All this rain we’ve been getting here in Virginia—and across the East and Midwest—is great for deer, and at this stage of the pre-season, barring any big breakouts of disease, I’m predicting a banner hunting year in most all of whitetail range. It is mid-July and the woods and fields are greener and lusher than I have seen them in years. The corn is emerald and tall. The habitat’s natural food and cover are in peak condition, and have been since spring. For months deer have consumed nutritious forbs and new-growth browse, which are high protein. The woods are a jungle of green, with good cover everywhere. With does healthy and producing good milk from eating right, they have dropped a good [...]

Ran across a fascinating whitetail study conducted in Oklahoma. Researchers fitted bucks with GPS collars and monitored their movements using a technique called “fractal dimension,” which describes the complexity (crisscross paths) and linearity (more straight lines) of the travels used by deer at various times of the season. The scientists found that in early fall (and again later in the post-rut), bucks stick to relatively small core areas and have complex, localized mazes of movement, which are the result of many short-distance trips during which the deer frequently circle, backtrack and change directions as they move from feed to bed (above left). But come the seeking days of the rut--beginning in late October and running through mid-November--many of those same bucks show less [...]