Drought and poor-acorn year deer activity

[BSK]

Thanks for sharing your findings, BSK. Still slow at our place in Hardeman Co regarding mature bucks. Friday afternoon and this afternoon I saw a spike chasing does but all our cameras are dead, again regarding mature bucks. Cameras are a small glimpse I know but hunter sightings are down as well. We run between 15-20 cameras on our place

Over how many acres?

 

[BSK]

Is acorn failure a result of the drought, or is just an instance of correlation? The worst drought ever that I experienced was fall of '01 through September of '02. The white oak acorn crop of '02 was the best ever that I recall. This past summer we suffered from drought, but we had a bumper crop of both white and red acorns this year.

It really depends on when the drought is at its worst. We had acorns in the trees this year (a low number, but they were there), and the peak of the drought in August and September dried them up. We had acorns falling in early October, but for the vast majority of them the nut was shriveled up in the shell.

Late freezes in spring are the worst offenders for wiping out acorn crops, but late summer and early fall droughts are the second leading cause.

 

[BSK]

Im in northeast Dickson. Typical rut times certainly seemed delayed this year. I was able to kill a nice 10 or the second week of muzzleloader but he didn't seem rutty for a lack of a better term. My farm on the vanleer/Erin border was significantly delayed to what appeared to be the first week of December. Although this week I'm suddenly getting daylight pics of bucks again

I got a bunch of daylight pics of bucks just the last few days.

 

[348Winchester]

I'm seeing a ton of "pestering" going on in food plots at night. Bucks are feeding away in the plot, then a doe group ambles in and the bucks go after them. Once the does prove unresponsive, bucks go back to feeding.

That's what I have happening to a T!

On this particular piece of property in northern Morgan County there are excellent food sources. One is a green lush food plot with a variety of goodies. There is an abundance of red oak acorns but nary a white oak acorn. However, my sightings on this property are way, way lower than normal. There is decent deer sign but trail cameras reveal that the overwhelming majority of deer activity is at night.

This property has received very little hunting pressure.

I'm a bit puzzled.

 

[WTNBowHunter]

Over how many acres?

1500 contiguous

 

[BSK]

1500 contiguous

So a camera per 75-100 acres. That's good coverage. I feel I can get a very good unbaited census of the local population with one camera per 80 acres, as long as I can move the cameras around all season.

 

[BSK]

To add to my above post, there's a statistical process that can be used to determine at what point your camera density would start "missing" a significant number of bucks. It's a process where camera data is removed by randomly removing individual camera's input and then seeing what the census numbers show. By running this process over and over, each time randomly removing a different camera, and then two cameras and then three cameras' data you can find where the buck inventory starts missing a significant number of bucks. For the way I place cameras, the census numbers start to dip significantly once I get below about 1 camera per 90 acres (this is for an unbaited census, where you are trying to catch bucks doing their normal thing).

 

[BSK]

That's very interesting JCDEERMAN. I have to admit, this year seems like one of the most nocturnal years I can remember. I'll run the numbers when all of the data is in, but I'll bet a much higher percentage of older buck camera captures were at night than the previous year, when we had a bumper acorn crop.

OK, I was wrong. Once I ran the numbers, so far this year is not a more "nocturnal" year than normal. From 2011 through 2023, the percent of middle-aged (2 1/2 and 3 1/2) buck camera events that occur at night (outside legal hunting times) from October through December is 68.3%. For mature (4 1/2+) bucks it is 82.6%. So far this year (2024), middle-aged bucks are at 68.3% and mature bucks at 84.3%. Go figure...

