2021 Whitetail Rut Forecast

now you came here for a 2021 whitetail rut forecast but i'm not going to tell you when the deer should be moving when they should be going into rut but how you should hunt them and why you should hunt them where you should hunt them at one point and not another but we're ultimately going to talk about the tools that you need to make sure that you're on track for when the whitetail rod is actually taking place in your area and what's pretty cool and what i'm excited about what i'm really excited about for this this rod is that every year those tools are expanding to let us know in research that shows when deer are actually moving and when they're not when the rod actually takes place there's so been so many common uh mistruths and miss fads in the past for when the whitetail rut takes place i'm here to tell you the rut doesn't take place as predicted by some moon phase or something like that the rut takes place in the same time at the same place every single year in your neck of the woods the rut's going to be the same as it was last year as far as the timing of the rut but there are a few differences and and even the weather you know i hunt by the weather i hunt by the weather i don't allow the weather to predict when those are actually coming into estrus because that's not the way it's going to work the weather will dictate uh when bucks are actually moving the activity levels when they're rubbing and scraping when they're really getting going and just think about it with you if if you're a runner if you're a biker if you're a hiker it's 110 degrees out you might not go as far you might sit in the shade all day you might drink a nice cocktail have some water whatever it is but you're gonna lay low at the same time if you have pounding rain thunderstorms blizzards you're going to sit whitetails aren't that much different and think of them we have a house to go into a car they're living out in the woods every single day and they have to go through every weather pattern that comes across your area every single day month time of the year season hunting season and so while the weather does influence us it influences deer behavior it does not influence when those actually come into estrus those are these are very important concepts for you because once you understand the timing of the rut then it's a matter of putting the system in place that allows you to be on a stand when you have the biggest opportunity to shoot a particular buck you're after now right here we have a tree behind me and we'll talk about that in a little bit but i am setting a stand in that tree for venti he was a 21 point buck that we had last year we saw him in the uh february march or in the winter time and we know he's alive and uh we can't wait to hunt him this year i can't wait to see what he was going to become so this stand i have venti in mind because it's right in the wheelhouse on this property for where his daily patterns were we were finding trail cam photos of him and his overall movements in this location let's back up a little bit the route will take place at the same time every year but there are there's a big variable and that is during the pre-rut you know i shot kermit last year we'll talk about this a second i shot kermit during the pre-rot what that means is is that the does are coming into asteroids as those first does from the year they're about to come in the bucks are getting ready and there's a lot of activity being taken place but this is not the rut lockdown for example where bucks actually slow down their movements because they're on a particular doe and they're breeding her for a couple days they can sense he's coming into estrus for fighting off other bucks this is a long process these bucks are not breeding 10 deer a year 10 does a year a lot of times on average you're going to breed three or four and that's stretched out over the primary rot the second rut sometimes the third rot so it takes a lot of effort and a lot of energy to breed these does and when those first few are coming into estrus you can imagine the scent in the air and how excited bucks get and if it's an old wise mature buck he's experienced he knows he's going to start laying down a lot of sign he's going to move a lot more that's when you suddenly get pictures of that buck on a morning water hole during ten o'clock eleven o'clock one o'clock in the afternoon where before he was just content to stay back in his bedding area now he's moving more he's developing a thirst just like a run or a bike or someone exerting a lot of physical activity it doesn't matter how cold it is you're going to drink water because you develop a thirst because of your activity level not necessarily because of how warm or cold it actually is a lot of times we're seeing our water hole use in the pre-rut pick up right when the temperature drops so all of a sudden have a 42 degree morning and there's a buck on a water hole so pretty cool how when it gets cold they're more active so they hit those water holes now let's just talk about if you have a core mature buck we think kermit was about a six-year-old buck he had the belly in the back to prove it last year in his body but regardless though he was a core buck that means we have lots of sign we have rubs and scrapes on the property that are active during the pre-rut if you have to wait for a buck to come over from another property and a lot of times they'll range out a mile or more during the rut you're not going to have a lot of activity that's why those rut watches around the country can be so misleading for one it doesn't reflect your area your region even your view region of a particular state but two can be very misleading because someone two miles away can have exceptional rudd activity because they have mature bucks on the