With all the talk about the rut over the past few weeks and how successful you can be, sometimes things just dont go as planned. A bit of transparency here, I've been experiencing a dry spell. Not that I'm not seeing deer in general but not seeing "The Deer" that we need to make a TV show with. I call it "The Rut Blues". It has happened to me before and I don't expect this will be the last time I experience it.
With the advent of the modern trail camera, a hunter can monitor his farm or area he hunts 24 hours a day. It can be both fun and almost maddening at times. I admit that I use my Browning Trail Cameras extensively on the farm. Browning has a large selection of cameras to fit most hunters' needs and now that cell cameras are the latest and greatest I can stay out of an area enjoy the images coming to my phone and let the deer do their thing without alerting them to my presence. I have several bucks that I've identified as "Hit Listers" and early in the season it was easy to keep tabs on them. In their lazy summer patterns, we could pretty much put cameras near food sources and they'd pose for the camera night after night. As the months progress we'd have to move the cameras around a bit but still be able to catch them on camera going about their routines.
Browning Trail Cameras like the Defender Pro Scout Max can be easily ordered at agrisupply.com
As the season has progressed the deer that were on the camera like clockwork, have all but disappeared, and show up at random times of the day(mostly at night). I suppose that's the maddening part of camera game... The fact that the cameras have exposed the randomness of a buck in rut. A recent buck we've been watching and hoping to put my tag on has shown up with a pretty bad limp. I've watched the videos carefully and I cant see any trauma like blood or a hole or even roughed up hair around the shoulder. This makes me think he was hit by a car instead of being shot or hurt during a fight. Still, this has definitely changed his patterns. He had disappeared from the cameras for some time but has emerged (at night) at several scrapes I've been monitoring. He's still working the scrape and still has good body condition so I'm optimistic that he's going to make it but he's definitely not participating in the reindeer games like he normally would.
Young bucks like this are on the move continually during the rut.
There are other deer that we have on our hit-list but they're showing up in the dark so the monitoring continues and we still hunt hoping that at some point one of our bucks will make the mistake and walk by during shooting hours. I know it can happen! The Rut Blues are real and if you've experienced them you know what I'm talking about. If you're experiencing them now all I can say is don't give up and hang in there because it can change to "The Rut Joy" in just a matter of seconds!
Mature bucks can easily disappear once the heart of the breeding begins making for a frustrating rut.
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