 

[BSK]

To add to what JCDEERMAN had posted in this thread and others, we too saw a delayed rut with peak activity much later than normal due to the drought and acorn failure. We saw the same thing during the drought and acorn failure in 2022. Below is a graph displaying the average number of older buck events caught on trail camera in October, November, and December. I have two lines on this graph. The orange line represents years with adequate acorns since 2019. I started with that year because that is when we first started some major habitat changes on our property, and 2019 was also the year we began using video trail-cameras instead of still image trail-cameras (video collects much better data). The orange "adequate acorn years" graph represents the average of four years of data, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2023. The green line represents two years of data, both drought years with total acorn failures (2022 and 2024).

Notice how the older buck activity peaked much later in November for the acorn failure drought years (green line) versus the adequate acorn years (orange line). In a decent acorn year, our best hunting is the first three weeks of November. However, in the acorn failure years, the best hunting is more like Thanksgiving week through the first few days of December.

This year, our best days of hunting were the Friday-Sunday following Thanksgiving (Nov. 29-Dec. 1).

 

[Dumbluck]

What is totally odd is that older bucks are just hanging out in plots feeding and loafing about in the middle of the day (11a till 1p). They have had a TON of pressure on them between us and new hunting neighbors. Are they that hungry and worn down they have lost all fear? Middle.of the night feeding for hours in plots right now is normal. This behavior is NOT.

Mega that added pressure next door may have them thinking your place is a sanctuary which is good, it can become habit forming. Poor hunting tactics and too much pressure can do this easily in my opinion.

 

[WTNBowHunter]

To add to what JCDEERMAN had posted in this thread and others, we too saw a delayed rut with peak activity much later than normal due to the drought and acorn failure. We saw the same thing during the drought and acorn failure in 2022. Below is a graph displaying the average number of older buck events caught on trail camera in October, November, and December. I have two lines on this graph. The orange line represents years with adequate acorns since 2019. I started with that year because that is when we first started some major habitat changes on our property, and 2019 was also the year we began using video trail-cameras instead of still image trail-cameras (video collects much better data). The orange "adequate acorn years" graph represents the average of four years of data, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2023. The green line represents two years of data, both drought years with total acorn failures (2022 and 2024).

Notice how the older buck activity peaked much later in November for the acorn failure drought years (green line) versus the adequate acorn years (orange line). In a decent acorn year, our best hunting is the first three weeks of November. However, in the acorn failure years, the best hunting is more like Thanksgiving week through the first few days of December.

This year, our best days of hunting were the Friday-Sunday following Thanksgiving (Nov. 29-Dec. 1).

thanks for continuing to share your findings!

 

[Dumbluck]

I still think late December after Christmas is going to be dynamite if you know where to find the deer.

To summarize what I saw. I started seeing active chases and breeding as early as Nov 1st. Almost no scrapes, deer were scraping in very obvious locations extremely close to bedding areas but scrape numbers were extremely low. If you could set up and hunt a scrape line successfully this was the year to do it in my opinion because they were so localized and few. The bucks running those scrapes were staying very close to them and daylighting more than usual at the scrapes. I have a strong suspicion the bucks were more aggressive toward each other due to the lack of scraping. I watched this behavior on two different farms in different counties one with a good doe to buck ratio, one with a poor doe to buck ratio. Rubs were almost none existent this year, very few anywhere on all the farms I hunt.

I believe most of the deer stayed in pockets and are still in those pockets, they will start venturing out after Christmas in my locations but once they find food they will lock down again.

The overall rutting was about 1 week late even with transient bucks showing up exactly a week late. I figured they would start chasing again around Dec 9th and that was pretty close. I started getting photos and reports around the 12th-16th.

I do think many bucks will shed antlers early this year. They are extremely run down and beat to hell on all the farms I hunt.

 

[BSK]

Dumluck,

Our chasing peaked very late this year, centered around Nov. 30. However, I too have seen a sudden uptick in chasing again around Dec. 10-13.

