With the oncoming of the rut drawing closer every day the GrowingDeer Team has been out hunting hard since the middle of October. We’ve found ourselves perched 20 plus feet up a tree in hopes of an encounter with a hit list buck out trolling trying to find that first hot doe of the year!

A nice 3 year old buck Grant and Adam had an encounter with recently.

Almost every hunter has their game plan on how they’re going to capture that hit list buck, and like most, we know that it’s going to bust wide open soon! Until then, we need to have a plan to be successful. Over the last couple weeks we’ve observed younger bucks following does, we’ve seen them sparring, and we’ve seen them scraping, but we haven’t seen anything that’s made us believe they’re getting over-heated doing their pre-rut ritual. Through all our observations, encounters, and Reconyx data we know food sources are still the main attraction. The food sources include a ridge littered with acorns from white oaks and in areas without many acorns we’re watching food plots. In those feeding areas where the deer have been most active we’ve noticed that is where the scrapes and rubs are being most frequented. We learned this the hard way, perched in a Muddy stand before daylight and not seeing a deer until 10:30.

We’re now trying to find that magical place where the wind is steady, there are still acorns falling and the deer are active during daylight. If we can find the food source that the females are using the bucks will be along shortly! That’s our plan! Be sure to keep up with GrowingDeer.tv every week to see if the plan works!

Daydreaming of Whitetails,

Adam