Midwest Rut Report, Week 8: Rut Winding Down, but Not Over

I spent last week kicking around the Nebraska Sandhills in search of a trophy buck. On Day 1, I encountered a nice young 10-pointer, locked down with a doe. I passed him up. The following morning, I hiked and glassed and didn’t see a single deer until 10:30 a.m. when I spotted the buck of a lifetime — a giant typical — standing in a cattail bedding area. If I read his demeanor correctly, I believe he had been bedded and stood briefly before preparing to bed again. He definitely wasn’t cruising.

The wind was blowing right to him. As I got my shooting sticks up and gun ready, I noticed that he was running; he had caught my scent. I grunted a couple of times as he ran, and he stopped for a split second at 300 yards and again at 400 yards before the Sandhills swallowed him up. I believe he would’ve been my biggest buck to date. He was huge. I saw zero chasing, and even on the cold mornings, the does that I kicked up had been bedded before daylight and had no bucks with them. Rutting behavior appeared to be nonexistent, at least during the daytime. Some of that could be due to pressure from firearm hunters.

In Missouri, Shawn Sanford logged an all-day sit in a good spot late last week and didn’t see a single deer. His wife, Kate, said, “We have had a few bucks chasing on and off on our farm. None of the scrapes seem to be fresh. There isn’t a lot of movement at all. It has been unseasonably warm, which hasn’t helped. I have heard about a lot of smaller bucks being taken around us but nothing of any real size/age.”

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My brother-in-law has been bowhunting in South Dakota. He had a small buck come to his decoy on Saturday. He has been seeing shooters every couple of sits in a high-doe-traffic area, but they haven’t been responsive to calling. He’s witnessed a lot of does feeding and only a few of them are being pestered by bucks.

Ben Matykiewicz of the North Dakota Game and Fish reported an uptick in rutting activity over the past week. “Bucks have been very active during daylight hours,” he said. “From both personal observations and talking with hunters, bucks have been seen chasing and tending does, fighting, and traveling between bedding areas searching for does coming into estrous. Additionally, I’ve been seeing and hearing reports of fawns either by themselves or getting pushed off by does, which leads me to believe we are nearing peak breeding time.”

My father hunted Wisconsin’s gun opener and saw a lot of activity in a location where he traditionally doesn’t see a lot of deer. He shot a 9-pointer on opening morning and said, “He was the tenth deer that I saw and the third buck. He was a couple of minutes behind three does and a smaller buck.” While standing next to his buck in the middle of a field, he reported seeing a different buck rubbing a sumac tree not far away.

Ray Howell of the Kicking Bear Foundation recently killed a giant buck in Kansas and has also been monitoring his hunting grounds in Minnesota. He said of his hunt, “The bucks in Kansas right now are following does and chasing with lots of grunting. The buck I shot followed a doe right past me to his death. In Minnesota, it has been quiet. There has been lockdown, and I have not seen the bigger bucks in the last week. I am seeing lots of does with no followers, although there have been some trail cam pictures of big mature bucks in the middle of the day.”