Lots of guys worry about planting rye too early. Unfounded concern in almost all cases. Especially when you are only talking 2 to 3 weeks or even a month. If you are in an area with early snow, your deer will actually thank you for getting a few extra inches of growth so they don't have to dig through it as much for food. One thing that gets lost for new northern plotters is that making the winter food easily accessible so the deer do not have to expend as much energy to get food is almost as important as having that food in the first place. So if you think you are a few weeks early, don't sweat it, get it in the ground and let your deer show you that it is not the end all, be all that we read about all the time. Most years we just rolled our rye seed down in late July after it ripened and our rye was always heavily used. No deer ever turned their noses up at it to my knowledge, they ate it every time they entered the plot.