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Midwest Rut Report Season Kickoff: Deer on Food Sources, Rubbing and Scraping Minimal

White-Tailed Deer

Midwest

Midwest Rut Report Season Kickoff: Deer on Food Sources, Rubbing and Scraping Minimal

Posted 2024-10-09  by  Darron McDougal

With the rut still weeks away, now’s a good time to hit cut cornfields or hard mast as bucks continue to fatten up

I’ve had trail cameras on mock scrapes for a few weeks now around home in central Wisconsin. I’ve captured a few buck and doe images on them, but the overall activity has been and continues to be slow. I’ve been glassing my soybean field almost nightly for weeks. Movements had been minimal until the local farmers recently began harvesting adjacent cornfields, effectively changing up the deer patterns. Now, I’ve been seeing up to 25 deer feeding everyday in the daylight, including several bucks between 1.5 and 3.5 years old.

One evening, I observed a doe crouch and urinate, and then a small buck came and nudged her before smelling the ground and lip-curling. The 3.5-year-old bucks, however, seem to be focused almost solely on eating. They barely lift their heads to look around. I live in an area with a fairly poor age class due to surrounding landowners shooting young bucks, so I think that is why I haven’t picked up any 4.5-year-old bucks with my optics or trail cameras. Of course, that could change a few weeks from now.

Ben Matykiewicz, the big game management biologist with North Dakota Game and Fish, is located in Bismarck, North Dakota, and he said that the conditions have been relatively warm and dry. “We haven’t had any substantial rainfall for more than a month now across most of the state,” he says. “Some of the cornfields have been cut already. I haven’t seen any green fields in quite awhile, so I’m assuming most of the remaining corn will be harvested very soon. Farmers began harvesting beans about two weeks ago as well.

“I’ve seen a few rubs so far,” he continued, “but I haven’t seen any scraping activity or heard of anyone else seeing any. A friend of mine who runs a lot of trail cameras has consistently been capturing buck images, but he told me that the daylight pictures scaled way back about the second week of September and haven’t picked back up.” For the most part, Matykiewicz thinks hunters will have the best success on bed-to-feed patterns for at least the next two weeks or so until the bucks really get into their pre-rut behaviors.

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Dale Techel, who manages the Michigan Deer Hunters Facebook page, said that seasonable fall temperatures have finally fallen on the Wolverine State following a hot September. “A cool down arrived for the first week of archery season, and buck activity has increased,” he says. “Food source changes seem to have bucks moving around a little more.” He feels that green soybeans and red oaks with acorns on the ground are great places to hunt right now. Scrapes and rubs have also started showing up along trails to these food sources within the past week in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.

“Many hunters like to wait until later in October to hunt,” Techel says, “but some nice bucks have already been taken. Focus on adapting to their changing patterns, and you’ll have a good chance at tagging a buck. And, the excitement of the rut isn’t far off.”

Iowa’s bow season just opened, and Jace Elliot, the Iowa DNR’s state deer biologist, reported that temperatures have been hot and the hunting action fairly slow. “Youth and disabled hunters have been harvesting some deer,” he says. “And some deer were harvested over the archery opener. The crops are being harvested as we speak. This will help move deer into different areas.”

Elliot has been out scouting and hunting quite a lot. Scraping has been virtually nonexistent, he says. To find bucks right now, he suggests patterning a buck by using trail cameras and glassing open areas. “Hunters aren’t having much luck in the timber,” Elliot says. “Most who’ve been successful so far have been hunting alternative cover types such as wetlands, prairies, and river bottom thickets.”

Elliot also mentioned that, despite a bumper red oak acorn drop already falling, deer are still on the crops. He believes that deer will shift to feeding in the timber once most of the cornfields have been cut.

For the next week, most bucks will be susceptible around the food sources noted in this report, though daylight movements will depend highly on the area you’re hunting and the level of hunting pressure. Watch for scrapes to begin popping up more regularly in the next week and especially the week after that. If you do find some steaming-fresh buck sign, especially near a perceived bedding area, it’s a good time to strike.

  • Day Activity

  • Rubbing

  • Scraping

  • Fighting

  • Seeking

  • Chasing

  • Breeding

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