Here’s a quick word-association game for you: Of the following words and phrases, which one doesn’t belong?
Rutte. Ruit. Rugitus. Roar. Rugire.
Dakota Sioux. Kutenai. Oto.
Osage. Micmac. Colonial American. Algonquin. Running season.
The answer: None of the above. In a way, all of them can be linked to what modern deer hunters call the rut.
When I think of my introduction to the rut, I think of my boyhood and growing up on my parents’ farm. As early as I can remember, locals would say things like, “I like to hunt the rut,” or “Do you think the rut will be early this year?” or “It looks like the rut is kicking in.” In the beginning, I wasn’t exactly sure what they were referring to, but as I learned more about the “birds and the bees” I started to catch on.
Today, the word rut is broken down and defined to the point that hunters know every aspect of a whitetail’s breeding season and the behavior associated with it. This wasn’t the case 20 years ago.
But what about 500 or a thousand years ago? Did our ancestors know what the breeding seasons for wild animals, particularly deer, were all about? No one knows