 

[Dumbluck]

BSK the leaves and nature's signs had me thinking they would be late this year regardless of the deer activities. I thought the deer in my area would actually rut later than they did. We had leaves on the trees later than I can remember in a while coupled with warm temperatures

 

[JCDEERMAN]

To add to what JCDEERMAN had posted in this thread and others, we too saw a delayed rut with peak activity much later than normal due to the drought and acorn failure. We saw the same thing during the drought and acorn failure in 2022. Below is a graph displaying the average number of older buck events caught on trail camera in October, November, and December. I have two lines on this graph. The orange line represents years with adequate acorns since 2019. I started with that year because that is when we first started some major habitat changes on our property, and 2019 was also the year we began using video trail-cameras instead of still image trail-cameras (video collects much better data). The orange "adequate acorn years" graph represents the average of four years of data, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2023. The green line represents two years of data, both drought years with total acorn failures (2022 and 2024).

Notice how the older buck activity peaked much later in November for the acorn failure drought years (green line) versus the adequate acorn years (orange line). In a decent acorn year, our best hunting is the first three weeks of November. However, in the acorn failure years, the best hunting is more like Thanksgiving week through the first few days of December.

This year, our best days of hunting were the Friday-Sunday following Thanksgiving (Nov. 29-Dec. 1).

Great graph and our timing aligns perfectly. I'll definitely remember this in the coming years of poor-to-no acorns

 

[BSK]

BSK the leaves and nature's signs had me thinking they would be late this year regardless of the deer activities. I thought the deer in my area would actually rut later than they did. We had leaves on the trees later than I can remember in a while coupled with warm temperatures

Yup, my place as well. Warn temps through November and didn't get our first killing freeze until Thanksgiving. We still had green leaves on trees just before Thanksgiving.

 

[megalomaniac]

Mega that added pressure next door may have them thinking your place is a sanctuary which is good, it can become habit forming. Poor hunting tactics and too much pressure can do this easily in my opinion.

Maybe, but we have put the pressure on them as well. I think we are up to 8 bucks killed thus far.

New observation.....

bucks are really bunching back up into bachelor groups past 2 days. Group of four 2.5 to 3.5y/o's on one spot this morning feeding, about another mile away another bachelor group of 5. 4 miles away a group of 3 bucks.

Hunting is about to become feast or famine.

 

[TN Larry]

This has been the greatest, craziest year that I have ever seen. Between myself and two kids, we have killed 9 bucks (2 statewide and 1 bonus per) that were all 2.5 plus.

I found some acorns in KY but have not seen the first acorn here. I can normally walk enough and find a hot tree on bad acorn years but the closest I have come is one tree with about 10 fresh caps underneath it the day before juvenile. Our normal seeking phase here is the second week of muzzleloader with heavy chasing the week of Thanksgiving.

This year, I saw two chases on the opening day of muzzleloader. The first one was a good buck from what I could tell but too thick for a shot. The second one, I think was a good buck, but thick as well. I ended up killing one at 9:15 that morning just out feeding. When I skinned him out for a Euro, he was full of green stuff that he was browsing on in the woods. I will add that I spent the day before covering a ton of ground looking for general deer sign, tracks, and scrapes in traditional rut travel spots to pinpoint where I was hunting the next morning. I told my son that I found 31 scrapes that day with 30 of them being on one scrape line. That's honestly not too far from the truth. The deer weren't running the scrape line but there.

During the second week of muzzleloader, I walked into a place that I hadn't been in several years. I found about 10 to 15 scrapes, a bunch of general sign, and a few rubs. I went there opening morning of gun season on a funnel and killed a good 9 pt following a doe. My daughter killed one the same morning at 10:05 out in a field feeding.

To put it into perspective, I covered a ton of territory walking in a few weeks period and seen about 50 scrapes, however, 40 of them were in two places.

I'm not really sure what my point is, lol, but just a weird year with early chasing, no acorns, etc. Seasons for me are generally tougher without some red oaks, but this one has been extremely good so far in terms of success.

My son and I are going back to KY this weekend that would be great to top the year off with another good buck.

My mzl buck full of green.