RE: Too early to rattle?
Rattling has never worked for me personally. Buck to doe ratios are pretty wild out of whack in a lot of places I hunt. However, speaking with biologists, and being around lots of deer over the years, I have found that a lot of sparring takes place in September... and has horns get harder and harder, and testosterone starts building up.... it doesn't take much for a friendly wrestle in the yard to turn into a knock down, drag out full blow back alley brawl. I found two bucks, locked together in combat, dead in the pond behind my hunt club last year. They had been dead for at least a week, if not two weeks... I found them Oct 26th, which means that they were at each other's throats around the first or second week of October... and that fight was brutal enough to kill both of them.
If rattling works in your area, then I would certainly think that it would work now... I'd hinge that raking some heavy horns on some limbs to immitate a buck making a rub and showing dominence would probably work well too. Good luck.