Ep. 983: Rut Fresh Radio - Peak Southern Rut Meets Prime Food Sources: December’s Perfect Storm
Wired To Hunt Podcast
MeatEater
4.8 • 4.8K Ratings
🗓️ 3 December 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on Rut Fresh, we're covering the first week of December with updates from three completely different whitetail worlds. Michael Perry of 18 Outdoors breaks down the ramping Southern rut in Alabama, where daylight activity is just starting to climb and winter food sources are becoming key. Reese Johnson checks in from Kentucky, sharing how the post-rut lull is shifting deer toward predictable food patterns and what hunters can expect as cold weather settles in. Then Alex Comstock of Whitetail DNA gives a Minnesota perspective, where late-rut behavior overlaps with harsh conditions and target bucks begin locking into survival mode.
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Transcript
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| 0:34.6 | What is going on? Welcome back to Rutfresh. I'm Jake Hofer, and we have some updates. It's December. It's not November anymore. So you still have a tag. You're still listening to this. It's time to find your rally caps. Time to hear what's going on. Here's some quick strategies on what folks are looking to do for the following seven days. We have Michael Perry from Alabama. |
| 0:55.3 | We have Reese Johnson from Kentucky at Alice Comstock from Minnesota to give their updates. |
| 1:00.3 | As you know, Ruffresh is brought to you by land.com, the leading online real estate marketplace |
| 1:04.8 | to find your perfect rural, recreational, agricultural, hunting properties here in the U.S. |
| 1:26.0 | My challenge is to refocus, reassess your current season and not necessarily lower your standards, but be realistic and keep scouting, keep hanging cameras, figure out where the deer are moving to as a constant, constant reshuffling up the deck. |
| 1:29.1 | And I feel like this is probably a clean, new starting point, |
| 1:31.8 | especially if you just got a fresh coat of snow. |
| 1:35.2 | So let's kick things off with Michael Perry in Alabama. |
| 1:36.3 | Here we go. |
| 1:46.7 | All right, first up on the line, we have Michael Perry of Alabama. Michael, how's it going? |
| 2:02.9 | Going good. How y'all does? Doing great. Doing great. I know things are heating up down in Alabama. I know you already shot a buck here recently, so congratulations. But we've been pretty much focused on the Midwest, and I know things are getting exciting in your neck of the woods, so I wanted to bring you on. |
| 2:04.7 | Oh, I appreciate it. |
| 2:08.0 | So when did you shoot your most recent buck here in Alabama? |
| 2:11.4 | Thanksgiving morning. |
... |
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