And if I can add even more confusion to the story of seasonal ranges, some other interesting findings from GPS collar studies:
A deer's annual range is defined in research as the closest 95% of GPS positions a deer wearing a collar generates in a year. A map of a deer's annual range can end up being VERY strange, not a circle or an ellipse as many people envision. Often the annual range is made up of separate sections. Basically, it often is a conglomerate of the deer's separate seasonal ranges, and these seasonal ranges might not even touch each other. Then after throwing in all these different seasonal ranges, for bucks their rut range has to be accounted for. Most bucks end up doubling the area they cover for the rut compared to all of the areas they use the rest of the year. Some bucks simply expand their travels outward from their fall ranges, making their total range twice as large. But some bucks do some truly strange things, like up and leave their normal fall range and find a completely different range to spend the 6 weeks of peak breeding before returning to their normal fall range post-rut. And this separate rut range can literally be miles away from their normal range. So you end up with a cluster of seasonal ranges in one area, and a big rut range in a completely different area. Now most of the time, these separate rut ranges are traditional, in that the buck goes to the same distant rut range every year. But I've also seen examples of bucks that choose a different distant rut range every year. Their seasonal ranges are the same year to year, but they move to a new location each rut, never choosing the same rut range twice in their lifetime.
Trying to figure out buck movements will make you realize there are so many "exceptions to the rule" that exceptions to the rule become the rule!