It was November 23, 2020, and the woods on our Trigg County farm smelled like rutting buck. Not faintly either. That thick, musky smell hung in the stiff northwest wind the entire afternoon, and it had me convinced something was going to happen before dark. I’d been after one particular 8 pointer, and every rut hunting tactic that put him in bow range back in October had been worthless for weeks.
There was a small cluster of trees 150 yards in front of my stand, maybe 20 yards across, grown up around a sinkhole in the field. From the minute I climbed in, my gut told me a deer was bedded in those trees. I couldn’t see one. I just knew.
But before I tell you how that afternoon ended, I need to back up to October 20. Because the story of that buck is the story of why I hunt the rut the way I do now.
For years I treated the rut like it was one long hunt. I’d pick the best stand on the farm, start hunting it around Halloween, and sit there every time I entered the woods until Thanksgiving waiting on the calendar to hand me a buck. Some years it worked just enough to keep me doing it. Most years I sat in that same tree watching the woods change around me and wondering where all the deer went.
That 8 pointer finally beat the lesson into me. The rut isn’t just one phase. It’s three, and the tactic that kills a buck in one phase will flat cost you deer in the next.
The Buck I Should Have Killed in October
The pre rut was just getting started, and I was hunting what we call the pond stand. It sits in a stand of trees, roughly a quarter of an acre with a pond in the middle, out in an ag field that necks down between two blocks of timber. It has always been a productive early season and pre rut spot.
For years, a large primary scrape would open up during the pre rut about 20 yards from that stand and it was there again. A rain had just moved out so I had a feeling the mature buck in the area would want to freshen it up.
With about 15 minutes of shooting light left, one of my target bucks stepped out of the timber to my right and made a b line straight for that scrape. I grabbed my bow, and when he reached it I pulled back, settled my pin, and let the arrow fly. I just knew I’d smoked him. I figured he’d be piled up inside the woods before I climbed down.
He wasn’t. The blood dried up after 100 yards or so, and the buck was nowhere to be found. After a night of little to no sleep, I spent the better part of the next day gridding that block of timber and came up with nothing. A week later, to my surprise, he showed back up on camera, alive and moving, with a perfect hole high behind the shoulder. The pictures told the story. I’d hit him high and missed everything that mattered.
That’s the honest version. I made a bad shot on a buck that did everything right, and trust me if you bow hunt long enough its bound to happen to you. From that point forward, I had one buck on my mind and a mission to settle the score before the season ended.
Here’s the part I didn’t understand yet. The setup that gave me that shot had already started dying the moment my arrow left the string. Not because I’d educated him, though I’m sure I didn’t help. Because the rut itself was about to make scrapes irrelevant.
Why One Set of Rut Hunting Tactics Won’t Carry You Through November
Yes, you can hang a stand in a good funnel, sit it every day of November, and eventually a buck will walk by. Bucks cover a pile of ground during the rut, and a true pinch point catches some of that traffic no matter what. If you only get a handful of sits and one stand, that’s a fine plan.
But if you’re hunting a farm you know, chasing a specific deer, or just tired of long sits with nothing to show for them, hunting the whole rut one way is leaving deer on the table. The buck you’re after isn’t doing the same thing on November 20 that he was doing on October 20.
The bulk of scraping activity happens before peak breeding, and once does start coming into estrus, bucks largely abandon sign making to lock onto the does themselves. The sign that was your best intel in October goes cold, and if your stand choice is built on that sign, your stand goes cold with it.
So I break the rut into three hunts. Here’s how each one played out with that 8 pointer, and what I’d tell you to do in each.
Pre Rut: Hunt the Sign
From roughly mid October until the first does come into heat, bucks are on their feet more every day, and they’re advertising. Rubs and scrapes show up along the edges of doe areas, and mature bucks will check that sign in daylight, especially behind a weather change.
The part a lot of hunters miss is that pre rut bucks are still living on a bed to food pattern. The rut hasn’t scrambled their world yet. They’re still bedding in the same cover and hitting the same food they were in early October, they’re just doing more advertising along the way. That’s good news for you, because a buck on a pattern is a buck you can predict. The scrapes and rubs aren’t random, they show up along the routes he’s already traveling between his bed and his groceries.
This is the window where a scrape is worth hunting. My October 20 sit was the right tactic executed at the right time. Fresh scrape, rain just moved out, an evening sit in a natural pinch between two blocks of timber, next to a primary food source. The buck did exactly what the setup predicted he’d do, on his feet with 15 minutes of light left. The failure that day was mine, not the plan’s.
If I could hand you one pre rut approach, it’s this. Find the primary scrapes between bedding and food, pick the ones tucked into cover or pinch points rather than the ones in the middle of open fields, and hunt them on evenings after a rain or a cold front. Get your scouting done early so you’re not bumping deer looking for sign in November.
