Deer & Deer Hunting

RUT-HUNTING TACTICS FOR SOUTHERN DEER HUNTERS

For deer hunters, the rut links as closely to autumn as Christmas links to winter, and it encapsulates all of the excitement that we love about the sport.

The rut is, of course, the height of the breeding season for white-tailed deer.

The dates vary across the South by about six weeks, but Dixie deer hunters generally associate the rut with — appropriately — Thanksgiving.

Ralph Meeker, the deer program coordinator for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, said that the amount of daylight, or photoperiod, triggers breeding activity in whitetails. In Arkansas, Meeker said, the rut occurs in a descending gradient from northwest to southeast. The average peak of the rut in Arkansas is Nov. 11, he added, which is why Arkansas always opens modern gun deer season on the second Saturday of November.

“You can definitely see a difference as you progress from west to east,” Meeker said. “The Arkansas River Valley will be a little earlier, and the northwest will be

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