5 Tips for The Rut: They’ll Only Cost You a Buck

Hunting an Iowa typical giant, a 145 inch 300+ pound 7-year-old with a 6 inch drop tine, a 155-inch non-typical ghost buck, a 160 inch typical eight point, and a buck that I never laid eyes on, or maybe he was never there? Each of these deer have a special place in my nightmares. You know the saying, “If I had a dollar for every (insert cliché statement here)”, well if I had a buck for every lesson I learned the hard way, my trophy room would be one for the books. Unfortunately, all but one of these bucks lived to see another day because of simple mistakes I made during the Iowa Rut. Lucky for you, I will share 5 lessons I learned during each of these hunts so you can avoid letting bucks like this slip out of your sights during the 2016 whitetail rut.

Lesson 1: Stay Awake
It may seem silly but staying awake during the rut is crucial. If you are like me, the initial adrenaline rush of the morning starts to fade about an hour after climbing into the stand. The rustle of leaves starts to die down. The opossums, racoons, and other nocturnal critters head for their daily slumber and everything gets eerily peaceful about 20 minutes before the first song bird warms their vocal chords. These 20 minutes always turn into a head bobbing session as I try to keep my eyes open.

I vividly remember a hunt during my first year of bow hunting. The rut was in full swing and everything just felt right as I settled into the stand. Just as things got quiet I laid my bow across the railing on the stand and thought, “I’ll just rest my eyes for a minute.” TWO HOURS LATER… I awoke to a twig breaking to my right. I looked over to see two does staring directly at me a mere 12 yards away. We all know that the first few hours can be some of the most magical moments in the deer woods. As for that hunt, my nap could have cost me the biggest buck. The hard part about it is I will never actually know.

Lesson 2: Stay for The Long Haul
There is a good chance that you have heard these words before. The message may be redundant, but there is wisdom in this message: stay put until you “have to” leave.

I believe it was the fall of 2009 when I used my first trail camera to scout. A buddy and I hung the camera and waited. I pulled the camera a few weeks later and after sifting through the hundreds of photos of does, a small five point, some raccoons, and a fox I stumbled upon a single picture that made my jaw drop. One picture, at two in the morning, the camera caught a glimpse of a perfect 12 point that was into the 200” club. The next day I repositioned my stand to the trail that brought this bruiser into frame.

Soon the rut was in full swing and every buck but the one in the picture seemed to be chasing within eyesight of my stand, but I held out. I hunted the early morning. I hunted early afternoon until dark. I hunted all day long. I hunted every shift you can imagine without ever seeing the buck during shooting hours.

One afternoon I headed to the stand with hopes of shooting a deer and then meeting some buddies afterwards. After three hours of watching squirrels play, I had enough and decided to call it an early evening. After pulling out of the property, I looked over a cornfield that deer frequent prior to hitting a draw that runs them right to a creek bottom and my stand location. There were three or four does just making their way to the draw, one of which was especially heavy bodied. I slowed down to watch as they slipped into the timber one by one, and just before disappearing into the thick brush, the heavy bodied one raised its head to check out my vehicle. To this day I do not know how my car didn’t end up in the ditch. The 200” buck was staring me in the eye with a sly grin on his face. There I was, heading home early, and he was finally on his way to my stand during shooting hours. I never saw him again. Trust me, when the rut is on, stay for the long haul.

 

Lesson 3: Be Persistent in Your Calling
My second season of bow hunting came soon after my grandfather passed away. As I headed into the woods, I prayed for God to take care of him, and if he was willing, to let him come on this hunt with me. My grandpa was never a hunter (unless you count a story my grandma told me and my brother about a pheasant he and one of his buddies hit with a car during his “drinking days”) but I knew I would never get to watch Judge Judy with him and my brother again during our “lunch break” on his farm in Adair, so this was just as good.

After learning my lesson about staying awake during the final minutes before shooting light, I was fully alert as I reflected on the good ol’ days with grandpa. Just as the sunrise painted the forest floor red, my reminiscing faded as I caught movement to my left. I slowly turned my head to see a doe with a buck hot on her tail. As the buck lifted his head, I could tell he was wide and his right side had something different, but that was about all I could tell in the limited light.

