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Daylight movement
- Thread starter BSK
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BSK
Well-Known Member
Last year, older bucks from the bottomlands didn't start shifting up into my hill country until around Oct. 18th. However, that was unusually late and I believe driven by the very late harvesting of standing corn in the bottomlands. In previous years, the shift occurred mid-September. I'm getting worried this year. So far, little to no shifting into the hills as of Oct. 11. Crops in the bottoms were all harvested by late September. But we shall see the next time I check cameras, which should be around the 21st.
backyardtndeer
Well-Known Member
Have my target buck, for this year, on 3 different cameras at about 7:30 am. Have several pics of him during daylight but only have 4 pics of the deer at night.
I'm seeing 20 to 30 deer every afternoon I get to hunt. They are hungry. I think this year will be feast or famine.
Tuesday and Wednesday mornings are going to be perfect. If you can, I'd be getting on him as soon as I can before he moves on.
backyardtndeer
Well-Known Member
Bgoodman30
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Yes I don't think it has to do with anything other than deer are having to move further and wider to find food. Therefore being caught on way to back to bed at daylight.. My #1 target has been all over the farm daylight and dark... I'm stuck working in FL hope I get to hunt him in a couple weeks but it might be MZ.
Finally got bucks showing up on one of the properties. One mature and a decent 3yr old both showed up yesterday, one at 4:30am and the other at 6:55pm. The mature guy seems to have added a 9th point and expanded his frame a bit both in width and height. He's the one in the pics.
I heard what I'm pretty sure was him growling/grunting in the thicket this morning. Had the squirrels & blue jays in fits. Several does came out of there and kept looking back, but he never did pop out. Still haven't seen the first scrape and very few rubs. Strange for this time of year. No lack of food at this spot. Acorns everywhere and it's surrounded by recently harvested ag fields.
I heard what I'm pretty sure was him growling/grunting in the thicket this morning. Had the squirrels & blue jays in fits. Several does came out of there and kept looking back, but he never did pop out. Still haven't seen the first scrape and very few rubs. Strange for this time of year. No lack of food at this spot. Acorns everywhere and it's surrounded by recently harvested ag fields.
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TheLBLman
Well-Known Member
I'm just curious as to the approximate linear distance of your particular seasonal range shift.
Never mind that the weekly range patterns of most deer cover a lot more acreage than most hunters think. At least this is the case outside of suburbia.
I'm constantly having hunters tell me "I have a buck over on my place that . . . . . " and then another hunter on "his place" about 2 miles away is showing me pics of the exact same buck, each hunter seeming oblivious as to just how far that buck each is calling "his" travels around the area.
I think many hunters, in their minds, seem to think a particular buck is somewhat bounded to the acreage that hunter owns or hunts. Never mind a particular buck, at any time of year, may be REGULARLY having his picture taken by different hunters on different properties over a mile apart.
I suspect true wilderness deer, such as in the Cherokee National Forest, may frequently travel over 5 linear miles, from one week to the next, as can those living in river bottoms (and/or other habitat not subdivided by high concentrations of houses, people, and their dogs.
Oh I don't know. Buck movement is pretty well documented. I'd tend to think most folks hunting mature deer would be aware. But maybe not?
What I see most often is that folks tend to focus on their hunting ground because they're not privy to how & when a deer moves outside of it. For instance, when I say I've got a particular buck on my place, I mean he uses it to some extent. I'm well aware that he travels far beyond my boundaries but I can only hunt him when he's on mine so that's what I focus on. The game I'm attempting to play is two fold. First I want to encourage him in some way to spend more time on my place, specifically during daylight hours, preferably within range of a stand. Secondly, I try to predict when he'll be there. I can only assume other hunters in other stretches of his range are playing the same game, but there's nothing I can do about that so I don't give it much thought.
backyardtndeer
Well-Known Member
Yep. Bucks may or may not bed in the same place day after day, but when you have does around at the end of October and into November, I believe you increase your odds greatly that the buck will hang around nearby. When you get am pics of a certain buck a couple days in a weeks time, it is pretty likely that he is bedding somewhere in the area.
