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My Kansas pull - bucks went MIA!

Vermin93

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Finally drove up to Kansas and checked my five cams yesterday. They are on public access land - either state land or private land in the Kansas walk-in-hunting-access (WIHA) program. Two of my sites were a total bust due to dead batteries. I knew I should have changed them last time I was there, and I paid the price for being cheap. One site got a lot of pictures over the past two months, but mostly does, fawns, coyotes and a bobcat. One site that I had really high expectations for ended up being a major disappointment. It only had 34 pics over two months. I had good luck with the last site I checked. Lots of bucks. I like to run some of my cams in video mode to record 10-second clips. I put together a video montage with some clips from this site. The video is in chronological order starting on 7/2 and ending with the last buck that was captured on video on 8/15. I am worried because the bucks have vanished from this site. They were visiting regularly all through July and the first half of August and then poof - gone! This area got hammered by EHD last year because of the nasty drought, and it has been very hot and dry here the past month. The locals are worried it may be happening again. Take a look at the last buck in the video. He is the last buck that showed up on 8/15. Maybe I'm just paranoid, but it looks like he's panting and his mouth might be swollen. I wish I knew why these bucks just up and vanished 3 weeks ago. :(

Whitetail bucks in SE Kansas 7/2/13 - 8/15/13

Also, there is a 3-legged buck with a funky rack in one of the clips. I have him on video several times and I'm going to do a separate video montage of him. Really interesting how he must get around.
 
No humans on any of the cams. The spot where the bucks were is a long walk from the closest road through some nasty, overgrown cover. I am fairly certain human pressure did not cause their disappearance. Pretty sure I was the only one dumb enough to go back in there during summer.
 
Good deal. Yeah, I wasn't drawing a conclusion to the bucks' disappearance just wondering if anyone had found your "honey hole", messed with your cameras, or if there was much traffic that might ruin a good hunt for you.
 
Vermin93,

I suspect the bucks simply shifted their seasonal range. Almost unheard of for an EHD outbreak two years in a row. Those deer that survived last year's outbreak are now immune. That's why outbreaks only occur on 6 or 7 year rotations, because it takes that long for all of the immune deer do be replaced by new deer (through reproduction) that are not immune.
 

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