Menard 2022/23 Season

[WhiplashTX]

It was 31-32 most of yesterday morning, light rain and sleet. I ended up with .05" of precipitation for the day. Light rain and sleet again this morning, 36 degrees. Deer are hunkered down in the brush this morning.
Adios,
Gary

Thanks for the continued updates. Glad I bailed Saturday morning, still got to hunt 3 days though.

The rut is starting but the does don't seem quite receptive yet. There is still a lot of browse on the ground and feeder activity is hit or miss. Our wheat field is drawing them in but I am only seeing about 20 deer, mostly does. When the freezes kill the ground cover and the field is booming it will be five times that.

[Gary Roberson]

Be careful on the highways! With the rut in full swing, deer are stupid. The cold, wet weather has the hogs on the move and as tall as the grass is along the roadways, you can't see them until they are step into the road.
Yesterday, there was a bad wreck east of Menard on Hwy. 190 when a vehicle hit a deer and then a tree before catching on fire.
Adios,
Gary

[Gary Roberson]

Since last Wednesday, I have had 2.5" of rain at the house. It is really wet out there!
Adios,
Gary

[Randy M]

We had over 2” at our lease off Cleo this weekend. It was one sloppy weekend.

[Capp35]

Rut already over?
I was out there last weekend and nothing was running.

[Draco]

We never noticed a rut ever got started.

[Woj]

I use this rainfall info. Pretty accurate, and you can get pretty specific to where you want to look.

https://www.iweathernet.com/total-rainfall-map-24-hours-to-72-hours

[Capp35]

Well dam, I just left the lease and my bud just sent me this pic. One of the widest I have seen on our place. Hope his genes got spread around.

[Capp35]

Looks like we will finally get our first hard freeze this week.
A little late, but might help the hunters New Years weekend.

[Gary Roberson]

It was 13 degrees and clear yesterday at 6:00 PM so I was forecasting a low around 5 degrees this morning. Luckily, we had cloud cover roll in and kept the temperature a little higher at 9 degrees. Still a wind out of the NW so I am guessing that tomorrow will be about as cold if it remains clear. Brrrrrrr....
Adios,
Gary

[Heath]

I had a trail camera pic that rolled in with 1 degree on it. We have been out the last couple of days and was staying to hunt tonight but our pipes froze in the cabin so no water. We will be back out on Monday for a quick trip.

We have no mature deer and only ****ty racks on any bucks that are showing up. It’s a complete 180 from last year.

[Randy M]

We have no mature deer and only ****ty racks on any bucks that are showing up. It’s a complete 180 from last year.

We are about a mile from you and this is verbatim what is going on at our lease as well.

[AntlerCollector]

Not sure if Eldorado is allowed in here.

This season has been almost nonexistent. Absolutely zero mature bucks. Only young bucks, what looks like inferior “cull” bucks, and does.

[SV72]

Our season has been very similar, although, we do have a few good deer. Most of the activity has been immature bucks and a handful of does. I believe this was the perfect storm for the deer. Horrible off season but then abundant rain has made many of the bigger deer basically “unkillable” since they are not having to move too much.

[Gary Roberson]

I had a low of 9 last Friday, 10 on Saturday and this morning's forecast low was 28 but was 21. The freeze killed a lot of plants that we were trying to protect and broke a few pipes around the county. Hopefully it killed a few ticks.
Adios,
Gary