Where do the bucks go?

[jason]

It seems every shot gun season, me and my group never seem to see any bucks at all. We hunt 2nd season. We hunt a few different timber, to small ones, and a small timber that connect to two large ones. But people hunt the timber around us, so they keep the deer moving, but no bucks! I was just wondering if anyone has ever exsperianced this too. Thanks!

[This message has been edited by jason (edited 11-28-2001).]

 

[BugleMIn]

By no means am I an expert.

I read some results of a study that said the bucks never go very far. They collared young bucks and watched them with GPS. They were all shot within 3 1/2 years by hunters and were within 800 yards of where trapped and released.

Another research project was to see what the deer do when the area is hunted. The researchers could tell you exactly where the deer were, so they acted like hunters and walked by them. In two cases during gun season the "hunters" (DNR Biologists) got within 20some feet of the buck before it fled.

Which means I think your typical deer drivers are walking right past the big smart bucks. The deer will notice you, but if you walk slower and pause he may think you are on to him and bust loose. Also how many times have you noticed the big boys bust out the sides or sneak back behind the drivers. They wait for you to pass then sneak out. Happened to us lots of times.....back when I was a shotgunner.

Look in thickets and tall weedy/shrubby areas close to food source. Think about when you are pheasant hunting, you kick big bucks out of CRP fields and other thick pheasant cover. If they can most avoid the tall canopied big woods, (mature forest with little ground cover) that have been driven 3 times by first season shotgunners. And they become very nocturnal, so you won't see them unless you kick them up.

I might consider shotgun season again, anybody got some body armor I can borrow? Good Luck.

 

[Gianni]

My experience is much the same as above. I will occasionally see a biggun in the woods if there are a lot of deadfalls and heavy ground cover, but most of the bucks I've seen during shotgun were in tight to small cover areas with lots & lots of space around them from which they could not be approached. Fencerows, small thickets, terraces, heavy brambles, and even burn-piles that haven't yet been ignited are all likely spots. If you find a deer at all in one of those places, you've got about a 70% chance it's a buck. Since the ratio of deer spotted per mile walked is so low, I don't think many hunters have much tolerance for hunting cover like that.

There have been several times when I've witnessed a buck actually driving does to hunters by poking them in the rear with their antlers, and then ducking out the other direction (a little move they learned from the Taliban, no doubt). Usually the hunters watch the does while the buck sneaks out the back way.

 

[jerad]

yeah ive noticed that once spooked a buck that is behind a doe will always duck behind her...using her as a shield

 

[Daver]

I agree with the posts that tell of bucks finding places to stay that are "out of the way". After a day or two of slugs flying, think like a pheasant hunter. How many stories have we all heard from pheasant hunters jumping the "biggest buck I've ever seen" from the middle of a draw that no self-respecting deer hunter would normally pay attention to.

If the big boys are in the timber they will sit tighter than bark on a tree. Several years ago I arrived at a farm to hunt pheasants during the second slug season. About 30 locals had just finished an ol' fashioned, "if it's brown, it's down" drive when we arrived. ( Never mind that they didn't have permission to be there. I did confront them regarding their trespassing and got the old, "we have hunted here for years" line. What to do, 2 against 30 didn't really seem like a good idea that day!) Long story, we went ahead and let the dog out and started hunting. Not long afterwards, my dog jumped a big buck out of an area these folks had just been through. I had already walked past this buck, no more than 8-10 yards away, when it jumped. I am certain that it would have stayed put had not my dog rousted it.

I could tell many similar tales, but the morale of the story is to think differently when hunting bucks that are pressured.