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Deer Movement Question

Really slow this weekend & had several hunting. Last week we killed 5 in 3 days. I put rut activity in my phone each year as a annual reoccurring event. It's been giving me notifications that scrapes we're re-opened last year on the 12/20, first opening for us was just 10 days ago.... Flat out weird year
 
Looking back at last year exact same dates, 3.5 y/os were running the does hard, and 4.5 y/o's were working scrapes in daylight in Starkville.

It was ROUGH hunting for us though... now granted, I was intentionally picking spots that are not thought of as traditional deer spots, as this club gets hunted hard. I was willing to trade numbers for a chance a big boy on the edge of a sanctuary (or yesterday morn hunted 50 yards from HWY 82- 4 lanes and LOTS of traffic- road noise was miserable, but there is a giant in that thick stuff right next to the highway... and noone ever hunts there). So I only saw 1 doe yesterday morn, only saw 1 spike and 2 unidentified deer in some thick stuff. My buddy hunted the nice food plots and saw more than me, but best buck he saw on a plot was a future cull... 3.5 y/o tending a doe, but only scored around 90in.

A guest of another member managed to kill a button buck. Doh!!!
 
Rub
 

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Weekend hunting was dead, dead, dead for us. Chasing has shut off. However, I did get some does investigating scrapes in the last two days, so maybe things will pick back up.
 
Spurhunter said:
Can't blame them. Not many people pass a 140" 8 point whether he's 1.5 or 11.5. Personally I don't get the age thing and why it became all the rage.
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I believe it is because, on average, older bucks are harder to kill than younger bucks, hence more of a challenge. And secondly, many hunters/managers are trying let bucks reach their maximum potential, which doesn't occur until at least 4 1/2.

Spurhunter said:
If a buck is big enough to shoulder mount and display on your wall, who cares how old he is? I've never seen a jawbone hanging on someone's wall, although I suspect it will start happening.
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I've seen many, many bucks mounted with the lower jaw below the mount. Very common in the Deep South.
 
BSK said:
Weekend hunting was dead, dead, dead for us. Chasing has shut off. However, I did get some does investigating scrapes in the last two days, so maybe things will pick back up.
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@BSK We haven't found one scrape on my lease this year. Not one. Usually they are plentiful. Can you offer any explanation for this? I've never seen it anywhere I've hunted.
 
Ski said:
Yeah I'm right in the middle I guess. I purposely target the oldest bucks, but that's almost always because the oldest bucks are the biggest bucks.

I also don't necessarily believe nor disbelieve in the "let them grow" mentality. Its all situational. Killing younger bucks has never yet prevented me from killing older or bigger bucks. Reality is much more nuanced than that, and I'm a pragmatic guy. If I see a 130+ 8pt I'm shooting it even if it's a 2yr old
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I couldn't agree more. I've changed my perspective on growing older bucks dramatically over the years, because the data got better, and I always try to follow the data.

I also agree that I'm a "middle-of-the-road" guy on buck age that I will harvest. I'm not a trophy hunter, although I freely admit I want to kill the largest antlered buck possible. But I also like killing a buck each year. I'm certainly doing no harm to my buck population by doing so. I've got a "hit list" of known bucks I will take on first sight, but as the rut dwindles down and I know the old bucks are about to vanish from my place, my standards drop considerably!

I'm also going to shoot a large-antlered buck no matter his age. I knew the below pictured buck was only 3 1/2. But he was tops on my target list that year. Four days into MZ season, I had the opportunity and took him. Thrilled to have him. He scored 140. Many will accurately point out he could have been a monster in a couple years. I don't care. I killed a 140" buck and I'm thrilled to have done so!
 

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Spurhunter said:
@BSK We haven't found one scrape on my lease this year. Not one. Usually they are plentiful. Can you offer any explanation for this? I've never seen it anywhere I've hunted.
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Poor nutrition. Buck sign-making is closely tied to excess energy to burn. When bucks don't have much excess energy, they don't make many rubs or scrapes.

Our scraping eventually exploded very late in the year this year, but rubbing never did. In a big acorn year, we can have hundreds of rubs on our place. This year, I've counted a grand total of 5 on the entire property. The drought really did a number on my local deer.
 
BSK said:
Poor nutrition. Buck sign-making is closely tied to excess energy to burn. When bucks don't have much excess energy, they don't make many rubs or scrapes.

Our scraping eventually exploded very late in the year this year, but rubbing never did. In a big acorn year, we can have hundreds of rubs on our place. This year, I've counted a grand total of 5 on the entire property. The drought really did a number on my local deer.
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Thank you!
 
