Whitetail Science – Rut

Article by: Brian Murphy is a Certified Wildlife Biologist and ive Director of the Quality Deer Management Association. This column originally appeared in Bowhunting World magazine. Visit www.QDMA.com and www.bowhuntingworld.com for more information.

Whitetail Science offers you the latest whitetail research to make you a more knowledgeable and effective bowhunter. As a wildlife biologist and the executive director of the Quality Deer Management Association (QDMA), this is a topic of great interest to me personally as well as to our 40,000 members throughout North America. I am blessed to have on my staff and Board of Directors 10 of the top deer researchers in the nation including four of the seven living winners of The Wildlife Society’s Deer Management Career Achievement Award. We also work closely with hundreds of other deer biologists and researchers to keep abreast of the latest discoveries in the whitetail world. However, since I’ve also been a passionate bowhunter for more than 25 years, I will limit the scope of this column to research with real-world hunting applications.

With the whitetail rut rapidly approaching in many areas, this column will be specific to this unique and exciting time. I suspect many of you use urine-based scents such as “doe in heat” in attempts to lure that buck-of-a-lifetime into bow range. Like me, you probably have had both good and not-so-good success with these products. You might even be able to recall the morning that big buck came “bird dogging” into your setup like he was “on a string.” But I’ll bet you didn’t know the real dynamics behind that response, an element of whitetail behavior that happened to be the key focus of my Master’s research at the University of Georgia (UGA) and the first intriguing topic I’d like to delve into with this column.
For the past two decades, studies conducted at UGA have attempted to unravel the mystery of how an estrous doe advertises her readiness to bucks in the area. Given that estrus or the “heat” period occurs only once per month and lasts only 24 to 36 hours, the mechanism must be efficient. Hunters have long believed that urine was the source of the magical pheromone or scent that conveys this message. This is a reasonable assumption given that bucks perform the flehmen or lip ...

Continue reading "Whitetail Science – Rut" »

More Featured Articles

© 2010 | Los Cazadores LLC and Brush Country WebTerms | Privacy Policy