Ep. 835: Foundations - The Pre-Rut & What Most Hunters Get Wrong About This Part of the Season

as I get older. I think it's because the hunting is really really good if you know what to do. That's what I plan to talk about right now, So buckle up, my little deer hunting buttercups. When I first got into the hunting industry, I didn't really even understand how some small town dude from southern Minnesota could suddenly get invited to go hunt crazy places while someone else

paid for the whole thing. My first trip, which was part disaster and part like trying Heroin for the first time, brought me to the high country in Colorado to chase velvet meal deer. I didn't kill one, but it left a mark on me that made me realize that every chance I get to go into the mountains with a bow in my hand, I better do it. I got to go to Africa, too, which was pretty crazy and something I'll put into a book someday, but not today. I pretty much said yes to whatever offer came my way,

but not to whitetail hunts. I just didn't want to spend my time going on outfitted whitetail hunts when I could do it myself at home. And it went pretty good for me until I was told that I needed to go on a specific white toil hunt with one of our advertisers. The trip wasn't a total guided deal, but it wasn't DIY either. It was one of those situations where they say, hey, we have these stands in these farms, do whatever you want with either. So I figured I'd head down to Kansas and see what I

could do. It was a rod hunt too, which sounded pretty sweet since I was about to give up the woods in my home state to half a million gun hunters. Now. I was a very nervous traveler then, because I had traveled very little, and I had traveled very very little for any hunting trips, so I triple check the emails about my flights. I packed up my stuff and drove from my office in north central Minnesota on down to

the Minneapolis airport. When I went to check in my luggage, the woman working there said, Honey, you are way way too early to check in for this flight. It turns out that the eight am flight I thought I had was actually for eight PM, and the woman who had

booked my trip had emailed me the wrong times. The worst part about it, or one of the worst parts, was that I could have spent half the day hunting for a big nine pointer I'd been after the whole bow season, but instead I was about to kill a day in the cities before flying in super late that night. You know, it was the right day, but my timing was way wrong. I'm sure she felt a little like I did when in a past life I was a floating manager for a company that owns a bunch of

big liquor stores. That job was as soul sucking as they come, and not a great fit for someone who, every time he drank, did it in such a way that might convince others around him that we were about to run out of alcohol for good. About once a week during that job, some customer would come in and throw a small fit about how a case, a CoP's light or a bottle of wine was supposed to be

on sale and it wasn't. This was back when people actually cut coupons out of the paper, and so they'd present it in a way that I would best describe as super cocky, kind of like a what do you think about this shit kind of way. Inevitably it would be a coupon for a different store owned by a different company. Those customers had the right idea. They just got their wires crossed a bit. It happens when you're flying, it happens when you need to restock the liquor cabinet,

and it happens in hunting. In fact, it happens a lot in the pre rut. I think this is the most misunderstood time of the deer season. To be honest, maybe it's second to the lull, but if it is, it's a close second. I think the pre rut, at least in the North Country, starts to kick in far earlier than we give it credit for. I feel like by the time you were into mid October, you were definitely into the pre rut. By this week, there's just no question. Even though we all kind of know this,

I think we still tend to approach it wrong. For starters, we place a lot of weight in what we see on our trail cameras and what we hear amongst our deer hunting circles. The first chase always seems to happen this week, and it's rarely anything but a scraper getting after it. Now. We used to say things like, oh it's close, now, it's almost here, and on and on. But the pre rut isn't just an appetizer for the rut. It is its own thing, and it's really good if

you know how to approach it. So for starters, just forget about that four ky that chase the dough past your trail camera doesn't matter. The rut happens the same time every year, and that's not an anomaly. It's just what young bucks do they start off a little early before the whole thing gets going. Now, instead of looking at the pre rut like you can hunt it like the rut, but with less action, look at it like

