They are definitely in pre-rut. I rattled in a mature 8 point, mid-afternoon in medina county last Saturday.

start rattling guys and good luck

I'm leaving at 5 so we can get down to our ranch just south of Los Angeles tonight. Might stop at Ruby's for a beer

I'm hoping it's not too muddy down there this weekend. We haven't been in a month but it seems like they got a good amount of rain in the last week.

I hunted Los Angeles sat through Tuesday and it was very muddy , had about 1 1/4" of rain in that time , I onley saw young bucks pushing does around !

Thanks, I was afraid of that. Well, I'll have fun either way but the bad thing about down there is that when it's muddy, it's miserable. The oil company just put in gravel roads on our place, though, so that will help a bit.

Heading to Bee County tomorrow...

Anyone have an update after this weekends hunt in South Texas? I was in medina county and have still yet to see a lot of rutting activity. It was pretty slow this weekend.

It was a slow/tuff weekend for me in Duval County.

I didnt make it down, but brother and dad did. Southern duval co. Saw lots of deer, but we are waiting on the rut. It seemed to be picking up from what they say.

matt

I hear it has begun already.

I hunted Duvall county this past weekend, and although that might or might not be considered south Texas for this thread, I can tell you many attempts at rattling didn't bear out any bucks or movement. We did however seem to have either a buck or a neighbor rattling a little back at us one time. This was our first attempt rattling this property and we tried it two days with only one "response" but nothing came of it.

In the blind Sunday morning I saw nothing but did hear and got responses from what sounded like a doe bleat or an estrus bleat. I called back to it and got about three or four responses but again no movement, which made me think it was an estrus bleat more than just a doe bleat. I am sure this wasn't a neighbor as my hunting buddy didn't hear any of it and he was between me and the neighbors that it could have come from.

Other than that, we saw several fresh doe scrapes, some buck scrapes and lots of deer sign but very little other than young deer.

We did see some monsters at the freer deer camp on Sunday morning. A couple each had freakish looking deer, the guy's had drop tines which nearly covered the bucks eyes in addition to the other three drop tines it had on each side (the antlers looked stuck on they were so freakish looking) and the gals had above 40 points (looked like a cancerous wart on the deers head). They said they got them in Live Oak county and brought them down to get scored. The workers were not happy to score them since they were so atypical. I didn't ask the guy how much they cost him, as there was no way in he#* they were low fence deer.

We did see another truck pull in with three or four deer in the back with a nice large typical, but didn't get a chance to see how big it was....

So even though the rest of us didn't do so well this past weekend, the HF pay ranches certainly had some success.

They were not even thinking about it in Webb Co this weekend, at least not on my place.

One of the other hunters on our place got a real nice 8 point
on thursday,said it was around 180lbs. And another 200lb 8 pointer was taken saturday by the third hunter. Said they saw 5 really nice bucks on saturday morning. This was on a low fenced 320 acre lease. Southern Duval county, 10 miles north of Hebbronville.

It's starting to pick up, but the rut has not started

It was slow this weekend. Steady drizzle on Saturday and overcast on Sunday. Saw about 7 deer. No mature bucks. Didn't see any sign of rutting. I tried rattling, but no luck. I starting to believe that the one shooter buck from our offseason trail cam pics has been killed by a neighboring ranch. He hasn't come out on our cameras since the 2nd week of rifle season. There's always that hope in the back of my mind that he'll magically appear out of nowhere, but the amount of shooting activity coming from the neighbors to our east tells me that it would be a miracle if he IS still alive. Oh well, that's hunting I guess.

It was in eastern Duval County, close to Palito Blanco.

I just talked to my buddy hunting n McMullen CO, he said the bucks are running hard today !! I hate work lol ,