Northwest Rut Report Week 5: No Rut Activity, but Montana Hunters Enjoy Succes

In the very early morning hours of Montana’s general season opener on October 26, I found myself huffing and puffing up a mountain in the dark listening to wolves howl. I was climbing to over 8,000 feet in search of either a mule deer buck worth packing off a mountainside or a bull elk. With practically no snow to speak of this season and a lack of rut activity, our best guess was that big bucks were still in higher elevations. Just a couple hundred yards away from our intended glassing knob, my husband and I were interrupted by chirps, mews, and raking of antlers of a herd of elk.

I’ll never know if a mature muley moved through the opening we planned to sit at daylight. We shivered in dark silence for close to an hour trying not to scare the elk around us. As daylight peaked through the trees, the herd had moved on and we slowly worked our way to our glassing spot. We watched a group of eight mule deer does maneuver down a game trail. A few minutes later a petite 4x4 buck walked down roughly 15 yards in front of us. His nose was to the ground, oblivious to our presence, moving in the direction of the does.

About an hour later my husband shot a 5x5 bull elk. During two days and more than 12 miles of packing it took to get the meat off the mountain, we saw roughly 50 mule deer. The majority were does. The bucks we did spot were younger and other than the first buck, and we didn’t notice any rutting behavior. That’s similar to the stories I’m hearing from friends who were out chasing muleys during Montana’s opening week. On the other side of the state, my neighbor harvested a big bodied and heavy 5x5 mule deer. He said the buck wasn’t with any does and the only rutting behavior he witnessed was from younger bucks that were sparring a little bit among groups of does.

Don’t Miss: The Best Shot Placement on Deer

Opening week was a busy one for my family. We’d been out of the mountains for less than 24 hours before my husband and I took our shot at chasing river-bottom whitetails. As it cracked daylight, we saw lots of does and a couple of forkies in an ag field. They quickly moved into the brush right at daylight. About an hour later, a nearby gunshot sent a group of does out of some thick brush running toward us. A big-bodied, mature 5x5 was also in pursuit. My husband took the shot. And with that, in under 72 hours, both his tags were filled.

When we stopped at a local chronic wasting disease monitoring station, a member of Montana’s Fish Wildlife and Parks reported he’d seen quite a few decent bucks harvested during the opening days of the season. He attributed it to favorable weather which encouraged more hunters to get out.

Montana isn’t the only Northwest state stepping up CWD monitoring. Washington had its first confirmed case this year. Oregon is one of the few remaining states without a confirmed case. Earlier this month, two Oregon hunters brought home the “uncleaned heads” of two deer killed in Wyoming, that later tested positive. When the hunters received the news, they notified Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, which confiscated and incinerated the deer. The hunters were cited for illegally transporting carcass parts into the state.

As the calendar rolls into November, and more hunters hope to catch a buck in the rut, it’s important to check the latest restrictions as many have changed in recent years due to the increased prevalence of CWD.