My friend James Morgan and I slipped into the 360 Hunting Blind for an afternoon hunt that I knew would be eventful. The blind was placed in the corner of a food-plot planted in Real World soybeans and just a few yards away was a thick bedding sanctuary that had not been disturbed all season. The final piece of the puzzle was a strong cold weather front set to push through the area that night. I knew without a doubt that the deer would be on their feet hitting the prime food source before dark and was just as confident that the 360 blind was perfectly placed to take advantage of the current wind direction and past deer movement patterns.

As if on cue, the deer started filing into the plot nearly two hours before dark. James and I anxiously waited on a couple of older bucks that I wanted to take out of the herd. When the sun had finally set on this hunt more than 40 deer had walked past our blind including more than a dozen bucks. Unfortunately the bucks we were looking for were not amongst the group we had seen.

As various bucks exited the thick bedding cover and started feeding in the soybeans, I quickly recognized each of them from past encounters as well as thousands of game-camera photos gathered on the property. All were regulars on the property without a single stranger showing up. I was not at all surprised.

After more than 40 years of passionately chasing giant whitetails I can tell you without a doubt that the biggest game-changer to come to our sport in that time period has been the game-camera. There is a bit of an art and a learning-curve to using them but once you figure a few things out I think it is very possible to get photos of every buck on a property without exception. In fact I do it all the time.

The lessons that I have learned from my game-cameras have put a lot of giant bucks on the ground for both myself and those that follow my teachings. Without a doubt my trophy room walls would not be nearly as impressive had the game-camera never been invented. I am going to share some of those lessons here, lessons that go totally against the grain in terms of things deer hunters have been taught and believed in the past. Let me state for the record that I certainly don’t claim to know it all and my observations, while I believe them to be very accurate for my area of the Midwest, might not follow the same pattern across other regions within the whitetail’s range.

In this article I am going to discuss ideas regarding buck movement that I have noticed, particularly in regards to “new” bucks moving into an area. Without a doubt there is movement of bucks over the landscape from one property or area to another. I am not disputing that at all. What my cameras and my own observations are showing me however is that some of what we have been led to believe about buck movements simply isn’t happening in the “real world”.

Let’s start by discussing buck movement during the rut. Specifically, I want to challenge two commonly held thoughts regarding movements of rutting bucks. The first idea is that during the rut bucks expand their range and thus when we are hunting it is not uncommon for a “new” buck to come cruising by as he searches for hot does in an area he otherwise does not frequent. I believe this idea to be totally false based on not only my hunting experiences but also my game-camera photos.

I already mentioned that I have over 40 years of experience in the deer woods and most of those 40 years I was able to spend the entire rut in the deer-woods. Honestly though, it has only been in about the last 15 or so years that I really put it all together and took my hunting success to another level. Interestingly the last 15 years or so has also coincided with the advent of the game-camera. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Today I know the bucks on every property that I hunt very well, primarily through game-camera photos. I just do not ever see “new” bucks show up during the rut. In fact, I cannot remember the last time a buck walked past my stand in the rut or that I got photos of during the rut that I didn’t already know existed. Let me make an even bolder statement; it has been at least 10 years (and probably a lot longer) since I have seen or gotten photos of a buck during the rut that I didn’t already know existed. I have seen enough evidence to conclude that during the rut bucks do not leave their home-range to go looking for does. Remember, just because you haven’t seen or gotten photos of a buck does not mean he wasn’t there. The rut makes bucks more visible but it does not cause them to travel to new areas.

There is another popular idea that when a hunter harvests a mature buck from a property a new mature buck will move in to take the dead buck’s place. I have never seen evidence of this happening. My first question is, where did the new buck come from? And if he indeed is moving into a new area, how in the world did he know a buck was killed in an area he wasn’t even in? From a common-sense perspective it just doesn’t add up and furthermore I have never seen it happen through my cameras. My theory is that once a dominate buck is killed it shakes up the hierarchy within the buck population and the buck that was formerly No. 2 on the totem pole finds that he is all of a sudden the top dog. With some bucks this newfound dominance might cause them to become more active and thus visible as they strut their stuff. Make no mistake however, that buck was there all along, he didn’t just magically move in from a new area.

So let’s dig a little deeper into this topic and try to explain some of the situations when a “new” buck might show up on a property. For the record, we are not talking about young yearling bucks here. This entire article is dealing with bucks that are 3 ½ years old and older. Yearling bucks in particular are prone to relocating as this is Mother Nature’s way of preventing inbreeding. In fact young males in most wildlife species often relocate to new ranges.

The only time that I ever see “new” bucks show up on a property is during the late season. This movement is based 100% on food availability and nothing else in my opinion. Just this past winter for example, I had two really nice bucks show up on my home farm that were both at least 3 ½ years old. One of those bucks I was getting photos of all summer and fall on another farm about two miles away. He did not show up on my farm during the rut at all. It was only later when food sources became scarce that he showed up. I have no idea where the other buck mentioned came from.

As you might have guessed, I have a theory on this late buck movement onto a property. On my home farm I plant extensive and diverse food-plots with a goal each year of providing enough high-quality food that there is still some food left in those plots when spring finally hits. As you can probably guess, I get a lot of deer wintering on my farm. In fact I have more deer on my place the last day of hunting season than any other time of the season including the rut.

Each winter I will have several does and their fawns staying on my farm and taking advantage of the food that I provide for them. Then in the spring some of those deer stay and others disperse to the surrounding countryside. As we know, when a doe is about to give birth her yearling buck fawns from the previous year are “kicked out” and thus they disperse and set out to eventually find a new home-range. Again, this is nature’s way of preventing inbreeding.

So what happens to those bucks that have dispersed to a new range when at some point down the road they encounter a tough winter and are hard-pressed to find quality food? My theory is that these older bucks that I see coming to my property in the late season for the food were quite possibly on my farm years earlier as button buck fawns with their mother. When times get tough they remember where they found food in the past. Obviously my theory is difficult if not impossible to prove but it is the only explanation that I can come up with for these older bucks finding my place given the geography of wide open farm country where I live. I will also note that I see these “new” bucks more during harsher winters. If the winter is mild I may not see a single “new” buck show up at all. I compare this to deer in northern regions “yarding up” during tough winters in the same areas where deer have yarded for decades. They simply remember where to go when things get tough and food is scarce.

So just what does this mean for the deer hunter or whitetail land manager? Well, I think another misconception amongst those who own hunting property is that they can create a whitetail paradise and then “draw in” good bucks from the surrounding areas. Again, I just don’t see this happening on any property that I have ever managed. I tell all of my consulting clients when I put together a plan for their property to forget about drawing in giant bucks from the neighbors as that will rarely happen, especially if the buck was not already using the property to begin with. Instead a land manager needs to focus on growing his own bucks.

There is probably a lot more we don’t know about buck movements than what we do know however game-cameras have really opened my eyes to some false ideas that many hunters accept as fact. To me, unraveling these little tidbits of mystery around mature buck habits is almost as rewarding as slipping an arrow through one of them … almost!

— Don Higgins can be reached through his website www.higginsoutdoors.com where you can learn more about his consulting service and Whitetail Master Course.