Episode #271A Rut Forecast AJ Gall

Whitetail Rendezvous podcast hosted by Bruce Hutcheon

Curious about this year’s rut forecast? AJ Gall, manager of the Legendary Whitetails Community Page, explores hunting during 2016’s peak breeding and lockdown period. His prior hunting and wildlife experiences began long ago and make him the perfect in-house whitetail addict. Peak breeding is not necessarily the best time to hunt. It's the seek-and-chase phases leading up to it, which AJ believes are the best – often within the last week of October. That's your best chance at getting one of the bucks that you've been having constant trail cam pictures up on your property. If you go by the biology, it doesn't waiver in this scientific information trends and data that's been collected to support that. Just remember that weather again. It's a wildcard in the cold front. --- We’re heading to Slinger, Wisconsin and we're going to visit with an old friend, AJ Gall. AJ is the Legendary Whitetails Community Page Manager. That means he takes all the pictures that people send in and he talks about what's going on in the whitetail world from the stand or from a blind. He's going to talk about the 2016 rut forecast based on four indicators. Listen to the podcast here: Rut Forecast With AJ Gall AJ, welcome back to the show. Bruce, thanks for having me again. We are going to talk about the rut, but I wanted AJ to tell you what Legendary Whitetails Community Page Manager means or does. Can you share that with everyone? As the Community Page Manager, basically I'm in charge of all the hunting content that we put out for our consumers to use. I do a lot of writing, some filming, and stuff like that. Everything deer hunting related. It's a way for us to keep connected to our customer all year round and sharing the passion that we also live. I know there are tremendous floods. I just saw something up the Florida. There are some evacuations because of the floods were having. In Wisconsin, two weeks ago, the hellacious, hellacious floods. There had been a lot of rain going around, especially on the Western part of the state. We know it's going to change some things. One, the low-lying corn, they're going to be able to pick it, the same with beans, any crops that are in anywhere near a river. Fortunately, our farm is right above the Baraboo River. There are some low-lying crops that the deer use at different times of year and that's going to be a problem. Before we get to rut, just address that to the people who are being impacted by these floods. For anybody severely impacted, prayers go out to you guys. Going back to the deer movement, standing crops can have a huge impact on what you'll see throughout the season. I know a couple of years ago, I think Western Wisconsin specifically had some wet fields and then followed up by some early snowfall in those crops through the entire winter. There's plenty of food, but there's also plenty of cover and when that happens, it gets pretty tough to hunt theme especially for gun hunters. A lot of times they'll lay low in those cornfields and they're just very tough to hunt or push out. They can bed and feed at the same spot without moving. Floods can certainly have an impact on movements, can change pinch points, especially. They're creatures of natural habits, so they’re going to take the easiest path of least resistance. You can also capitalize on the flood waters if you have the right property and the right ground that does suit that, say lakes get above waters and some of the crossings get washed out or river crossings. Probably going to narrow it down to spots that they can cross and funnel through. We’re all getting excited. We’re talking about the rut. I did some research and the first article about the rut I saw was printed in April 2016. They were starting to forecast a rut or let us know when, where and how and like we talked in the warm up AJ, if you're not in your tree stand, if you're not hunting, what difference does it make?