land where you don't because you don't have a mature buck on the land mature bucks lay down an exponential amount of sign compared to immature bucks so rob scrapes a number of rub scrapes they just lay it down where a young buck is not going to do that so you're going to see a lot more sign if you have a core box a korbach meaning that he lives in and around your land on a daily basis you get consistent pictures of him in and around daylight he's not coming at two in the morning and infrequently like a non-core buck he's in and around the property so if you have these nice core bucks on the property then you're going to see some outstanding movement kermit was actually shot last year on october 29th we had an exceptional video of him on october 27th i actually sat in that same stand because the weather the weather algorithm through hunt wise told me to do so that's something i helped develop so that's a part of me i talk about it a lot i don't talk about products very much at all but that weather algorithm has a piece of me in it so i have spent a lot of time helping to develop that and the way i've looked at the weather over the last three decades that's infused into that that algorithm that is used through hunt wise 27th was a great day to sit got in the stand sat for 20 minutes and the wind was just starting it was getting light enough it was starting to tail downhill it was a light wind forecast three or four miles an hour five miles an hour because of that it started drifting down into areas i thought that kerma might actually travel from so i got out of there went to a different stand the weather was going to be good for another set two days later so i knew that planned for it and sure enough we have a video october 27th kermit came in from the direction i thought he would he hit the mock scrape he's hitting a scrape right now that's 25 yards in front of my stand i shot him 10 yards from that location had i been sitting there i firmly believe i would have spooked him out so it takes that discipline too and that's part of this process you can't just say well hunt wise tells me it's a good day the weather looks good i have a buck i'm after and you go in there and sit down there's so much more that goes into it especially as it relates to the patience and the strategy and planning you put into the entire process now remember if you have core bucks you'll have an earlier rut or experience earlier rut activity it's going to take place at the same time for example the peak rut in wisconsin here you can apply that to michigan minnesota we're in southeast minnesota right now i hunt a lot in wisconsin across the river it's at the same time but the peak of the rut is going to be in those first 10 days in november i would if i had to guess a date would be the 6th through the 15th somewhere around in there 6 through the tenth it's gonna be a very narrow window before that you have the pre-rot around here that'd be the last 10 days of october but again if it's an 85 degree day and 35 mile an hour wind you're not going to see rut activity it's a real roller coaster for the entire rut even during the peak route when things can be going great if you get those exceptionally warm days a lot of wind it's not to say you can't shoot a buck it's just to say the odds are very low and if you're like most of us that have a limited number of stands and hunting opportunities you can't afford to waste a sit or a location i'm not going to come in here and sit in this stand behind me for venti on a bad day because i could spook out this area i could leave my scent here i might spook other deer in the area and ruin an outstanding day that's just three days later so it takes patience and planning and what's pretty cool is that i could go through my entire rut in wisconsin last year i had about five opportunities i blew in the first seven sets i use the average a mature buck opportunity about every five or six sits during the rut you can shrink that down to every two or three sets but it's because i'm only hunting on those best days if you have a non-core buck on your air in your area that means infrequent pictures it's about half of my bucks that i shoot they're coming from a mile away they're coming in the middle of the night that tells you these coming from a long ways away bucks don't just sit back there on a knoll and wait for the conditions to get right at 4am and move they're coming in at 4am because they had such a great distance to travel to get to you so non-corbac i'm focusing more during that peak rut and again that could be the 6th through the 10th 11th in most areas of minnesota wisconsin michigan pennsylvania new york but when you start going a little bit south when i hunted down in southern ohio and then you go into southern illinois when i've been down in kentucky over into kansas you can honestly say the rut is about week a week to 10 days later in those areas and when you get down the south boy you can have a rut december january february march you can have those trickle ruts that just keep happening and uh and that gets a little bit blurred too but in those areas the only guide you can have to go by is the weather make sure you're hunting the best days remember look at those extremes bad weather we're inside they're not moving good weather they feel comfortable we feel comfortable pretty close uh relationship between the two so think about that think about the timing of the rut doesn't change every year by some magical position of the moon that just been disproved so many times and times again in fact uh camp cuz no deer research facility up in shingleton michigan john zoga lou verm and there's other people that were involved in that uh fredericks is another one but those people up there studied deer for 30 years plus that's just what they did for