girls and starting to get serious about it. The pre-rut is underway.”

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Things are heating up in Minnesota, too, according to Ray Howell, the founder of Kicking Bear Foundation. “The rut is just beginning here,” Howell said. “The smaller bucks are following the does and pestering them. In the last week, I’ve seen more and more people taking nicer animals with archery equipment.”

In Michigan, Dale Techel, who manages the Michigan Deer Hunters Facebook page, gave an overview of the deer happenings in his neck of the woods. “October has had mixed weather conditions for hunters,” he said. “It began with temperatures in the 90s, along with dry conditions across the whole state. That also triggered EHD reports in our southern counties. That said, the recent frost and rain was welcomed.

“Hunters are starting to see rubs as the buck activity has been rising. Reports of buck and deer movement patterns in general seem to have been altered in the northern region of the Lower Peninsula by the damaging spring ice storms, and hunters in those areas are finding that they must adapt. The state has had a heavy acorn crop this year, so hunters will need to find those hotspots and be prepared to change locations because of changing food sources.”

Moving west to the Nebraska Sandhills, Scott Kuhn of Deer Meadows Outfitters said that mule deer are just starting to feel their oats, and the whitetail rut is really picking up speed. “For mule deer rutting activity in the Sandhills, I’m seeing some sparring between the younger bucks,” he said. “The older bucks are starting to separate from their bachelor groups. The whitetails are doing scrape lines and fighting aggressively. I believe the whitetail rut is going to be earlier than normal this year.”

For what it’s worth, the MoonGuide is showing red moon dates of Oct. 23 through 29 for the region, and with the weather shaping up to be seasonable across most of the area, it should be a dynamite week to be in the Midwestern whitetail woods.