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Guest blog with some great insight from our good friend Matt “Flatlander” Cheever from Illinois:

Hey Mike: Here’s a good late season blog: Reading the rut and what’s left of it.

I admit I get pretty caught up focusing my rut hunting efforts from November 3rd to November 12th.  This is not to say I don’t hunt outside that, I hunt nearly every weekend of the season, but this is the bulk of my vacation time.

This year I noticed some shooter bucks cruising in mid-October.  On Oct. 18th I botched a chance at my best bow buck to date, later to have a neighbor get him.  Though I came up short against that buck, it told me that big deer were seeking does almost three weeks earlier than I had anticipated.

Using this information along with a lack of deer sightings in early November, I was actually excited to gun hunt Illinois in early December. If I calculated right and does were being bred  that third week in October through Halloween (many accounts from friends in the field as well as my observations) then it seemed about right that the does missed would be coming into estrus again in late November or even early December.

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I re-energized my efforts for the second gun season, and the later muzzleloader season in Illinois.  Both bets paid off and I tagged 2 nice bucks in back to back weekends.

My season is over, but what does this mean for you? In your area, any does “missed” or coming into a third cycle, along with some doe fawns that might come into their first estrus, will mix with bucks in a late-afternoon feed to bed cycle. If you’re still hunting, post-Christmas, New Year’s and early January will likely have some great action.

And remember, temps have been extremely warm in most of the BIG DEER range, and that next major cold front that hits will be your ticket, so get back out there! Good luck and God bless, Flatlander

Good stuff and I add my good luck if you’re still hunting.