It’s an old story, one in which you’ve played a starring role fairly often.  You’ve scouted a really good buck, and you saw him several times in August and September.  But come hunting season, he is gone.  You scout, you hunt, and nothing.  Then a year later, there he is again!  Apparently, he was there all the time and you just didn’t look or hunt hard enough — or was he?
 
Remember the Beatty buck?  That buck is the new bowhunting world record taken in Ohio.  You might recall reading that no one had ever seen the buck until Mike Beatty took him.  I talked to Mike about that and, sure enough, he verified it.  He’d seen some big rubs, but neither the farmer that owned the farm nor anyone else had ever spotted the buck there.  Surely someone should have spotted a buck of that size in the area, but they didn’t. How do we explain such situations?
 
The Disappearing Act

Dr. Grant Woods is a wildlife biologist and consultant who helps landowners manage their land and their deer for quality bucks.  He is an expert on the use of cameras to follow deer and recently summarized his findings on buck movements based on work done in Missouri and elsewhere.  Woods found that early in the fall, some of the older bucks (2 1/2 years of age and older) moved their home range to a new area and stayed for a year.  Then they returned.  This would explain two things: 1) having big bucks you’ve scouted disappear for a year and, 2) having big bucks you’ve never seen before show up in your area.  Apparently some older bucks stay away for a year, and then they move back.  Interesting.  Woods concluded that if you had 500 acres to hunt, some of your big bucks will leave, but if you had 1000 acres, then the bucks might move, but are probably still on your property somewhere.
 
Another researcher, Dr. Mickey Hellickson, who works at the King Ranch in Texas, looked at home ranges of individual radio-collared bucks as they aged.  He found that as bucks age, their home ranges get smaller.  For example, the home range for 4 1/2- and 5 1/2-year-old bucks was 526 acres, but when they reached 6 1/2 the home range had decreased to 346 acres.  Did bucks move their home ranges as they aged?  Not really.  There was a 61 percent overlap in home ranges of bucks from age 2 1/2 years to 7 1/2 years.
 
Focus In On Bucks

Dr. Hellickson also found something else that should interest hunters.  The home range of deer is where they spend all of their time.  In other words, if you compile all of the radio locations taken for a buck during the fall season, or perhaps just for one month, you will determine the home range of that deer for that period.  But if you plot the radio locations of where bucks spend 50 percent of their time (we call that the core home range), it can be a much smaller area.  In Hellickson’s south Texas study, the core home range for bucks over 3 1/2 years of age was only 45 to 55 acres.  Since bucks are mostly inactive during the day (except in peak rut), we know that the core home range must include the bedding area and the feeding area.  Why spend time scouting and hunting a buck whose home range is 500-plus acres, when you could focus on a much smaller area?
 
Dr. Mark Conners at Chesapeake Farm in Maryland has done similar work on home ranges of does.  The farm has great feed and good cover; it is superior habitat for deer.  We know that great habitat leads to much smaller home ranges.  Conners found that some does had a home range of only 100 acres, and during the fall their core home range was only 15 acres.  So, it appears that if you have good habitat, the does don’t move much.
 
Conners also looked at buck home ranges and found that they varied by month.  No surprise.  Remember, Chesapeake Farms on the eastern shore of Maryland is great habitat with lots of crop foods and nearby forested cover.  Conners found that the August home range of some bucks was only 300 acres, and the core home range only 30 acres.  In October, the home range jumped to 820 acres, but the core home range was 120 acres.  In the rut of November, the home range of bucks was 1000 acres, and the core home range only 150 acres.
 
In fact, Conners showed that the core home range of bucks on Chesapeake Farms was never over 14 percent of the home range.  Thus, it is essential that you find the bedding and feeding areas for bucks you are hunting.  Once that’s done, you’ve reduced your search for a stand location by a huge amount and can concentrate on the buck you’re after.
 
Hellickson points out that all bucks move for two reasons — they need to breed and they need to feed.  However, he concluded that they are inactive 57 percent of the time.  We also know that bucks are much more active at night, except during the peak rut when they are active all day.  At other times of the year, during the day their activity runs from 7-9 a.m. and 6-7 p.m.  There is one other factor related to home range and buck movements. Research shows that some bucks don’t read the books.  Some individual older bucks move four times as much as other bucks, and have much larger home ranges.
 
Tie it all together.  Home ranges and core home ranges vary, but are much smaller in good habitat.  Since bucks are inactive a lot of the time, and are active and available to the hunter at dawn and dusk most of the year, it is critical to find the core home range.  Finding the core home range of a buck means finding bedding and feeding areas.  All you then have to do is pick a good spot between the two and hammer them.
 
Hmmm. If only it were that easy.
 
 
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