Here’s what I perceive to be happening……I’m not saying this is completely right or wrong…..just throwing out thoughts on the subject……

When the young bucks disperse….(and the “when” is another topic to talk about one day)….but when they disperse its like you’ve kicked an ant bed and yearling are randomly moving across the landscape in every direction most likely without a whole lot of rhyme of reason. Habitat type and deer density probably have the biggest effect on them….But lets just imagine were looking at a google earth map of the county where you hunt…..It’s like ants going every which a way in a big game of musical chairs. Alright now…..on that map are key locations where people may not be able to hunt for whatever reason or maybe its too rugged to access….There’s gonna even be some places that get hunted hard but will have a strategic location that just gives the deer too much of an advantage…..When the music stops and the dispersing young bucks have all found them a place to fit in….Its simply luck for some of them that they landed in one of these spots and started calling it home. They will likely have a chance to grow old and that will be the most influential reason why. When the stars really line up is when it’s the top end buck that gets lucky and ends up in one of those places……

So I know I’ve said most of that once already but I repeated it because I want to add on to that some. Now don’t get me wrong…...I believe as bucks age they definitely get smarter and wiser to a degree…..But I think we mislabel some traits as them being smart when in actuality its more being “wary”…….Just think of a turkey for instance…..I wouldn’t call a turkey smart or intelligent really….they have a brain the size of a pea …..but they can be extremely wary. I think as bucks age they become more and more so and that is likely what saves them as much as being “smart”. That and learning to use their nose as a tool more and more. I’ve killed several mature bucks over the years in my big food plot….But it was simply because they let some hot coochie temporarily cloud their judgment for a moment. I’ve seen more than one walk out into the field behind a doe and then just suddenly stop and have this look like “Oh chit!....What did I just do!?!”…..They are extremely wary of walking out in the open. It was if they were so focused on the hot doe though that they didn’t even realize they were exposing themselves until it was too late. They would turn and head back for cover but by that time they had already fugged up and gave me a shot. I’ve watched them numerous times stay back in the woods and watch the hot doe from the cover. Every so often though that hot tail causes them to lose focus.

That leads me into where I think we may be able to actually give them credit for being “smart” to some degree….even still I don’t know if its true intelligence or instinctive prey behavior of some kind…..but I don’t think it takes any deer….buck or doe…..but once or twice to experience something in order to develop a learned behavior in response to it. (This applies to the coyote thread as well) In other words….it may only take one time for that buck to see his buddy get shot walking out into a food plot to develop a negative association with it. I see it with does al the time….Start blasting does on a greenfield while a bunch of others are out feeding in it at the same time and see how long it takes the to catch on….it won’t take very many …..I think they likely carry those negative learned responses with them for quite awhile….This is just throwing out a complete guess but maybe bucks carry them for the rest of their lives…..I think this ability to learn quickly or adapt quickly amplifies the wariness of the older bucks….I’ve even seen a negative response from the from a street light at night…..I think there are people in the larger area around me shooting them at night under street lights or out of their houses with a spotlight….The reason I think that is because the older bucks are scared to death to walk out of the cover at night into the streetlight no different than if it were daylight.

I like sitting on the back porch during the peak of the rut at night and just watching what happens around my clover patch that’s lit up by a street light. One night a couple years ago I had a bunch of does out there feeding and suddenly I heard a long deep grunt from down on the thicket. You could hear a buck down there thrashing trees and this and that but he wouldn’t come out of the cover. I grunted at him just to see what happened and when I did he walked out just enough to see what was happening for a second or two and then disappeared again….It was just long enough for me to see it was a nice tall 8 point likely with some age on him….Well, several nights later I was watching the does again and listening to grunting and chasing when all of sudden out of the corner my eye hear comes that tall 8 just on a fast walk right out into the light like he didn’t have a care in the world. He made it about 4 or 5 steps into the light and I could literally see his eyeballs get wide like he had seen a ghost…..There was no doubt that he had an “Oh chit!” moment because he about broke his neck trying to turn around and retreat when he realized what he had done…..That kind of wariness of street lights….open areas, etc…..is on a whole different level and is one of the reasons they become so hard to kill.

The final attribute that I think we tend to overlook is how little they actually move around……especially during daylight hours……I don’t watch them too much anymore but I used to really like the survival shows that came on….Survivorman, Dual Survivor, Naked and Afraid, etc…etc…..If you’ve watched these shows very much you’ve likely learned from them that “survival” is a game of calories consumed versus calories burned. These folks look at everything in terms of how much energy is that gonna cost me and what is the easiest meal with the least amount of effort, etc….They don’t just go on walks down the beach to enjoy the afternoon…..There’s even times when they stay held up in camp just laying there to conserve calories…..I think deer are much the same in that they are survivors as well playing a really similar game…..They don’t move around just because it’s a pretty day and they’re going to the park to see friends…..They move for specific reasons….outside of the rut that’s mainly just to eat. To take that a step farther….if they can find everything they need in one small area then they don’t have any reason to go anywhere else. I’ve seen this on our lease in Union Springs…..there’s one 40 acre corner where the same bucks seem to never leave.

With all that being said….I don’t see much of any of it being that bucks “seek out” these honey holes…..Its luck in the beginning and then wariness and reducing the size of their core area later on. I’ve got a few other thoughts on it but I’ll leave it at that for the sake of not getting to long with one post.