I am only in my third season of deer hunting and I am learning as I go. I hunt in Nebraska and I am thinking the rut is almost over if not already over. My question is how late is too late to be rattling and grunting? On Nov 8 I rattled and grunted in a nice 8 point but misjudged yardage with my bow and missed. A week later Nov 15 I went out for rifle season and got no responses from anything the whole weekend. I stayed away from rattling this weekend. I am guessing that maybe the rut has ended and the bucks are tired of fighting.

probly

I'd start hunting close to the food.

Best time for rattling is the 2 weeks prior to the rut--but you can still pull them in almost any time with rattling....it's just less effective.

Stan Potts rattles and grunts all te way into december, And he uses bucky Jr. as well. Remember not all bucks are the same they have different personalities like humans. One other thing I have learned from watching Stan Potts is that you have new bucks coming in and out of your area all the time. My thoughts keep on with it. You might get the one that is ticked off and ready to fight.

Just this past sat. (11/22/08) My son and I were hunting during the Ohio youth gun hunt and I just got done rattling and grunting and we heard a shot a ridge over from us where my brother-n-law was setting with two of my nieces. A small buck was angling up the hill away from them and stopped dead in his tracks and turned and started walking the opp. direction which would be towards our location, the only problem is my 13 yr. old niece shot it before it got to us, girls -1, boys -0!!I'm only speculating that he heard me rattleling but I would say he did and was coming to check it out. Now, you read correctly he had not one but two 13-14 yr old girls with him, talk about patience!!
Also some of the scrapes on the property have not been touched for a while and we found some that had been worked that same day.