their living whitetail deer they were able to alter sound hundreds if not thousands of does hit car deer hit whatever predation but they were able to go back and look at those fawns basically like you would with an ultrasound for a person and go back to the date of conception they found there was no variance for decades based on the moon or anything else obviously even the weather the timing of the route was the same every single year the only difference you're going to see is if you have mature bucks it'll be about a week to 10 days earlier during the pre-rut if you don't have mature bucks in the area you can expect to push that back another week to 10 days a lot of times people get into november 20th november november 15th in michigan wisconsin minnesota maybe the 25th of uh november in ohio southern ohio indiana illinois over into kansas and they say oh the rut just hasn't take place yet you just missed it and again if you don't have mature bucks in the area you're not going to see a really big substantial rot and if you're on one of those super properties that attracts a whole bunch of deer in the form of does you're not going to see much of a rut either because there's no challenge a lot of times it's a stressful situation so bucks are going to be in another location that has a balance of does they have does to breed so why do they want to come over to this property that has an over abundance of does a high value a high amount of stress no cover left over for a box you might get a few bucks but when you have an overpopulation of does you're actually going to see fewer bucks not only for the entire season but definitely during the rut so that balance of does and bucks is something that will show you that uh the rut isn't happening so i hope you understand that the rut is going to take place in the same time and when you know that that's a comfort you can actually go to a stand and say you know what it's november 7th i know the rut's in full display and that's why i'm going to go hunt this morning stand that's why i need to switch back to an evening stand to look for movements in the evening but just know that that rut take comfort in that that rut's going to take place at the same time every year that's a good thing now i'm going to talk about some tools in a second but i want to express my excitement you know this was kermit was an awesome buck we were after he was my number one target buck last year on the property for the first time this year we kept him because of our food plots we made sure that he was on the property consistently that he focused during the daylight on our property because we didn't over hunt the stands even being to the point where i knew he'd be moving on october 27th i wanted to hunt that stand so bad made the right guess to the stand and his movement wrong guess has to win so i got out of the stand you have to have the discipline to do that right behind me that big tree up there venti is a special buck we don't know what it'll be this year but he's going to be a really cool buck we don't know how many points he had he had 14 when he was a two and a half year old he had 21 points last year who knows what he'll have this year as a four-year-old but he's going to be a super bach and i want to kill him you know i want to shoot him i want to find him and this is my best guess form and i have a couple other stands and you can imagine i have quite a few stands out here but uh but i have a couple other stands with him in mind but if i haven't shot him and it's the pre-rut and he's around here we're getting pictures of them this stand requires a post day breaks uh entrance meaning i wait for the fields to clear i come in here a half down half hour after daylight i get into the stand and just like today our wind is going right up hill hill here and they're coming up with these draws i can sit in that stand and i can look down at a water hole and a mock scrape that we're supplying down on a pinch point that goes above a draw i'll chainsaw off that pinch point so that they have to pass within 25 to 30 yards at the most from the stand the water hole the mock scrape trail camera will be there and you'd think the stand is so important i'll clear some lanes for that stand but that stand probably won't go until august you know venti shouldn't be really around here we haven't gotten pitchers up yet this year because this property now is not a summer property all our food's related till fall so although i really don't care if he's around in the summer i want to see him during the summer i want to get his see his growth i'd rather he come here in the fall most of the time where bucks are at during the summer they're not at in the fall and vice versa so i'm excited about this spot for venti and we have a couple other bucks that i'm after this year too one's costanza costanza is a pretty cool buck he's got a a little kicker off his one g2 he's a stubby so dylan you came up with that name right costanza short and stocky just like george costanza on seinfeld so hopefully you can appreciate the comparison there we name our bucks just because we need to tell them apart from dylan dante everyone else that's hunting here my buddy mike diane there's a lot of people that are looking at these same box so we need to name them and be able to tell them by it really gets confusing with the big 10 the wide 10 the heavy 10 the short 8 the short 10. we get them all mixed up so i'm excited because venti is a buck that i really want to go after this year and then in wisconsin we have some superbucks too so we have some really nice bucks i'm working on my archery game so i make sure i'm a little bit more in tune this year i don't know what happened last year just one of those bad years every 10 years i have a bad year but this is a really exciting time going