If a buck hasn't attached himself to a particular doe, Pye says, he can be tricked with rattling horns or grunt calls. "I keep two calls on me when I'm hunting," he offered. "One buck grunt and one doe grunt. A doe bleating is not natural; they only bleat when they're in heat. But they grunt -- probably more than bucks do. The other deer hear that, and the bucks will come to it.

"The buck grunter: I don't use the deepest grunt, because you don't want to sound like the biggest buck in the woods.

"As far as rattling, it goes along with calling, but you don't want to sound like a 190-inch buck unless you're hunting a 200-inch buck. Rattle bags sound as good as horns without being loud enough to scare bucks away."

Longworth loves using cover and lure scents. "I'm a firm believer in doe urine as an attractant during the rut, and it doesn't matter which brand," he said. "They're running wild, chasing girls all over the place. Grunting will get you some action, and so will rattling. I use all the resources that are available."

Indeed, Longworth goes so far as to change his tactics totally when he feels that the rut is at maximum. He leaves the ground, where he feels most comfortable, and starts hunting in tree stands.

"I am more of a stalker, but with the rut coming, and the bucks moving through the woods as much as they are … well, when the bucks are moving, I'm going to stay put a lot longer. If they're holed up somewhere, that's when I'll go after 'em. Before and after the rut, I'll move a lot more than I do during the rut. When it's on, the biggest thing you can do is hang around where the girls are."

And then, as abruptly as it started, the rut is over. Nobody's seeing bucks anymore. "That's when you hear guys say, 'He's gone nocturnal,'" Pye said. "What's happened is he's worn out, and he's gone to rest up. Some of them won't make it.

"A big, dominant buck will go somewhere after the rut, because he wants to be left alone. It will be the thickest spot he can find near a food source or a water source. He'll lay up and rest and eat, because in another 28 days, the rut will be triggered again. So he's got four weeks to get ready for battle again.

"He'll feed at night and walk around at night, and he'll have a way in and out of his place. He's hiding in there. If you have the right idea about where he is, you need to get as close to him as possible, In fact, the best thing you can do may be to run him out of there so he's got to go somewhere else. And if you know where his escape routes are, you hunt them.

"You can find where he enters and leaves his bedding area. Normally, you'll find all the tracks going in one direction -- either in or out. You need to have two stands set up. Keep the sun at your back and set up, say, on the south side of a cutover or any kind of opening, because he'll bed there, because the sun will keep him warm all day."

And Pye's got one last piece of advice to keep you hunting when it seems the action has died down: "There is really no such thing as a totally nocturnal deer. That's because he's got to get up and drink water sometime during the day. He won't be far away from the water, and he'll have to get up in the middle of the day to drink."

Keep that in mind when the rut winds down in your hunting area this season. There'll still be plenty of bucks out there -- but they won't be as easy to find as they were a few weeks earlier, when the rut was peaking!