I scheduled my vacation from Oct 27th through Nov 14th to coincide with the pre-rut staqe. All the sign that I normally see in late October started showing up 3-4 weeks early this year. As Rob says, the does will control when breeding actually takes place, but the bucks seem to be jumping the gun a little early this year. I've seem more bucks this year than usual, but, so far they've all been little dinks. I've already passed on a lot of six points that have wandered past my stand.