This! During the 10-day peak tending period, we almost never see a mature buck. They are holed up with does. We see the vast majority of mature bucks before that period or just after.
Exactly. Locked down. Going nowhere. Staying behind closed doors, I mean closed canopy.
I can count on one hand all the does being bred I've ever actually seen while hunting. In fact, it is only two (for certain), possibly 3 or 4, as just couldn't see due to cover & darkness. Most breeding is done in heavy cover, and/or under the cover of darkness.
Oh, I've seen lots of chasing, tending, heard lots of grunting, seen lots of bucks fights. But actual breeding? Nope. Very rare to see that in the wild in Tennessee.
Many, many years ago, one morning, I climbed about 25 feet in a good
"tending" area. Had not heard or seen a thing by @ 9am. So I have my binoculars glassing the cover, when I see a deer's ear twitch. A few seconds later I realize it's a doe, and bedded beside her is a mature buck. I knew by the basal mass of his antlers and his huge neck that he was fully mature.
In fact, I'm pretty sure he was the same mainframe mature 8 that jumped my bowstring when I sailed an arrow at him a year earlier. That distance was only 35 yds, but he was looking at me when I released. I thought the arrow was so fast, no way he'd jump it. But he did. I did nick him, but I ended up being near certain he had survived.
They were @ 40 yds away. No idea how long they'd been there. There was just enough wind to visually camouflage my slow movement in threading the shot. That was the only buck I've ever killed bedded. But if I had waited for him to stand, probably couldn't have made it.
But here's where it gets more interesting.
The buck I took was aged at 5 1/2 or older, had a very clean (but very heavy) mainframe 8-pt rack. He net scored just a little past that magical 125 inches. But due to the mass, his rack appeared larger, as was his body, especially his neck & shoulders. Despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, 125 inches is actually
ABOVE average for a fully mature buck in Stewart Co., TN. But still a
STUD buck
when fully mature & that score comes more from circumference mass than tine length.
Two miles away, at about the same time, same morning, a good friend hunting buddy of mine also killed a buck. His buck was a very clean mainframe 10-pointer, with very long tines, but not much mass. His buck was aged at 2 1/2. But it net scored at over 134!!! That was the 2nd highest scoring 2 1/2 (in TN) I've ever taped. (Did tape a 2 1/2 near the Mississippi River in far West TN that grossed 146.)
The younger buck represents a good example of antler high-grading, yet most hunters would have quickly killed that buck my friend did as well. This is especially the case because a 135-class rack on a small 2 1/2-yr-old body can have the "appearance" of a 165-plus class rack. Then you have that dreaded "ground shrinkage", which most commonly gets said with 2 1/2-yr-old bucks, and mostly attributed to a lack of mass (or "skinny" antlers).