I only have about 60 acres, I know I don't hold any deer. There are several properties in the area that get hunted, I am sure others get pics of the same deer we do, and that they hunt the same deer. Just part of it when you have a small farm.
60 acres is plenty! I've been pretty successful using accumulated trail cam info to predict when to hunt certain bucks. Most generally when a buck is on my place, he's only around for a day or two or three. Or he may just pass through & then pass through again in a week or so. And so far it's been as often as not that those time frames repeat year after year. Either the bucks have an internal clock that dictates when they're where, or else it's the does that come into estrous same time each year and bucks who know her know when to be around. Either way it's uncanny how they show up in certain time frames.
And although any one buck may only be on my property three or four or half dozen times per season, I still call them "my bucks".
And although any one buck may only be on my property three or four or half dozen times per season, I still call them "my bucks".
BSK
Well-Known Member
We seem to see two seasonal shifts. The first is deer coming out of Cherry Bottom, the last big agricultural bottomland of the Buffalo River before it joins the Duck River. That shift is anywhere from 1/2 a mile to 2-3 miles. We then see a second later shift when the National Wildlife Refuge starts flooding their bottomlands for duck season, and that shift is about a mile.
BSK
Well-Known Member
...and after 20+ years of running season-long photo censuses on my place (1 mile north-south by 3/4 mile east-west) I don't believe I've ever photographed a buck I believe was living within the confines of our property. They all move off and on.
BSK
Well-Known Member
Interesting you mention the observation that a particular deer is on your place for a few consecutive days and then gone for a week, only to repeat the process. One of the first GPS-collar projects I ever worked on was up on Lookout Mountain, in north Alabama. This was back when memory space and battery life were very limited on GPS-collars hence you could either collect frequent positions for only a short period of time or very infrequent positions for a much longer time. We wanted to see how deer were using the terrain and habitat so we had the collars set to collect a position every 20 minutes around the clock for just three months (September through November).
We had both a doe and her button buck with GPS-collars on. We also had the entire area GPS mapped and developed into a huge Geographic Information System (GIS). This allowed us to drop the GPS positions into the digital map and track exactly which habitat types the deer were using and how they were moving across the landscape. How this doe and her button buck used their seasonal range (we weren't able to monitor her long enough to get her annual range) was fascinating. Instead of using all of her seasonal range each day, she and her button buck had a daily range that was much smaller than her full seasonal range. But that daily range slowly shifted from one end of her seasonal range to the other end, shifting a little bit each day. It took her about a week and a half to work from one end to the other, then she would start working back the other direction. The boundaries of her daily range would overlap from day to day, but each daily range was just a little further towards one end of her range until she finally got to the end. Then she would turn back and start working back in the opposite direction.
What this meant from a hunter's perspective was, she could be seen in a food plot for about 2-3 days in a row, only to disappear for a week or so, then to reappear for 2-3 days. This pattern would repeat itself over and over. She was not leaving her daily range to access that particular food plot, but she would use the best food sources available that happened to fall into that day's daily range. Once her daily range had moved beyond that food source, she did not leave her daily range to go back to that food source. It was like it didn't exist until her daily ranges once again moved through the area.
TheLBLman
Well-Known Member
Annually, maybe even more than two significant ones?
Not a range "shift", but simply that deer are often just moving around daily within their range more than many hunters might believe.
I've been fortunate to be able to somewhat keep tabs on deer movement within several square miles (thousands of acres). Very challenging to identify individual antlerless deer, but some individual bucks can be easily recognized.
One thing that has somewhat surprised me more recently is how far deer will travel daily during the summer months. While we may see identifiable bucks (and does) at a particular salt lick, or in a particular field daily, we may not realize these deer are actually traveling linearly and daily somewhere between 1/2 and 1-mile plus, just as a matter of "routine". And while they may bed much of the day in a general area, they are often bedding hundreds of yards away today from where they spent most of the day yesterday.
