Rut Activity

[Stinger]

Huntin in JNF other side of Blacksburg...any words on how active the rut is in that area?

[okiebuckonly]

Deer have been rutting in almost any part of the country since mid-October. Almost everyone I have talked to from Georgia to S. Carolina to Oklahoma (personal experience) has been that when the weather was perfect, there was some chasing, when it was cold and windy or hot and windy or too much hunter activity, everything either bedded down or went nocturnal. In Ok. Sometimes we have strange intermittent ruts for various reasons but this year was one of the most mixed up rut I have seen. I have seen some decent bucks but not during legal seasons. I prefer young bucks because they are tender but like anyone will shoot a wall hanger if given the chance. I stopped shooting does in Ok. 3 years ago because deer numbers in areas I hunt hit bottom.
For the past decade I have suspected the "doe days" in oklahoma were a product of the automobile insurance lobby and that was confirmed by a wildlife official (source unnamed) last week when discussing the 35 doe days in rifle and black powder in Ok. this year. Politics and game management are not sustainable partners.

If you want a sustainable hunt here (OK), you better manage your own land and try to get your neighbors also to base doe kills on deer surveys, habitat and population instead of ODWC doe days. While they will never exterminate the deer in the expanding urbanized areas, all the state controlled lands have very low deer populations even in the controlled hunt areas because of excessive doe kills. I only know of one area in NE ok. that has a decent deer population and that is declining and that is the Ft. Gibson Waterfowl refuge but don't apply for the antlerless only hunt, you will be disappointed. They are on the verge of losing their deer herd just like happened at Cherokee and Okmulgee when the doe hunts started. More politics than science in Oklahoma doe hunts. If you have private land you will regret killing all does unless there are massive quantities of deer.
In Eastern Ok. most landowners and leases are a few hundred acres so even if you switch to scientific deer management, if your neighbors continue killing all does, your area will decline. Maybe good food plots will keep some of them at home but I'm struggling to find something that can take nights in the teens and still be palatable to deer other than corn feeders.

My outstanding hunting area in Mcintosh county had a new landowner buy a couple of hundred acres of land next to mine and he happens to be one of the brainwashed wannabe game biologists that talked to an ODWC "game biologist" that told him to kill all does. The last two years has decreased the deer count including bucks by at least half and much of the "management" this guy does is at night shooting does and smaller bucks. I have tried before to stop this by getting enforcement involved and it is nothing short of impossible to be able to find an Oklahoma warden at the same time that they are spotlighting. The other problem is that poachers keep different hours than I do so it seems pretty hopeless. When you confront them they simply change to times they know you can't be around.
Sadly many of them don't even use the meat but leave 'em lay or dump them somewhere. The "kill all does" is a bad management tool that borders on brainwashing in Ok. and the poaching with spotlights is a disease that borders on addiction. My rifles are tuned to where I could shoot out lights or tires with sniper tactics but then I'm a lawbreaker too and somehow I think they would rather put a vigilante in jail than someone killing does at night.
If anyone has any ideas on how to hold deer in smaller areas with food plots etc. I'm open to suggestion.