after venti this year and uh for the 2021 whitetail rut and i'm excited about the tools that you have and we'll talk about just the phases of the rut real quick at the end of this and where you should be sitting and why but i'm excited because hunt wise and the app that we developed throughout the hunting season last year and all the way beginning in february of last year is the first time we met so going back well over a year that's i've hunted by the weather since the early 90s specifically by the weather i'm looking for big weather temperature drops deer relate to feedings they feed five times in a 24-hour period so when you have major weather coming when it's very hot they miss feedings they miss quality feedings they're laying low but when the weather changes and those temperatures drop i'm hunting on the back side of that front and it doesn't matter if the pressure the bare metal pressure is high or low if you just had an 18 degree temperature drop it doesn't matter if there's a storm coming in two days and the barometric pressure is low get out in the woods and hunt at the same time when that storm clears out you have clearing skies the day to hunt is the day after that storm clears through right at the end of the tail storm not two days later when the barometric pressure is higher or three days later when the barometric pressure is higher folks you already missed it by a day or two at that point so really look for those major temperature changes i hunt a little bit on the front side but temperatures haven't dropped much on the front side the temperatures have stayed consistent and hot for a long time boring so there'll be a little drop usually the evening the morning before a big front comes through you have those easterly winds it allows you to hunt some of those stands temperature might have dropped seven degrees but boy i'm really hitting it when it's dropping 15 to 20 on the backside and even a 10 degree difference is really good i'm also looking for morning to morning changes so you can have consistent forecasted daytime highs 61 59 62 60 60. but somewhere in the morning there because winds have died and conditions are changing there'll be a morning where instead of being 47 45 46 47 all of a sudden you have one pop up in there that's 39 that's the morning you hunt and what the algorithm does and what the hunt cast does through hunt wise and that algorithm that portion of that hunt cast and and out of the huntwise app is it tells you all these different changes you can just look at a a weather forecast and you can look out to 10 days out because major temperature changes can be seen 10 days out you can see those coming i see them coming i've planned on them for decades to hunt those times and that's when i shoot my box almost all of my blocks are shot at eight to ten out of eight out of ten days all my best bucks nine out of ten ten out of ten they're almost top value days those top value days you can never make up those top value days with hunting a lot of poor value days so you need to pick those best days out of the forecast and do all you can to hunt them i've even traded a long weekend of three or four days just to hunt one evening one morning during the middle of the week because that's when i needed to go hunting i'm not gonna i'm not gonna go burn out my stands on bad weather days if you have limited time off cheat your long weekend hunt more on the front side friday off if it's good weather if it's good weather on monday take monday off maybe your your boss or employer will let you do that you look at it a week ahead of time and just say hey i really want to slant this hunt towards the end maybe break out your weekends you're going three day weekend three day weekend three day weekend three day weekends in a row and that'll help you out too because you're actually spreading out your hunt and you're going to hit some good days during that entire hunt now we're looking at you know again i talk about that timing we figure that and we calculate a rut factor timing in with the various states timings for example kansas might be 10 days later than southeast minnesota and southwest wisconsin where i'm at kentucky might be seven to ten days later than southern michigan so you have to pay attention to those factors but that's all built into the app too so a great app that allows you to look at the days you hunt after you've narrowed down you already know your timing for when the rut is we build that into the app too but the the timing stays and so that app is really a tool that just tells you you should go here and you shouldn't go then and when i say that you know a lot of people hunt nine days in a row well during that nine days you'll find two or three days you probably shouldn't even be in the woods you'll find two or three days that are exceptional and you'll find a handful of days in between you don't want to burn out your best days by sitting on a poor weather day and burning out that stand so some great tools now to help you going forward for planning for the rut i would urge you to check out hunt wise the link is in the description but on top of that to me this is a precision plan we have venti we know his patterns we know he made it through the winter we hopefully makes it through the spring and summer you just never know we have a stand in place we have multiple stands in place where we think that we can target fenty from but it's not just that we have to determine our access into that location once we determine our access stand location we have mock scrapes maybe i have a mock strap in almost every stand we have cameras doing a lot of work telling us when those bucks are moving through the area but then at the same time all this planning the right access choosing the right tree stand that's all you take the guesswork out