This past summer I had a couple of mature bucks running together, one of which was extremely identifiable as a mainframe 7 and by his bilateral forked G2s (like a mule deer). They were daily traveling a round trip of about 2 linear miles (total daily travel appeared to exceed 3 miles). This was during June, July, and August while growing their antlers. This was not a seasonal range shift, but somewhat a daily "pattern", with most of these "patterns" encompassing much greater distances and acreage than one might think. The mainframe 7 with the forked G2s has died, and the other (which was just more or less an average mainframe 8) has shifted his range and routine.
A couple years ago, during the summer months, I had a very identifiable doe, identifiable because she was ruptured, her stomach exposed. No idea how she lived nearly a year after first seen like this. But, she was near daily traveling a round trip of nearly 2 miles as well.
Deer are "browsers", and it's their nature to be walking & feeding, not confined to a 2-acre wood lot in a subdivision. Where not constrained by man, they will commonly move significant linear distances in most 24-hr periods. Talking year round, not just bucks during the rut, albeit rutting bucks greatly increase their daily distances, sometimes walking all day, not even taking time to eat.
TheLBLman
Well-Known Member
Somewhat what I was trying to say with stating deer are browsers.
I do believe every particular deer is a bit unique, some will have smaller or larger ranges, some range shift more or less, and the time of year is also a factor. I once thought bucks in velvet didn't travel much daily within their summer range, but this is not necessarily the case at all.
LenS
Well-Known Member
BSK and LBLman,
Interesting observations. So I have a question about deer's movement and thinking, and I hope I can word it properly. Are deer able to conceptually understand a "the grass is greener over there" mentality or are they driven more by instinct/habit/etc? For example, will a buck comprehend that there are few does in his home range and go looking for a place with more does or is he going to stay within his range and simply deal with what is there?
Interesting observations. So I have a question about deer's movement and thinking, and I hope I can word it properly. Are deer able to conceptually understand a "the grass is greener over there" mentality or are they driven more by instinct/habit/etc? For example, will a buck comprehend that there are few does in his home range and go looking for a place with more does or is he going to stay within his range and simply deal with what is there?
Super interesting, and makes total sense when considering the patterns I see on trail cams, especially long term. And being selective browsers, it would make sense that their pattern is in constant motion. Coming back in a week or two allows time for a food source to replenish itself, whether it be new sprouts or more acorns falling, etc. Confining themselves to one place would not only realize diminishing returns in the way of food, but would also make for easier predation. Not to mention their excrement would begin piling up like a stockyard, a literal cesspool of disease.
BSK
Well-Known Member
I doubt we have many deer that completely pick up and leave their summer range and move to our hill country. What we are seeing is a shift in movement away from the bottomlands and into the hill country. In fall, the hill country has acorns and cover. The bottomlands, once harvested, have no food and no cover. I think the seasonal ranges would look much like the "Ven diagrams" we all saw as kids in school, with two circles that have a small area of overlap. When it comes to deers' seasonal movement patterns, the "area of overlap" in my situation is the first thick cover adjacent to the big ag bottoms. Deer bed there in summer, moving out into the agriculture at night to feed. Once all the crops are harvested in fall, the deer still use that first adjacent cover to the bottomlands, but move deep into the hills to access acorns, traveling a mile or more into the hill country.
The problem in the past has been, a year with no acorns. No reason for deer to move up into the hills hence they stay down along the edges of the cut ag fields. We see far less deer up in the hill country in a poor acorn year. In fact, much of our habitat management has been geared towards trying to temp deer up into the hills even in a poor acorn year. We have vastly increased our food plot acreage and created many, many more acres of early-stage regrowth up in the hills. In the past, we only had a couple acres of food plots, and half a dozen little 3-acre sections of regrowth. That helped some. But this year, we have tripled the food plots acreage (if it produces anything) and 100 acres of regrowth. We shall see what happens as this is our first acorn failure under the new habitat project.
