I havent seen peak rut that early here.  Typically speaking the rut starts up early november and typical peak weeks would be the second week of november to about thanksgiving.  This is mearly all based off of my experience.  That is normally about the time it starts to cool down.  It seems to really be based off the cooler weather for peaks weeks.  If it cools off in October then stays cools it can start up early.

Chad, NC

We need another cold snap or 2 in our local mountains out here before we get the rut to kick in. That will usually happen in the first week or so of Novermber.  However, I have seen rut-like activity as early as late October, and on a couple of occasions as late as December.

Someone on one of my other, more local to SoCal sites brought up an interesting point the other day.  There have been some people who have speculated that the deer in my area actually mate a huge part of the year.  Some say they can even see spotted fawns through October, which is pretty much unheard of.  It would be interesting to see if it were true or not.