Far Afield
2007 Whitetail rut: End of the first week of November
With Oak Duke

Whitetail bowhunters should be in their favorite tree during the first week of November this year, to take advantage of the peak of the 2007 rut.

(But that doesn't guarantee you are going to get your deer!)

As experienced bowhunters know, the rut is what we call that specific few days each year when the diurnal (daytime) chasing and breeding action ramps up and reaches a crescendo. And there, at that time, the chance for success with an arrow just doesn't get any better.

The upcoming 2007 season should be "as close as it gets" to the timing of the 2004 whitetail rut.

But the peak of the rut this year is almost 10 days earlier than it was last archery season. Last year, hunters, for the most part, across the state were reporting that action during the first week of November was "dead."

And they were right for the most part, but there are always exceptions. And the rut is not a constant thing, but evidences minor ebbs and flows, waxing and waning, and has peaks and troughs, each month.

What makes the rut vary as much as three weeks from year to year?

Thanks a careful study of whitetail deer behavior by serious hunters using a scientific methodology, the answer has become apparent, even if the exact chemical mechanisms are still unknown.

The moon times the annual whitetail reproduction pattern.

Other, less important modifying and fine-tuning aspects such as air temperature, sex ratio, herd age structure, as well as food sources, can each have a less important, but measurable, variable effect on the timing and intensity.

Deer, like many other animals, are "short-day breeders." That is, as the amount of daylight changes, a gland in their head is tuned by the amount of light that enters their eye.

The lessening daylight in the fall each day during hunting season is not the only light that affects the whitetail. Moonlight, especially night after night with a bright Full Moon, is the wild card and the Full Moon occurs at a different time each year.

This year, in 2007, the Full Moon in October is on the 26th of the month. Last year, the Full Moon in October was on the 7th of the month, and the year before, in 2005, it was September 18. And the rut timing varied each year, shadowing the moon phases perfectly.

Our calendar (Gregorian Calendar, since 1751 when the Julian Calendar was replaced,) is based on the solar year and doesn't synchronize well with a Lunarbased calendar. The Muslim calendar is a Lunar-based calendar. That's why Muslim religious celebrations do not occur on the same day, one year to the next, on our solarbased Gregorian calendar.

And neither does the whitetail rut.

The hormone flow, tuned by the amount of light is set by a "Master Switch," called the Autumnal Equinox, by astronomers, or "The First Day of Fall," by the rest of us.

The fall equinox, usually lands on or about September 21, when nighttime begins being longer than daytime. Actually, it's when the length of daylight and night are exactly equal. This phenomenon occurs each spring too, usually March 21, "The First Day of Spring."

Each year the day upon which the Full Moon rises, varies as much as two weeks on either side of the equinox.

How is the moon linked to an animal's biological rhythms?

A myth? Seems farfetched, if not a bit closer to astrological than astronomical, but this theory is based on a "nuts and bolts" science.

Scientific methodology has literally "shown a light" into the whitetails' breeding pattern and its relation to daylight and moonlight by studying blind deer and by being able to skew whitetail estrus patterns by keeping deer in the dark and artificially (with lights) create a "false rut."

The fall of 2004 shaped up to be a "normal" fall because of the timing of the moon phases. I wrote, "We should see a good rut "explode" in the first week of November." And that turned out to be right on.

During some hunting seasons, the Full Moon in September (normally the Harvest Moon, but not always, like last year in 2006) occurred very early, so early in fact that actually the first Full Moon in October was closer to the equinox, making it, by definition, the Harvest Moon!

Of course that made the Hunter's Moon occur in November and consequently a very late rut. (Like in 2003.)

This only happens, "Once in a Blue Moon." And that is what happened in November of 2001, two full moons in the same month. Very rare (usually occurring only once every three-and-a half years or so). By the way, technically speaking, the second moon of November of 2001 was "The Blue Moon." And the rut was even later in 2003!

But what's all this astronomy stuff got to do with the whitetails' breeding pattern? How does it affect hunting - that is our tree stand selection and when to spend time in it?

Well, those of us who were out there in 2003 saw that the rut was quite repressed during October and really didn't get rolling until the end of the second week of November. Usually things start popping in the first week of November around here (Southern Tier of New York and Northern Tier of Pa.)

Why is a week or two so important?

Many of us only have a few days that we can take time off from work. If you miss by a week, it might as well be six months, for all the venison it puts in the freezer.

Now, there is one other major factor besides the moon that effects the whitetails' breeding cycle.

Bucks have their own metabolic and hormonal patterns, part of which are set off and set up by the does' chemical messages. In turn, the females are triggered by the bucks' scent as we say, but really it's his chemical messages. So the bucks and does, during their pre-rut interaction, "tune" each other.

Whitetails "want" to breed around the first week of November in our "neck of the woods" because it works. Fawns need to be born at the end of May or first week of June for maximum survival. If they are born a month earlier, they could be born in snow and have a difficult time. If they are born a month later, they will be small when winter sets in. And in a tough winter, the smallest fawns are the first to go. Gestation period for a whitetail is about 200 days.

So in 2003, the rut was unusual and late.

In 2004 it was "right on time," during that magical time of the first week of November - a classic, "normal" year. That one was easy to predict.

The 2005 rut was a "bifurcated rut" - two pronged, so to speak with a significant rut in the last week of October and a smaller peak in the last week of November, which many other rut prognosticators had mistakenly predicted to be the peak.

Last season, the rut occurred during the middle of the November, just a few days before the rifle (shotgun) season opened on Saturday, November 18, in the Southern Tier as predicted.

But this year, like in 2004, when the Full Moon in September was on the 28th, the rut is timed to peak during that first weekend of November, and into the beginning of the following week.

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Oak Duke, publisher of the Wellsville Daily Reporter, writes a regular column on the outdoors.