a totally different phase. The easiest way to think about this is to look at your field edge stands and any stands that you've been hunting all season now. During the first few weeks of the season, these stands are usually pretty good because the deer are on summer ish patterns and they haven't really been hunted for nine months. Enough sits and those spots I write down along, you know, with the reality that the deer tend to back up in the cover and pay more attention to their daylight

movement as the season progresses. The pre rut might put a big buck in front of your burned out field edge stand, but it usually takes a cold front and just gift conditions. Mostly Mother nature is not going to be that generous. Mostly most hunters won't care. They'll go hunt those stands anyway, thinking that if the rut is about to pop off, they might get lucky and catch an early mover. They mostly just won't. They will only get more unlucky if they try to use some rut tactics.

Now again, I'm not saying you can't rattle in a buck or grown him in the last ten days of October. You certainly can. You probably just won't. It's not really prime time yet, and if the conditions don't make it extra prime for a bit, a lot of rattling isn't going to make up for a poor stand choice. It just won't. This is the thing about the pre rut. It is not the rut. It's not the magic time when just about anything can work, or you can just

ride out the hours on a pinch point. It's a time where the advantage is real, but you have to understand how to use it. I think about it this way. At this point in the season, especially if you hunt where there is some pressure, the deer are going to be located in pockets of advantageous cover. They are going to be where you aren't, and usually they won't be alone. They'll give this away with sign, which means if you do some scouting you can usually figure some of this

stuff out. This is where a lot of folks get things wrong too. They reason that it doesn't make any sense to wade into the best cover to find some rubs and scrapes now, while risking bumping all the deer out when they can just play it safe and wait another week or a week and a half to hit the rut as it starts burning super hot. I go the opposite way with this. I know that if I'm in the cover now and I'm around a lot of fresh bucks, sign I'm around a lot of bucks. Probably

it's that simple. The wind is right, and even if the conditions aren't great, I know my best chance of running into a good one now is to go where he is likely to be and then see if he'll slip up. This is a key tenant here, so pay attention. The bucks will move in daylight this week, and they'll be susceptible to a little grunting or some soft rattling, but only if you are where they feel comfortable moving. I've talked about this a lot, and I believe it.

Blind calling from the field edge three hundred yards away will do nothing but spook the deer. Most likely during the pre rut, you want to be in as tight as you can get to the security cover that they use to avoid you. This is not the time where they're going to run across the landscape all day long looking for doze. This is the time when they might get out of their bed an hour early and go lay down more sign or maybe spar with a buddy, and just give you a limited opportunity to encounter them.

That's better than what they usually give you. Honestly, a lot of people treat this like a free play where they can just hunt like they usually do and maybe the seasonal timing will put one in their lap. I don't, and if you hunt pressured ground, you shouldn't either. If you follow the traditional advice of staying out of there or hunting safe, at least you'll be doing exactly what

everyone else is doing. And then you'll share the rut woods with the masses when you could have made some calculated strikes the week before where your odds were higher. So you know you should use the pre rut to your advantage. And I've started to explain how, but let's go deeper. When you're out there on say October twenty fifth, and the woods feels electric, pay attention. This is a time when every deer sighting matters a lot to me.

I like seeing the dose because I might need them real soon if they use a specific stream crossing or hop a fence in a specific spot. I make note of that. When I see a buck, anybuck, I pay more attention. You've heard me say this a lot, but I believe it so much. Just to frame this up, about eight years ago, I found an interesting creek bottom in the Big Woods in northern Wisconsin. I killed a decent buck in there mid October and figured it would only be better if I came back during the pre

rut the following season. So I did, and when I walked in the first day, there was just a little tiny bit of snow on the ground and I jumped a good buck bedded with a dough. I saw him sneak back through later and almost killed him except for the wind. I hunted that spot, moving from one tree to another over the course of a few days, and never killed a deer, But mann did I see a lot of them for that area, and it gave me a way bigger glimpse into how the bucks used that