of it you just look at it this is the access this is the wind the side and go and hunt and then you just simply look at the weather and let it tell you when to hunt so this is a very defined plan it's a very definitive plan and it works it doesn't work of course if you don't if you're hunting the non-core buck at a core buck time or vice versa you can always kill that core buck during the peak of the rut but at the same time he could be a mile away in someone else's land so you really determine what buck you're after using some past intel personal observations sign current sign to determine when to actually go in and actually try to hunt him and uh and then you're picking the right stand with the right access the right weather and getting in there and it's crazy because hunting less is hunting more and will improve your success the old myth of you can't kill him from the couch has probably saved more bucks lives than any other statement in the entire hunting industry one of the worst statements ever it's fun to joke around about it now but obviously less is more what when it comes to consistently killing mature bucks and someone will say my buddy hunts every day of the season and shoots a nice buck that's not good enough for me i don't have that much time to waste i'll go fishing during the fall bird hunting hiking there's a lot of other things due in the fall besides sitting a tree stand during bad days i want to hunt the best days during the season after the best bucks in the area not just a buck there's a big difference from that i want to target venti i want to target costanza and there's other bucks we have that we have lots of real nice bucks that are named around this area that i could go after venti is one you know on the top of the list but i want to go after a specific buck i don't want just any old buck and uh and there's mature bucks around here there's three year olds i don't want to shoot i want to shoot that decent buck so knowing the right time same time every year having the right plan using the right weather days it'll lead you to success a very high percentage of time and i expect it to you know that's what i've shown over the last 30 years and not only my ability to do that but the factors of the weather and the prediction for doing that as well now you look through to the rut the pre-rut that's the first time i start hunting morning stands for the year so i'll hunt that pre-rut timing that's when i expect to hunt those core bucks that are close to home i'm sitting up behind those bedding areas i'm going in well away from the food and waiting for them to come back that's my first favorite time to hunt those i'm hunting evening food source movements which is what kermit was on this he was on the evening food source movement hitting a small plot on the way to a big plot on the way to ag field which is a destination field after dark most destination fields are dark nocturnal plots that's what we call them for a holding plot is one that holds them until dark so i try to teach how to plant hunting and holding plots not necessarily destination plots which most around the entire country are after dark that's the pre-rut i'm hunting morning and then i'm flipping around because if you hunt a great stand in the morning rarely should you sit in the same stand all day during the rut because the closer it gets dark those deer are moving towards food so if you're in a great morning stand which is a bedding area stand that means the closer you get to dark the less likely you are to see deer in that location so i flip out of that stand and go to an evening food source not sitting on the food source and spoiling it but hunting a mock scrape a water hole even a small hunting plot where deer can travel through that location of high attraction and pinch point to get to an evening holding plot that i do not want to spook out because on small properties you spook out one or two holding plots your property is done and you don't have that much time you don't have enough time to recover or for your land to recover during the rut the next phase is everyone's invited to the party all those all those does are coming into heat that's called the rut lockdown that's where bucks don't move because they just had a flurry of does coming in it's on the front side it's on when the rut is still building and then when it gets to the peak that's when things start to break apart bucks are really actively seeking does they're willing to move that's that middle of the rut that's at seventh eighth ninth tenth twelfth maybe fifth time in southeast minnesota wisconsin over into michigan and maybe new york portions of northern pennsylvania and then you have that peak rut of more the 15th through the 20th southern ohio over into kansas kentucky tennessee oklahoma and so that you can expect that rut in those areas to be pushed back then you get into some of the southern states whether it's mississippi louisiana alabama florida georgia where you can have that trickle rut and in that case you don't know when they're going to come in but i'll tell you what they're going to be moving a lot more when the weather is great and you have the post front that's when the big boys are still willing to move but they're not going to move a mile and a half and fight for the last remaining doze if it's 85 degrees so sometimes that post truck can be a bust just like the peak rut and the pre-rut the lockdown can if you experience warm weather again it is a roller coaster going through that entire rut the most often missed portion of the rut is a secondary rot just fast forward about 28 30 days from your peak rut date which would be early december for us and we have exceptional second rut hunting activity and opportunities i've capitalized on those my muzzleloader a lot during that late