If you hunt in or around a river bottom, swampy area or coastal marsh, read this:

Biologists worked a project in southern Delaware for four years, capturing bucks and then collaring them with GPS. They separated the deer into two age classes–4½ years old and younger, and 5½ and older—and monitored their movements around swamps and marshes.

They found that the oldest bucks hardly ever left the swamps until cover of darkness. The younger bucks not only left the marsh on occasion, they also readily used nearby upland forests and crop fields. The 5-year-olds routinely avoided those areas.

The scientists wrote, “Not using wetland areas increased a buck’s risk of mortality by 2.7, meaning he was nearly 3 times more likely to be killed compared to a buck who regularly hid out in swamps.”

Further, the experts noted that bucks need to learn from experience before they begin to use any nearly impenetrable sanctuary. Once they do learn to use it, they become much harder to kill.

The takeaway: When the rut is on the hunting pressure heats up. Hunt the fringes of a swamp (or any heavily dense sanctuary) the first half-hour of dawn or dusk in hopes of catching a big deer on his feet, otherwise he’ll be bedded deep inside. Limit hunting inside a swamp or any sanctuary so you won’t educate very mature bucks and make them virtually un-killable.