Mule Deer RUT

[Gobble]

They start about the first week but by the third week they are so rut dumb you can go right up to them. We watched this guy come from a few hundred yards, walk right in front of us and just kept going. We could have slapped him on the ass, he didn't even care about us.

 You can see his tongue out licking the air, he had a hot doe somewhere up wind.

Phool, Thats a pretty old deer, white face and a body to match.

[huntnphool]

he was only a 4X3 so we passed.

[Pathfinder101]

he was only a 4X3 so we passed.

Your killin' me Phool.  I am counting the days til my Montana hunt (NOV 13th through 22nd).

[huntnphool]

Very cool, we will be leaving the 14th

[KimberRich]

In my experience the Mule Deer rut is a little earlier than the WT here in Washington and Montana.  First week of Nov. the bucks are following does and by the third week it's on!!!

[MichaelJ]

Saturday morning along the Breaks of the Snake River here in ID we saw two young muley bucks trying to kill eachother for about 2 minutes over a doe that was there... they weren't exactly chasing her but they were pretty darn serious about pushing eachother around!

Up in the wilderness areas of the state I've seen muleys ruttin good n hard the middle of october....  My opinion is it just depends on where you are in the state and what the bucks feel like doing!

Michael

[MagKarl]

I don't know Jack about whitetails, but last week I was on the North end of Spokane and watched a bachelor group of 5 bucks for a while in the evening.  Two pairs started sparring fairly aggressively.  They were really raising a cloud of dust and I could hear the antlers clacking for quite a while after it got dark.  Seemed too early for that but maybe the pecking order gets figured out pretty early. 

[NWBREW]

In the N.E. corner it usually starts end of Oct. 1st week of Nov......just ahead of the whitetail rut.

[270Shooter]

If I saw a buck like the one phool posted, I woulda killed him .

[couesbitten]

I had the late muzzleloader tag for the Kahlotus unit in '06, opened on Nov. 20. Never saw any sign of rut in the few bucks I saw. Appeared that the rut was fully done by that time. Last year, I saw multiple bucks rutting in the last week of Oct.