status of the rut????

[wabi]

Curious about the rut in other areas. Here in southern Ohio it seems like the bucks are getting into the mood to mark territory now. Found several frash scrapes today, and have been seeing a lot of individual bucks on the move in the past few days. Colder weather is moving in, and the full moon will soon be gone, so my hopes are improving, but even with the full moon and warm weather I've seen bucks almost every trip out recently. Scouted some new areas today, and a staging area near my food plot/feeder site looks promising. Not many good trees for the climber there, but I'll probably give it a try in the next few days as I've had a few different bucks come in from that direction recently. I'll just climb up and look things over to see if I should bother to clear any shooting lanes. They don't come in to the food plot, but I've seen them come in far enough to have a look about an hour before sunset, then move back into the brush. I'm almost certain they didn't see me, they just didn't see any other deer, so they didn't come out into the open. The tracks are there the next morning to show they did come out during the night though.

[GaryM]

I was out this evening, even though it was 68F when I walked over to the woods and way too warm to hunt. 2 does came out into the corn stalks just before dark and were browsing around 75 yds out. Right at dark, a buck I've been seeing came out from near the same place as the does. He saw the does, but didn't seem interested in them and went his own way.
In '98 we had a really strong rut. It was 5 days after the full moon when all hell broke loose and bucks were running everywhere. Isn't tomorrow 5 days after the full moon? I hope we get cooled off soon and see some good buck movement.