Mid day movement of mature bucks?

[BSK]

I think our trail cams are more likely to miss the movement during midday than at any other time during a 24-hr period.

Perhaps, but if that's true why I do I get tons of does and yearling bucks, and the occasional middle-aged buck, on camera midday, but not mature bucks? They are larger in body and produce a larger heat signature. And why do I get so many pictures of deer midday in July when the temperature is near 100 degrees? I have my cams set on the most sensitive trigger settings (and get a lot of false triggers, especially in summer, because of it) and have had no problems picking up other deer midday.

 

[Andy S.]

^^^ The deer did not walk "near" their trail cameras, but they were walking around in daylight. That is the moral of the story. Seen it too many times in my life to even think about believing otherwise.

 

[Andy S.]

Perhaps, but if that's true why I do I get tons of does and yearling bucks, and the occasional middle-aged buck, on camera midday, but not mature bucks?

Simple explanation: there are FAR FEWER of them in the deer herd, and they are typically far more canny, leery and observant.

 

[@fulldraw]

Shot mine at 1:30 on public land. He was 5+, based on teeth. Just out cruising.

 

[BSK]

Private only is different. A lot of private land hunters won't hunt public. They put all their eggs in one basket so that sanctuary is probably more critical for them. If they bugger up a spot then they've ruined their property maybe for days. And during rut that can be hugely consequential. So they give probably a lot of times too much respect out of caution, and IMO it costs them opportunities at great bucks. They don't have other spots to hunt, other big bucks to chase. So they sit back and wait for a buck that may or may not present itself. Sometimes it works but pretty rarely do I see a person hunting one single property and stacking up big bucks like the mobile guys do.

This exactly. I hunt just one property. We put FAR more pressure on our place than any of the surrounding neighbors. We have done everything possible to create a bunch of sanctuary cover and keep it a sanctuary. Crawling into it during season would be a huge mistake. Before we had this much cover, deer - especially older bucks - left the property pretty quickly once we started hunting (and we hunt very intensively for just 3 weeks). However, once we converted 1/5 of the property to sanctuary cover (broken into a bunch of small sections), this is no longer occurring as much. We still see bucks leave and over-all buck activity decline (and go nocturnal) once we start hunting, but the change is not as dramatic as it used to be.

 

[Andy S.]

Shot mine at 1:30 on public land. He was 5+, based on teeth. Just out cruising.

Great buck too, antlers and teeth! Congrats!

 

[BSK]

Simple explanation: there are FAR FEWER of them in the deer herd, and they are typically far more canny, leery and observant.

So why do I get them all night long and the first hours of daylight and last hours of daylight, but not midday?

 

[@fulldraw]

Great buck too, antlers and teeth! Congrats!

Lol, thanks.

 

[Andy S.]

So why do I get them all night long and the first hours of daylight and last hours of daylight, but not midday?

I do not know, but I'd start by looking at your post #5 in this thread: "Also notice how nocturnal these mature bucks are." 4.5+ mature bucks are few and far between and statistical outliers in "general deer data" that is lumped together. They should be looked at as a separate species IMO, especially on high pressured properties.

 

[BSK]

I guess I need to explain what our "sanctuary cover" looks like. It is 8-foot tall blackberries and saplings and greenbrier that is virtually impossible to force your way into. Forcing your way through is 5 minutes of forcing and much lost skin and blood per 10-feet. It would take a machete and chain mail armor to get into these places. How would you set a camera in that? Visibility is 2-3 feet.

As for sanctuaries (on private property) being overrated, they absolutely can be made too large. In my opinion, any patch of extremely thick cover habitat exceeding about 50 acres is too large. Deer CAN spend a large amount of time in an area that big. Personally, I don't like to see individual sanctuaries exceeding about 20 acres. When we cut 100 acres of timber, we did it 7 blocks, the largest of which is 20 acres.

 

[BSK]

I do not know, but I'd start by looking at your post #5 in this thread: "Also notice how nocturnal these mature bucks are." 4.5+ mature bucks are few and far between and statistical outliers in "general deer data" that is lumped together. They should be looked at as a separate species IMO, especially on high pressured properties.

