The sound of a rutting buck chasing a hot doe through the fall woods is unmistakable.

When a buck is chasing a doe in heat near your stand, you'll hear leaves rustling, brush and twigs cracking and lots of passionate grunting. It's an exhilarating racket that will raise the blood pressure of even the most stoic of bowhunters. This is the sound of the peak of the rut -- the most revered time of year for any avid whitetail hunter.

One evening in mid-November, the sun was sinking low on the horizon as I sat guard in my tree stand, overlooking a small clearing that separated a plot of neatly-planted pines from a rectangular stand of aspens.

The air was cooling as fast as the shadows were racing across the ground. I zipped my jacket up to the top of the collar, the better to trap my body heat.

During the previous two hours I'd been on stand, I hadn't heard a sound or seen a deer. But a sudden commotion in the hardwoods caught my attention. It took my brain a second or two to process the noise I was hearing and determine that it was the sound of animals running. When I heard a series of loud, guttural grunts, I knew it was a buck chasing a doe.

Through small breaks in the trees and brush, I caught glimpses of two bucks running a doe in circles and figure eights. Neither of the bucks impressed me, but it was thrilling to listen to the pursuit.

The three deer ran around for a couple of minutes before I spotted a small 8-pointer emerge from a creek bottom off to my left and make a beeline toward the timber. The racket obviously attracted that buck.

This is getting good now, I thought to myself.

I was following the chase through the timber by tracking the noise when I caught movement out of the corner of my right eye. Turning my head, I watched a bigger 8-pointer 50 yards away, plodding toward me along a path that ran from the planted pines, through the opening I was watching and into the hardwoods.

I grabbed my can-style, doe-in-estrus bleat call and turned it over, creating a sheep-like bawl.

The buck stopped dead in his tracks and snapped his head sideways to look in my direction. He only paused for a second or two before he left the trail and began walking stiff-legged toward my stand. When he put his nose to the ground to sniff the buck lure I'd squirted on the ground in the middle of a scrape 10 yards from my tree, I drew back my bow.

My 10-yard sight pin danced around the deer's chest, before coming to rest in the crease behind the buck's left front shoulder. The arrow made a hollow thwack as it zipped straight through the buck.

The deer kicked its hind legs up high in the air, made two bounding leaps and then collapsed in full view, barely 30 yards from the spot where I had shot him. No tracking required!

Just like that, I had cashed in on the peak of the rut.

DON'T MISS THE RUT
There is arguably no more productive time to be in the deer woods than the peak of the rut. At this time of the season, bucks roam far and wide at all hours of the day and night in search of hot does. During the peak rut, the buck of your dreams -- one that you might never have seen before in your hunting area -- can walk by at any second that you are on stand or in a ground blind. Given that possibility, it's easy to see why hunters would do well to maximize their efforts during this period.

TIMING THE RUT
The first step in hunting the peak rut is to know when it occurs. In the northern half of the United States, generally speaking, count on the peak of the rut to occur in early to mid-November.

Some hunters believe the rut is directly tied to lunar cycles, and that it peaks shortly after the second full moon following the autumnal equinox in late September. Even so, you're still looking at early to mid-November. That's certainly a good bet for the peak rut, but it's not a sure thing year in and year out.

In the late winter and early spring of 2000, the Pennsylvania Game Commission studied road-killed pregnant does to determine -- among other things, when they'd been bred.

Based on the data collected, the 1999 rut in Pennsylvania lasted from early September through mid-February. Naturally, most of the does were bred during the traditional rutting period from late October through mid-November.

The point is, you shouldn't count on a calendar to tell you exactly when the rut is on. Instead, look to the woods.

The best way to know if the rut is on in your hunting area is to get out there to hunt, watch and scout. I say, "in your area," because the peak rut can vary from one part of your state to the next.