Southwest Rut Report, Week 9: Rut Activity Picking Up Deeper into the Southwest

On Thanksgiving day, I noticed a doe walking by the front window. Right behind her was one of the better bucks I had seen this fall. He was in no hurry, and had his nose turned up with a curled lip. He was still lovestruck even though the rut is trailing off in this part of Colorado.

My dad always said if he could hunt any day of the year for mule deer it would be Thanksgiving day. His thought was that it was pretty much guaranteed that the deer would be rutting hard by then, and historically, he has been right. I’m normally guiding on Thanksgiving, but for the first time in five years, Colorado’s fourth rifle season fell the week before.

While many of the mule deer seasons in the southwest are over for the year, there are a few late rifle tags to pay attention to such as eastern Colorado. The rut is going strong east of I-25. The late rifle tag holders are going to hit it just right. I never liked the late rifle because by then, the buck’s antlers tend to be broken up from fighting. The good side of the late rifle is a second chance to get a buck that has eluded you during bow season. There always seems to be tradeoffs with the rut.

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The rut is going strong in most regions in Texas. Will Brantley was at our lease in northcentral Texas over thanksgiving and he ran into the same problem I had the week before. The bucks were rutting like crazy but not hitting any of the feed pens. The tradeoff for awesome rut activity is that we can’t pattern the specific bucks we’re after while they are running all over the country chasing does. When this is the case, you just have to change your tactics.

Will was scouting for ducks after the morning hunt when one of the shooter bucks he was after came into the open dogging a doe. Some quick thinking and a range call out from his wife resulted in his farthest kill on a whitetail. I will be headed there in a few days, and (maybe for the first time ever) Will told me I may have to get out and walk or even drive around at primetime to find the mature bucks. I actually hope for rut activity to slow so the bucks will start patterning to the feeders again.

South Texas is getting geared up. It’s still a little early, but I have seen video of bucks chasing does already—and that’s been the demise of some really big deer in the past few days. Each day should get better for everything south of San Antonio and into Mexico. Bucks are traveling and starting to seek in the deep southwest.