BSK said:
Weekend hunting was dead, dead, dead for us. Chasing has shut off. However, I did get some does investigating scrapes in the last two days, so maybe things will pick back up.
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Completely dead for us as well. Three of us hardly saw any deer. Chasing is mostly shut off, however I did get a 3.5 on camera chasing a doe Saturday at noon.
 
BSK said:
Our scraping eventually exploded very late in the year this year, but rubbing never did. In a big acorn year, we can have hundreds of rubs on our place. This year, I've counted a grand total of 5 on the entire property. The drought really did a number on my local deer.
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Our scraping picked up some (very little), however the rubs really picked up over the last week. Some really good size trees too. The didn't rip them up like usual, but did about 5-6 inches worth. Night and day difference from when I was there last weekend
 
My son called me early this morning while driving out to help with some concrete work.

Dropping his daughter off at school this morning he saw two different bucks in two different fields chasing does. This was within the city limits...

Central Marshall County.

Quite here in my section of Giles County...
 
BSK said:
I'm also going to shoot a large-antlered buck no matter his age. I knew the below pictured buck was only 3 1/2. But he was tops on my target list that year. Four days into MZ season, I had the opportunity and took him. Thrilled to have him. He scored 140. Many will accurately point out he could have been a monster in a couple years. I don't care. I killed a 140" buck and I'm thrilled to have done so!
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I think you made a wise decision. Congrats on a GREAT buck!!!

I'm not so sure he would have become much more than that. Sure he may have. But it's just as or more likely that you'd have never seen him again or else his frame was as large as it was ever going to be. Not every buck explodes. Not every promising young buck turns into a super star. Just like not every under performing young buck always stays small. Letting a great buck like that walk is a big roll of the dice that doesn't often land on 7's. I would have done exactly as you did and take him when I had the opportunity!

In fact I've been fortunate to have been able to have a "list" of shooters each season. Often times I'll kill one on the list, and often others on that list will survive to the next season. Sometimes I get to watch them grow into old age until they just don't show up anymore. Being able to watch bucks throughout their natural life, I can solidly say it's rare to see one explode. By 3 or 4 they are what they are. They might gain some mass or turn from an 8pt to a 10pt, but not often do I see "jumps" in score. It does happen but not nearly often enough that I'd bet on it.
 
Ski said:
In fact I've been fortunate to have been able to have a "list" of shooters each season. Often times I'll kill one on the list, and often others on that list will survive to the next season. Sometimes I get to watch them grow into old age until they just don't show up anymore.
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The vast majority of bucks I follow on camera into maturity end up getting older and older until they vanish (die of natural causes). Sadly, we kill very few of those mature bucks. We usually have 3-5 of them using the property every year, but in the last 20 years I think we've only killed 10 of them.
 
BSK said:
The vast majority of bucks I follow on camera into maturity end up getting older and older until they vanish (die of natural causes). Sadly, we kill very few of those mature bucks. We usually have 3-5 of them using the property every year, but in the last 20 years I think we've only killed 10 of them.
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That's so bizarre to me. Any thoughts on why that might be?

I get most of my older buck sightings and shot opportunities during archery season. It seems once they begin getting shot at when ML season opens, they get even more reclusive than they normally are. Only twice in the past 5yrs or so have I seen an older buck while gun hunting. Every neighbor is a gun hunter though, so pressure goes from zero to full throttle over night.
 
megalomaniac said:
Looking back at last year exact same dates, 3.5 y/os were running the does hard, and 4.5 y/o's were working scrapes in daylight in Starkville.

It was ROUGH hunting for us though... now granted, I was intentionally picking spots that are not thought of as traditional deer spots, as this club gets hunted hard. I was willing to trade numbers for a chance a big boy on the edge of a sanctuary (or yesterday morn hunted 50 yards from HWY 82- 4 lanes and LOTS of traffic- road noise was miserable, but there is a giant in that thick stuff right next to the highway... and noone ever hunts there). So I only saw 1 doe yesterday morn, only saw 1 spike and 2 unidentified deer in some thick stuff. My buddy hunted the nice food plots and saw more than me, but best buck he saw on a plot was a future cull... 3.5 y/o tending a doe, but only scored around 90in.

A guest of another member managed to kill a button buck. Doh!!!
Click to expand...
I recently shared deer camp in KY with a couple from Starkville. They showed me a lot of pics of deer they had killed and had on camera. Some GREAT deer in that area apparently.
 

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