Buckmasters Magazine

Some of deer hunting’s common misconceptions actually have basis in fact.

Deer hunters love a lively debate almost as much as matching wits with a wily whitetail. They’ll argue at length about details on deer behavior, hunting tactics and equipment, each passionately defending their particular point of view. But there are two sides to every story, and while deer hunting lore is loaded with myths and misconceptions, some of the more common ones actually have some basis in fact. What follows are a few of the more common examples.

The Dominant Buck

There’s an older fella who hunts the same patch of woods as me, and I typically run into him at least once every season. Invariably, he’ll tell me how he saw the dominant buck but wasn’t able to get a clear shot. Rather than question how he knew it was the dominant buck, I simply nod my head in acknowledgment.

The term “dominant buck” has been bandied about so capriciously that it has become a creature of mythic proportions, a giant stag that makes all the scrapes and rubs, breeds all the does and from whom all other bucks run in fear. Not so.

The fact is, bucks whose home ranges overlap establish a dominance hierarchy, or pecking order, wherein each is either dominant or subordinate to another. Typically, older bucks are more dominant over younger ones, but among mature bucks, that’s not always the case.

As the old saying goes: It’s not the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog, and some bucks just have more aggressive personalities than others, regardless of age or size. Furthermore, close subordinates frequently test their more dominant rivals, looking for any signs of weakness. And when a stranger comes to town, things can get really interesting.

All bucks rub trees. However, it usually is the more dominant buck in a particular area that does most of the scraping. And some recent research suggests he might also be the one establishing signpost rubs. As for breeding, he can only tend one doe at a time, and while he’s otherwise occupied, other bucks are breeding other does. In some studies, as many as 40 percent of twin fawns had different fathers.

Weather Rules the Rut

If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say: “They’re not rutting yet. We need a good cold snap,” I could buy a new deer rifle.

The rut is triggered by changes in the amount of daylight, which happens at the same time every year. According to deer biologists I’ve interviewed from nearly three dozen states, peak breeding occurs at the same time every year.

Breeding dates can vary considerably from state to state, and even among regions of the same state, but in any particular area, it’s always the same.

However, temperature does play a role. Studies of northern deer showed that once the temperature climbs above 45 degrees, daytime deer movement declines considerably. Rutting continues, but most activity occurs at night.

Hunting pressure also plays a role in suppressing daytime movement. But if you get a good cold snap, there will be more daytime movement during the already-occurring rut.

The Moon Influences Deer Activity

This one is the Rasputin of deer hunting myths. No matter how we try, we just can’t seem to kill it. Theories abound on how moon phase or position influences deer movement and rutting behavior. There are even calendars that tell us the best times to be in the woods.

Countless studies have been conducted, and none have found any statistically significant empirical evidence of any correlation between deer behavior and the moon.

One study did find a slight increase in midday movement during the full moon. Admittedly, I’m biased. Being a biologist, I tend to agree with the science. But over roughly 40 years of deer hunting, I’ve observed the same thing, and I imagine a good many other hunters have as well.

In my early years as a wildlife student, one of my professors offered a piece of advice that I’ve always kept in the back of my mind when comparing research results to field observations. He said something to the effect that when what you observe in nature conflicts with what you read in the textbooks, nature is always right.

Culling Bucks Provides No Benefit

This is a fairly recent one, since many folks still believe removing cull or management bucks can help improve antler quality. That, for the most part, is spurious at best.

As we know, antler quality depends on age, nutrition and genetics. If given proper nutrition and allowed to reach maturity, a buck should be able to realize its full genetic potential for antler growth. We can influence age and nutrition, but it’s nigh unto impossible to influence genetics in free-ranging deer because there are too many variables.

As a result, some biologists contend there is no benefit to removing mature bucks with poor antler quality. After all, their genes are already in the population. Furthermore, we have no idea how much their mother contributed to their less-than-perfect rack, or which doe she is.

So it’s true that removing a cull buck isn’t likely to have much effect on antler quality within the population. However, you are removing one more mouth from the herd. That frees up more food for the deer that remain, which becomes more important if food is limited. Per-haps more importantly, you’re providing an additional recreational opportunity for someone.

