Hot off the press, the College of Agricultural Sciences at Penn State reports: Based on bucks wearing GPS radio collars during the 2013 rut, buck movements declined through the early morning. From 8AM to 11AM, bucks moved the least during that period of the day. But you better be in the woods and ready by 11:00 as  buck movements increased to some of their highest levels from 11AM to 2PM. The (chart) above shows movements of bucks wearing GPS radio-collars from November 1st to 10th (early November) and November 11th to 20th (mid-November). The distances bucks moved are in 3-hour periods. Peak buck movements were from 2 to 5AM and from 11AM to 2PM. This further confirms what I have [...]

For his graduate research project at Auburn, deer researcher Clint McCoy tracked the movements of 37 GPS-collared bucks on a 6,400-acre hunting site with excellent habitat in South Carolina. Read the full story at QDMA.com; here are a few highlights with my observations: Clint found average fall home range size for a buck was 350 acres. A buck’s age did not seem to play a role in how far he moved. “Our two smallest home ranges were yearling bucks at 60 and 90 acres. Our two largest home ranges of 754 and 640 acres were also yearling bucks.” This seems to contradict some earlier studies which found that older bucks have the smallest home ranges of all bucks. But this [...]

This is a picture of the Mini-Beast Buck last night, which means he stripped the velvet clean off his rack one day last week in late August. The bottom picture is of Mini-Beast with growing velvet antlers in July. The best description of the velvet-shedding ritual I have ever read comes from the research book Way of the Whitetail by Leonard Lee Rue III: Usually in the last week of August and the first week of September, the bucks begin to peel the velvet from their antlers. Mature bucks often peel four to five days earlier than the younger bucks, but I have seen younger bucks peel first on many occasions. Whereas up to this point the bucks have done everything possible [...]

A buddy shot me an email last night saying he’d spotted a buck with a tall rack outside his ears. The hay was too high so he couldn’t count points, but I told him to keep an eye on that dude. His antlers will continue to grow a quarter-inch or more a day over the next month, so he ought to be a shooter. John also said there were lots of little deer running around on his farm, so the fawn crop was good. You learn that kind of stuff by getting out there and going for walks and seeing what you see. Here are 4 more facts about summer antler growth I bet you didn’t know. I got them from Way [...]