THE WHITETAIL RUT IS CENTRIPETAL

More than 20 years ago, I was perched 65 yards from a bedded 13-pointer and watched him for five hours. There was no question he was an animal I wanted to harvest, but my grunting could not pull him past a brush wall 40 yards away. Five-and-a-half hours into the hunt, a magnificent 18-inch 6-pointer circled the big buck and came between him and me. When he urinated in the big buck’s scrape, the 13-pointer stood up. Then he walked over to push out the younger buck and came one step too far.

That incident was one of several that set me on a journey of discovering and formulating a theory I call the centripetal rut. Its basic tenets are: The rut hinges on a dominant buck setting up in secure cover within earshot of one to three of his primary scrapes, often directly downwind of one of them. ) One to four sentinel bucks cruise his perimeter to intercept does coming to his scrapes. The sentinel bucks incidentally provide the dominant buck with protection from natural predators and During the lockdown phase, the dominant buck seldom ventures farther from his center than the locations of his primary scrapes. And , estrus does visit the scrapes and trail the dominant buck to his bed. This centripetal rut is illustrated in .