I slipped into the standing position and put the grunt tube to work with a short “Burrrtttt!” The buck immediately stood at attention and stared hard in my direction. I froze. The doe was un-fazed and kept on her way and the buck quickly lost interest in me and started to follow. I hit the call again and the buck stopped and stared even harder in my direction. He looked back at the doe and I hit the call a third time, this time more aggressive. His hair stood on end, his neck swelled to twice its already massive size, and he started aggressively moving in the direction of the call. Just as he checked back on his doe, I grunted again and this time he came in on a string and stopped 20 yards broadside in front of the stand. With the grunt tube still in my mouth, I let the arrow fly. It wasn’t until four hours later that I discovered the gray haired beast that I call “grandpa’s buck”. The 7-year-old, 300lb, 145” brute with a 6” drop tine took every bit of my dad, his buddy Shadetree (both of which are stout fellas), and myself to drag him the 80 yards to the truck.

I give credit to my grandpa for this deer because I felt something pushing me to call persistently at the deer. Normally I would have not called after the first time out of fear of spooking him. During the rut when a buck is trying to split his attention between a “fight” and a piece of tail, a hunter has to be persistent with their calling if they want to bring the deer to the doe. It may not work every time, but it did earn my biggest buck to date.

Lesson 4: Calling Too Big and Looking Too Little.
Calling persistently can bring in a stubborn rutty buck, but too much calling with too little checking your six could mean leaving your trophy in the woods.

As an eager to learn young hunter, I bought one of the “Mega Bucks” series VHS tapes to watch each night before falling asleep. My obsessive need for hunting was the main goal in the purchase, but one tip I picked up was “Calling Blind”. The goal here is to rattle and grunt periodically in hopes of calling in a deer in the area even when you don’t see one. I put this to the test that season.

It was a windy day and I hadn’t seen a single deer all morning. I remembered the tip and decided that every so often I would rattle and grunt in hopes of bringing in a buck. I did this several times with no apparent luck and as I turned to my left to hang my horns, I was greeted by a loud snort and a heavy horned 160” 8 point bouncing off into the creek bottom. My guess is that he had circled me to catch the downwind side of the story, a place I had not been looking during my calling sessions. The lesson here is to be persistent with your calling but more importantly be aware of your surroundings. If the buck is within range before you see him, it is likely his ears and eyes will pinpoint your location and you may never even know he was there.

 

Lesson 5: Hunt Your Way to Your Stand.
As modern hunters, we do things a little easier than our ancestors. We no longer have to put our ear to the ground and listen for hoof beats to catch dinner, but we cannot forget the basics of hunting our way in and out of the stand.

It was just after noon on a beautiful November day when I began my trek across a cow pasture to the deer woods. As I worked the field edge with my eyes on the ground, my thoughts were on getting to the stand as fast as I could to maximize my hunting time. When I was about 50 yards from the fence line separating the forest wilderness from the open pasture, I was darn near tossed on my butt after something exploded to my left. Apparently I had walked right up on a bedded basket racked 8 point. After checking my pulse and watching him bound away into the pasture, I continued.

I pressed on with more urgency to the stand in fear that I had wasted too much time coming out of shock. I hustled down a worn trail with my head to the ground to avoid protruding roots and downed logs. Just as I neared a dried up creek bed that separated me from my hunting tree, I was rudely greeted with a loud series of snorts. I looked up just in time to lock eyes with a 155” non-typical. Before I could react, he burst off into the timber with a series of snorts and the thunder of breaking branches that ensured I would not see a deer the rest of the evening.

I later named this deer the “Ghost Buck” because the rest of that hunt I sat there in disbelief wondering if that had really just happened or if I was living a terrible nightmare. Ever since, I have never taken more than 10-15 steps without stopping to scan my surroundings. I call this “hunting into the stand”. This is especially helpful during the rut when the bucks are on the move without thinking about you coming at them. I have had some amazing close encounters with deer, turkeys, and coyotes while carefully hunting my way to the stand.

As you can see from my errors above, and what I now provide to you as lessons, I have had my fair share of failures. This is what hunting is all about though…if there is one thing I can guarantee that will happen this year hunting it would be that you will screw up at some point. Maybe it won’t cost you a 200” deer but something will happen that shouldn’t and you know what? That is okay. You see failures are how hunters learn to become successful. The best thing you can do to become a better hunter is learn from your errors, more specifically do not repeat them. Screwing up is fine and accepted, but performing that same goof over and over again is not acceptable. So here is to screwing up and becoming a better hunter because of it. Good luck this year!