Peak Rut: Leave the Sign, Find the Does
Then the switch flips. In Kentucky that’s usually the first two weeks of November, give or take. And here’s what it looked like for me in 2020. I hunted hard through that stretch trying to get back on that buck. I had pictures of him. I passed other target bucks I’d have been proud to shoot, all on the hope of settling the score. And I never laid eyes on him from the tree. Not once.
The scrapes around the pond stand kept getting hit, mostly at night, mostly by young bucks. The deer I wanted was somewhere else entirely, and I’d bet everything he was locked down in a thicket with a doe. Or doing what GPS collar research out of the Mississippi State Deer Lab shows mature bucks do during breeding, covering miles of ground a day and spending chunks of time off his normal core area, glued to whichever doe was closest to ready.
The peak rut tactic is simple to say and hard to do. Quit hunting buck sign and start hunting does. Set up on the downwind side of doe bedding areas in the morning, in funnels and pinch points between doe areas through the middle of the day, and near the food does are using in the evening. If a doe comes through with her tail out and her head on a swivel, get ready and stay ready. The buck behind her doesn’t care what time it is, and honestly neither should you. Some of the best movement I’ve seen in mid November happened between 10 and 2 while most hunters were back at the truck eating lunch.
The Wind Down: Odd Cover and the Last Does
By the third week of November, most does have been bred and the woods feel like somebody turned the volume down. A lot of hunters call it quits right there. They shouldn’t. The bucks that survived are still looking, and now they’re looking for a scarce resource, which changes the game one more time.
Two things matter in this phase. The last available does, and the unsuspected little pockets of cover where a buck will hole up with one. I’m talking about the spots that don’t look like deer cover at all. A ditch thicket. A briar patch behind the barn. A 20 yard cluster of trees around a sinkhole in the middle of a cut corn field. When a buck finds one of the last hot does, he’ll push her into a pocket like that and camp there, sometimes for a day or two, because it keeps her away from every other buck on the farm.
Back in the Stand, November 23
So there I sat, cold, with that northwest wind stiff in my face and the smell of rutting buck rolling through it all afternoon. It was Kentucky rifle season and I’d traded the bow for a rifle, which after October felt less like a choice and more like common sense.
An hour before dark, a doe stepped out of the timber 300 yards away, acting funny. She wasn’t feeding and she wasn’t relaxed. She walked out into the cut corn like she had somewhere to be and then bedded down right in the open, which does don’t do without a reason. I watched her for a couple of minutes, and then something made me look back at the sinkhole.
The 8 pointer was standing at the edge of those trees, eyeing her down.
Thirty four days had passed since the pond stand. In between there was a high hit, a lost blood trail, a week of wondering if I’d killed him slow, and every scrape tactic I owned going useless on me. Now he was standing 150 yards away because a doe bedded in a corn field and he’d trusted a patch of cover the size of a two car garage. I ranged him at 158 yards, settled into my rest, and squeezed.
He mule kicked and ran straight at me. I racked another round while he came. I could see the first shot was good, but with this buck and everything he’d already survived, I wasn’t taking chances. He stopped at about 75 yards and I put a second round in him, and that one dropped him where he stood.
How to Tell Which Hunt You’re In
The calendar gets you close, but the deer tell you the truth. A few things I watch on our farm, and what each one tells me to do:
Scrapes getting freshened every night and daylight camera pictures of bucks alone on their feet mean you’re in the pre rut. Hunt the sign.
The first time you see a chase, or a lone fawn wandering around confused because her mama got run off by a buck, the peak is on. Pull off the scrapes and get between doe groups, and pack a lunch.
When sightings crater, chasing stops, and the only rutty behavior you see is a single buck dogging a single doe, you’re in the wind down. Start picking apart the odd pockets of cover and stay patient.
None of this requires a different farm or better ground. The pond stand and the sinkhole stand are 500 yards apart. Same field, same deer. What changed between October 20 and November 23 wasn’t the property. It was the phase, and the tactic had to change with it.
Rut Hunting Tactics FAQ
What are the best rut hunting tactics for the pre rut?
Hunt fresh buck sign. Find the active scrapes between bedding and food, favor evening sits, and time your hunts behind a rain or a cold front when bucks are freshening sign in daylight. This is the one phase of the rut where a scrape is genuinely worth your stand time.
Should you hunt scrapes during the peak rut?
Not as your main plan. Once does start coming into estrus, bucks mostly quit working scrapes and lock onto does. The scrape activity that does continue tends to be young bucks after dark. During the peak, hunt doe bedding, doe travel, and the funnels between them instead.
What time of day is best to hunt during the rut?
During the peak, midday is better than most hunters give it credit for. Bucks cruise between doe groups all day, and I’ve seen some of the strongest movement between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. If you can’t sit all day, an all morning sit that stretches past noon beats climbing down at 9.
How do you hunt the end of the rut?
Find the last estrous does and the small, overlooked pockets of cover where a buck will hold one. Isolated thickets, ditch cover, and little tree clusters out in open fields are worth more in late November than the best scrape on the farm.