TheLBLman, your stats

[TheLBLman]

Another issue that may have caused past data to miss much of the late-morning older buck movement:

They often don't actually "visit" the scrapes, seeming to prefer scent-checking them from a distance too far away to trigger the trail cams. I also think older bucks have learned to move thru a lot of area really quickly, possibly as a way of "flushing" a bedded doe, they then see her, and run towards her, not following any trail.

Sometimes, I've observed older bucks make an incredible amount of noise, like stomping their feet, and/or purposefully throwing their feet down hard while walking, seemingly in an effort to cause a bedded deer to fearfully jump to its feet, and run.

 

[fairchaser]

I love these posts from two seasoned whitetail managers and hunters. This is doctoral level information and we are blessed to have it. Thanks for sharing!

 

[thirdwilliam]

very impressive reading. Thanks for sharing this and all of your incites.

 

[BSK]

When I get deeper into my "times of day bucks are captured on trail-camera" research, I'll post the data. In a hardwood environment, I'm hoping/expecting to see different peak times of buck movement based on acorn crop quality/volume. Also expecting to see a change in peak movement/photo-capture times for the rut month versus post-rut month.

Kinda' takes awhile to go through about 200,000 images/videos...

...and those are just the digital images that start in 2006. I'm not even going to attempt to go through all the film pictures pre-2006.

 

[poorhunter]

Great reads here! I'm not a big deer hunter anymore since I just don't have the time to dedicate to it, and me and my family of 11 love venison in the freezer so I'm mostly one of those brown and down guys. But I love reading the research and y'all's analysis of the data. Very informative.

One thing I know to be true about growing bigger bucks is that the biggest factor in killing big racked deer no matter where you are is age. There is a point where an older deer begins to lose score, but it's extremely rare for a deer to get that old anyway. In any given area 4 1/2 and 5 1/2 year old deer will have the biggest racks, and I'd guess you're data would show that. We all know that some 2 1/2 year old deer will have great racks, but if that deer gets passed it will be all that much bigger in the future.

There's many things that I don't like about what deer hunting has become, but I'm thankful for guy like BSK and LBL and a lot of other guys on here that share their thoughts and research and experience…I've always been interested in wildlife management (got a college degree for it 30 years ago) even though I don't do much of it myself.