And it wasn't just void of mature bucks.  It was void of any buck older than a yearling.  I was rather shocked to see an area that had regularly held a summer population of bucks totally 12-15 every year for a decade, including all ages of bucks up to and including mature bucks, suddenly having a summer population totaling just four yearling bucks.

To say I spent time pondering what had happened would be an understatement.  However, in any natural system, so many "inputs" exist that teasing out which input or combination of inputs may have caused any change in population is virtually impossible.  Yet, after lengthy review, I believe the cause for the sudden change in resident buck population was a sudden and major change in habitat on a small adjoining property.  I had always suspected that adjoining property (only 40 acres) played an important role in travel patterns on our much larger property, but I never expected it played such a dramatic role.

During the previous deer season, a massively large logging operation moved onto that adjoining property and virtually stripped it of all standing timber in a matter of a few weeks.  From the day that logging operation moved onto the property until the following fall, not a single 2 1/2 or older buck was photographed using our adjoining property.

Normally, logging operations cause little disruption in deer activity.  But for whatever reason (and I suspect it has something to do with how critical this 40-acre property was as a sanctuary), heavy logging of this property caused a massive disruption in buck range usage and travel patterns in the local area.