area all through October. I also hunted it during the rut several times, and it was just a ghost town. I think the deer still used it some, but the amount of people in there just changed the whole thing. It literally is a pre rut spot, and that's that. I'm still figuring that property out, but a lot of what I've learned has come from watching bucks during the back half October. When you see a buck, even if

it's a dank six pointer, watch him. Don't just glass him quick write him off as a non shooter and then go back to doom scrolling. Watch him. He will give you a crash course in how the deer travel and what they do when they want to lay down sign he might hear another deer and go check it out, or he might bed down in a specific spot. What he's doing, no matter what he's doing, is showing you dear behavior and possibly convincing you to go set up

where he is the first chance you can. Because deer do what other deer do, and this idea that big bucks are so different from other deer that they are another species is mostly bullshit. They are rare and often pretty cautious, but they're not reinventing the wheel out there, so to speak. They have the same needs as other deer and the same tools of a to them to help them meet those needs. They can't fly, they don't

have a sixth sense. They're just deer. Now, I have to say this again because I think most folks approach us wrong. If you're out there and you're not on the X and a deer you'd like to shoot is making a scrape two hundred yards away, think long and hard before you try to talk him into your setup. I think calling to bucks that don't look like they are going to come in is almost a certainty for

most hunters, but you should read the situation closely. If I'm on and over the road hunting, that situation lands in my lap, I'm probably gonna call when time is limited and I'll never see that deer again. Most likely I'm going to go for it. But if I have even a couple more opportunities in the next few days to hunt there, I think really long and hard about my calling. If you see a relax deer doing what relax deer do? You want to be there soon. That's

the winning lottery ticket right there. That's better than any trail camera image or anything you can find scouting. You call to that deer, it's like you have a lighter in your hand and can't help. But move it closer to that lottery ticket might just burn the whole thing up. Now, you might call him in. It might work, but it's also likely that it'll draw negative attention and sour the

whole encounter. If you can fight the urge, you might want to do that, especially if you have the chance to move a setup closer to where the buck is. This is why it's so important to pay attention. Seeing a buck is great. Seeing where he came from to get there is even better. Being able to watch how he interacts with the landscape, where he kills time, and

what he does when he leaves total gift. You can glass the trees he walks by to try to pick out a stand site, or look at the brush on the fence road to see if you could tuck in for a natural ground blind set. This is the advantage that the pre reut really gives you. It's a better opportunity to see decent bucks doing what they do when most of the season you just don't get to see them.

And better, yeah, yet you can see them doing what they do in a way that very well might lead to you being there tomorrow when they do it again. Not even the rut gives you that chance, because what they do today they might not do again for a week, or if they are chasing a dough, they might never do it again. But the pre rut is a weird pattern fest. Even if the patterns only last for a couple of days, that's still better than what you mostly have to work with, and it's a powerful motivator to

get out there. Now. It's also true, and I have to say this, that this style of hunting puts you in a position where you might just have a giant show himself. I never see this in the open. I never watch him do this in the open, But once every couple of years I'll see like a one fifty or a one sixty, often on public land, mind you, that just decides to move in the cover in late October. That is not a deer that is taking a lot of risks, but he's risking more than he usually does.

That aspect makes the whole thing a hell of a lot more exciting. Now that property I mentioned with the Creek Bottom Big Woods Bucks, I've seen two deer that are all of one point sixty in there in late October. And it's public land in a not very good region. Of the state. That's the magic of the pre rut. But it won't feel like that if you don't get in there with the deer and hunt the spots that most folks are either not aware of or are leaving alone so they can come in there for their rut

caation and hunt the crap out of it. Think about this this week. Are you playing it safe right now? Ask yourself? Why?

that crushes most deer hunts. Think about that as we slide into November here and think about coming back next week, because I'm going to talk about why I think doe decoys are a better choice than buck decoys, especially if you know how to use them. That's it for this week. I'm Tony Peterson. This has been the Wired to Hunt Foundation's podcast, which is brought to you by First Light. As always, thank you so much for listening for all

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