One of the findings they categorized bucks as sedentary or mobile. The sedentary bucks tended to stay within a single home range of about 700 acres. The mobile bucks moved between 2 or more home ranges that might be several miles apart.
We saw this play out a few years back the first year on our current lease. We put cameras out mid-Sept and immediately started getting pics of 3 nice bucks — an 8 pt, a 9 pt and a 10 pt. The 10 pt disappeared in mid-October. We didn't see it again until it walked into the field following 2 does Nov 19. I posted a picture of it here in the forum and another member contacted me wanting to know where I killed it. Turned out his buddy had watched it 3 or 4 times during muzzleloader — they were hunting over 3 miles from us. So while it had disappeared from our home range it had settled in its other home range for a month. It was a 4.5 year old.
Similar the 9 pt disappeared from second week of Nov until Dec 22 when my daughter was able to kill it during a pouring rain. It was a 5.5+ yr old. It had been on our cameras 2-3 times a week until it disappeared in November.
The 8 pt kept its home range on our lease until he walked in front of me the second weekend of muzzleloader!
As soon as I started running season-long photo censuses, I started to see stuff exactly like you're talking about JJ3. Yet at the time, GPS collar studies were so new that no one had picked up on these movement patterns. I'm so glad Auburn and MSU have taken GPS collar studies to such extensive levels. They have now documented many of the movement patterns I
suspected I was seeing, especially the pattern of bucks that up and leave their normal range and travel to a different location possibly miles away
just for the rut, then return to their normal range. I see this pattern a fair amount. I think it was an Auburn study that found approximately 20% of older bucks doing this.