season we even saw some outstanding rut activity of a five-year-old coming in and making scrapes all the way and that was early january that was during that third rut so there must have been a random fawn or doe that came into heat but guess what still the same factors for how you should access the stand during the rot i'll hunt morning stands on evening stands rarely on one stand that captures it all unless it's in between bedding in between feeding it features that perfect extra movement otherwise i'm limiting myself in one portion of the day meaning the morning or the evening and uh and i'm not maximizing my opportunity i score my sets meaning that if this is a great morning stand it's a 10 out of 10 great morning conditions to get into that stand it's probably a one or two out of ten in the evening so just to tell my friends i sat all day i loaded up on instagram all my supplies and snacks went out for an all-day set that's not good enough for me to sit in that stand i'm looking at it like you score that day a 20 being a 10 out of 10 a 10 out of 10 from morning evening i had a 9 out of 10 sit or a 10 out of 10 set opportunity in the morning well if that's a 2 out of 10 in the evening because all the deer are leaving and going towards food sources then i only had a 12 out of 10 or 11 out of 10 for the day instead i'm going to flip around to a high value evening stand and maximize my total potential score for the day when it comes to hunting the entire rut day and not just the entire rut day in the wrong stand because i wanted to say i sat all day in the same stand i hope that makes some sense there's a lot of myths that can be dispelled out there about the rut the timing of the rut is the same every year the weather the moon is not going to the barometer pressure is not going to tell the deer hey you need to go into rot does need to come into estrus they're going to come into estrus the same time every year you need to determine if you're hunting a core buck or a non-core buck that non-core buck that's going to come in the peak rut that core buck that could be around any time but don't let this peak rut slip by make sure you're looking at sign don't go by rut watches if you have core bucks that are mature on your property and they're there all the time you're going to have a lot of sign you're going to experience the pre-rut but if you don't you're going to have to wait till the peak rot so your sign is going to be 17 days later then maybe a neighbor that has core box or doesn't have core box vice versa and then finally when you have that plan of attack like we do for venti this year make sure you don't spoil it by going in too early and ruining your pre-rut rut lockdown or peak rut opportunities because you burn out not only the stand but the area the access i want to come in here when i believe that i can actually have a chance of seeing venti and getting an opportunity to um not when i think oh boy i just can't wait to get into that stand because it's new stand we have a cool water hole a mock scrape and i burn it out too early i mean terrible if i come in here on a bad day leave some sun around and venti smells me and he doesn't show back up in this location for three to four weeks the rut's already over and i missed my opportunity on them 2021 whitetail rot forecast pay attention to these details pay attention to the timing in your area hunt by the weather and my forecast then for you would be success if you follow the plan of attack like i've done for decades if you watch the weather tap into the hunt wise app hunt cast that'll really help you out do it on your own if you want i've talked about these this weather algorithm tom blue in the face and these opportunities look up 2020 whitetail ruckcast look up 2019 18 17 16. i've done rut forecasts for all these years and then even going back before then look at rut forecasts on google and look at the timing or november sit alert november whitetail sit alert those kind of things i've had those articles going back for 10 12 years at least my all-weather whitetails book details how to hunt the rut within that book and how to hunt the weather and how it relates to your entire season that's a 2018 book that i wrote i have the third book that will come out before hunting season this year so whether it's web classes or books we have additional resources to help you out with your hunt and your habitat hunt wise can help you that tone with the app through with hunt cast telling you which days to hunt decades proven formula and finally enjoy the hunt enjoy the preparation this offseason gear up towards the rut because if you plan accordingly and appropriately you follow these tools you follow the truths about the rut you'll find success for not only the 2021 whitetail rut but for every rut that follows for the rest of your life i'm excited to tell you guys about my latest web class it's how to plant food plots how to design your food plot program and it covers everything and really there's 30 videos over 10 hours 11 hours of footage workbook hats you know all that stuff on top of it i urge you to check out the link but i cover five main areas critical food plot concepts where to plant how to create what to plant and finally how to plant it takes you through that step by step so you can make your own decisions that apply to you and build a great high quality food plot program this year whether you have decades of experience or no experience at all

Channel: Whitetail Habitat Solutions

Views: 125,638

Keywords: whitetail rut, whitetail forecast, 2021 whitetail rut, 2021 whitetail rut forecast, 2021 rut forecast, rut forecast, 2021, Whitetail, rut, forecast, when will the rut begin, rut begin, 2021 whitetail rut begin, begin

Id: yl8QYutmiTQ

Length: 31min 19sec (1879 seconds)

Published: Sun May 30 2021