At this point in deer season, all serious whitetail hunters have two important questions they need to answer: When will the target buck move? And where will he go?
To answer these questions, we can use recent and historical data from trail cameras, as well as traditional craft skills and a hunter’s good intuition. But it also helps you understand the bigger picture. And that’s why you can’t beat the GPS data coming from Dr. Bronson Strickland’s collar.
Strickland is co-director of the Deer Lab at Mississippi State University and a certified wildlife biologist. Through the Deer Lab, he conducts research that is important to deer science, but also has implications for management and hunting.
As part of this research, he and his team attached GPS collars to 60 different dollars over the course of two years. These bucks ranged in age from 2 to 6 years old, with most of them being 3, 4, and 5 years old.
I recently interviewed Strickland in Outdoor living podcast to discuss some of the highlights of their research and how you can use their findings to hunt more effectively this fall.
When it comes to avoiding hunting pressure, bucks have no rules
One of the things Strickland analyzed was how bucks respond to hunting pressure. He hoped to come up with some hard and fast rules, such as: When the pressure increases, older bucks go to the marshes or under heavy cover.
But that’s not what the data showed.
“Basically, what we’ve learned is that the only pattern with bucks and how they react to pressure is that there is no pattern at all,” Strickland says.
There was no tendency for bucks to favor a particular type of habitat or terrain because each buck behaved differently when avoiding hunters.
“Every single dollar determines where it can go when the hunting pressure comes on, and every single one is there for it,” Strickland says.
The only pattern was that bucks actually change their habits and patterns to avoid hunters.
Bucks show up later
Strickland says that while bucks weren’t necessarily “roosting” as hunting intensified, they did notice that bucks tended to arrive later (in the afternoon and evening) in areas where hunters were present.
“We literally saw a steady decline from week to week, month to month, and the time that bucks were arriving at sites where they were being observed by hunters was getting later and later,” Strickland says. “During archery season, they may arrive 30 minutes to an hour before sunset, and as you get into the last month of the season, they arrive basically at sunset, and most of them arrive after sunset.”
This is probably one of the reasons why hunting a tree stand for the first time is usually your best chance of killing a mature buck from it – there hasn’t been any hunting pressure in that area yet, so bucks tend to show up there in daylight.
Bucks takes his cue from us
Strickland with a Whitetail Buck stomper.
Photo courtesy of Bronson Strickland
Often, when hunters don’t see their target deer in the stand or in camera photos, they assume it is no longer there. However, Strickland’s GPS data showed that bucks would still stick to the core area even when hunting pressure increased. They simply go to places where we do not disturb them and do not pollute them with human smell.
“Just as we model ourselves after dollars, they shape us,” says Strickland. “When we do the same ritual weekend after weekend, the deer find out about it. They know where we are and where we hunt, and they avoid those areas.”
Bucks have predictable movement patterns from year to year
Strickland observed two different types of deer “personalities” when it comes to annual movement patterns. The first was a homebody type pattern and these bucks did not drastically change their range from summer to fall. The second person was a mobile personality in which the bull’s summer range did not even coincide with his autumn-winter range. About 33 percent of the bucks in the study had this type of mobile personality, and their movement patterns did not change from year to year.
In other words, if you observed a buck arriving in a particular area during a particular window last fall (and you know he is alive during that season), it is likely that he will show up in the same area again this year. On the other hand, if you observed a summer deer disappearing after shedding its velvet last year, it will likely disappear from your property again this fall.
In the case of domestic deer, “they’ll be around,” Strickland says. However, within their core range, they may change their patterns and movements to avoid hunting pressure.
Bucks can have multiple places for bedding
In most of the South and Southeast, it is very difficult to pinpoint the location of a single buck. This is because bucks will have several places to sleep and will usually sleep in different places in these areas.
“(In the Southeast) We just see bucks using so many different patches throughout the year and in our landscape it’s very difficult to think of a particular buck being mulched ‘here.’
This makes it difficult to guess exactly where a given buck is on any given day, but it also creates a great opportunity for private land managers to create prime roosting areas on their properties. If you are very confident about where a mature buck sleeps, hunting him becomes much easier.
Read more about how to create the best bedding habitat and hunt this cover here.
Bucks still go to food plots during heat, but not to eat them
For the study, Strickland and his team analyzed how often bucks visited food stands during the rut and how long they stayed there. They found that estrous bucks visited farmlands to check for heat, not to feed.
“During the rut, buck visits to food stands increase, but what I find interesting is that their goal is not to eat,” Strickland says.
For hunters, this means changing their strategy around food stands during the estrus period. Instead of hunting the center or corner of a plot, it may be more effective to hunt the main trail that runs downwind toward the food plot.
Then, at the end of the season, return to hunting the plot itself as the bucks try to replace the weight lost during this time.
Read next: What do deer eat?
Final thoughts on Buck’s move
If you haven’t made good money this season, don’t be afraid to change the situation. Set up trail and tree cameras in new locations, hunt at different times, and target new types of cover. Do whatever you can to break your traditional routine, because it’s likely that the money in your area is imitating you.
“If you don’t know the buck is dead… he’s most likely going to come back (this fall) and you have to start thinking, ‘If I screwed up last year with the way I hunted him, what can I do this year?’ it will be a little different,” Strickland says.
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