A Square Mile Home Range

A lot of folks will argue that a whitetail’s home range is approximately one square mile, but it’s easy to see why that’s not the case. The size of a whitetail’s home range is influenced by several variables starting with the quality and quantity of food and cover. The more food and cover, the smaller the home range. Furthermore, the area an individual deer occupies can vary throughout the year, or even from year to year, with changes in food availability.

However, if you compiled all the data on whitetail home ranges throughout North America and took an average, it would probably come close to one square mile. The important thing to remember is that’s an average. For every home range that’s smaller than a square mile, there’s another that’s larger.

Tracks Tell All

Few among us have not looked at a particularly large footprint in the mud or snow and instantly declared, “That’s a buck.” It makes sense because bucks are generally larger than does. But like home ranges, we’re considering averages.

Where I live, a 2-year-old buck might dress out between 140 and 170 pounds and will certainly make a sizeable slot where it treads. But my son’s first deer was 140-pound doe, and hunters have taken does dressing out considerably more, even up to 170 or 180 pounds.

You can’t really tell the sex of a deer from the size of a single track until you actually catch up with the deer that made it. But you can make an educated guess by looking at other clues.

Like humans, male and female deer are built differently. A buck’s shoulders are wider than its hips, while the opposite is true for does. The front feet of both are slightly larger than the rear feet. Now consider both those things together as you follow a deer’s line of travel.

If imprints from the larger front feet are outside those of the smaller back feet, odds are better it’s a buck. During the rut, much of a buck’s weight is on its front shoulders, so tracks from the front feet will be more splayed out to the sides.

If you’re lucky enough to have snow, you might also be able to key in on yellow snow. A doe squats to urinate, usually in a wide, irregular spray. A buck’s urine is more of a steady stream.

Hunting Pressure Pushes Deer

“What?” you say. “That’s no myth. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.” So have I, because I happened to be standing near a property line when I or someone else bumped a deer. But re-search says they’ll be back soon.

Numerous studies have found that, in general, deer don’t change their home range or core area in reaction to hunting pressure. They merely change their daily activity patterns, becoming more nocturnal. They seek out denser cover.

The basis in fact is that we might see an individual deer leave the property, but one fleeing deer does not make a mass migration. They’re still there, but the more hunting pressure you apply, the fewer deer you and other hunters will see.

The Rut Occurs in Phases

It’s in our nature to simplify things so we can better understand them, but that some-times leads to misunderstanding. We use terms like seeking, chasing, breeding and lock-down to describe different phases of rutting activity. There’s actually more than a kernel of truth to this myth, because deer exhibit those activities during the rut. The problem is, they don’t necessarily occur within discrete time windows.

I can’t count on both hands the number of times I’ve returned to the lodge at night and heard different hunters say they observed very different levels and types of rutting activity at different stands, at the same time on the same property. One guy might report, “They were really chasing today,” while another watched bucks and does feeding side by side in a food plot. Yet another might have observed a buck working a scrape, and there’s always one guy who didn’t see anything.

Bucks seek hot does, and they’re more inclined to do so when they’re more active — dawn and dusk — and when there are fewer does around. If they find a hot doe, they kick into the chase phase, but that could be a day, a week or a month before peak rut. An hour later, that same buck might be feeding alongside a cold doe while his brother is locked down a quarter mile away with a different doe that has accepted him as a breeding partner.

Finally

So what do we learn from all this?

For starters, we learn not to judge too quickly when we hear someone espousing what we perceive to be a myth when it might just be a misunderstanding.

We also learn not to oversimplify. Whitetails are a mystery wrapped in an enigma that continues to confound even the best biologists. Get the facts before you make snap judgements, and remember that what you observe in one place might be very different in another. Deer don’t wear watches, and they don’t read scientific journals or even Buckmasters.

Whitetails react to whatever external stimulus is nearest at any particular time, and they do so in such a way that will give them the best chance to survive and pass along their genes to the next generation.

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