I do not get them midday because in the study area, they do not move midday outside of thick cover, where there are no cameras.

 

[Andy S.]

I do not get them midday because in the study area, they do not move midday outside of thick cover, where there are no cameras.

I can get behind this. Expounding further, say on other private or other huge public tracts, with dangerous swamps and impenetrable cutover, etc, I truly believe deer move a lot more during cold daylight hours "in areas" we humans are too lazy/scared to go, and for sure too lazy to trek into to place a camera (many areas without cell service), and routinely check the camera. I believe deer, and especially mature bucks, seek out these areas in short order every fall once the orange army hits the woods and the deer sense the sudden influx of human pressure.

 

[TN Larry]

I'll go one step further. I've used trail cameras for 20 years and absolutely love using trail cameras today, but I'm of the believe hunters and others put WAY TOO MUCH stock in trail camera photos/data, when making wholesale opinions/recommendations about daylight deer movement. For example, I hunted early November (30° at daylight) on a thicker/CRP/native grass 25 acre tract that had 4 cameras on/around the perimeter. I was "doe hunting" that morning. As you would expect, I saw 7 different bucks from the stand, and NONE of them were caught on camera. Cameras were on scrapes, trails and pinch points. Great hunt, but cameras would lead one to believe otherwise.

Another friend hunted a field one cold afternoon recently. He has three cameras around the perimeter in an attempt to catch deer entering field in the evening. He saw 25 deer in last hour, but not one trail camera pic.

These are just a few examples from this season alone. Cameras have their place, but they miss WAY MORE than they capture. My analogy it is like putting a trail camera in your closest and trying to estimate how much you and your family move around your house. Not a good representation of overall movement IMO.

Exactly!!! I know far too many who hunt via trail cam and find myself doing it as well. It's a tool to use but reading terrain and sign is important as well.

To your point, the afternoon my kids killed two bucks out of the same stand...........my daughter shot the first deer we saw. My son climbed in and we left. He saw 7 deer in the last hour and a half of dark including a buck chasing a doe and killed a buck at dark. Out of all of that, we got one picture. I have witnessed that several times over the years when hunting close to a camera.

 

[BSK]

I can get behind this. Expounding further, say on other private or other huge public tracts, with dangerous swamps and impenetrable cutover, etc, I truly believe deer move a lot more during cold daylight hours "in areas" we humans are too lazy/scared to go, and for sure too lazy to trek into to place a camera (many areas without cell service), and routinely check the camera. I believe deer, and especially mature bucks, seek out these areas in short order every fall once the orange army hits the woods and the deer sense the sudden influx of human pressure.

The strange thing is, on other properties, we do get some mature bucks moving during daylight. I have no idea why this is. They are hunted a bit differently (club hunting), but we don't have more hunting pressure than those other properties do.

 

[BSK]

Exactly!!! I know far too many who hunt via trail cam and find myself doing it as well. It's a tool to use but reading terrain and sign is important as well.

To your point, the afternoon my kids killed two bucks out of the same stand...........my daughter shot the first deer we saw. My son climbed in and we left. He saw 7 deer in the last hour and a half of dark including a buck chasing a doe and killed a buck at dark. Out of all of that, we got one picture. I have witnessed that several times over the years when hunting close to a camera.

That's amazing. I guess much depends on where the camera is located.

One of my BIL hunted a stand near a traditional scrape (that is monitored by camera). He told me he saw a couple of bucks work the scrape while hunting there. I got dozens and dozens of videos of those bucks working the scrape, moving in the background, and generally messing around in the area. The camera even triggered on my BIL when he moved his hand to pull his phone out of his pocket, and he was about 75-80 feet from the camera and 16 feet up in the tree.

 

[huvrman]

Except I've had 25+ years of experimenting with camera locations. I've put them in every type of terrain funnel, fence gap, and movement pattern I can think of, and still no midday mature bucks. I think mature bucks do move midday, but they're holding to very thick cover. I do NOT put cameras in thick cover.

Every buck I've killed later in the morning (after 1000) was adjacent to either heavy cover or incredibly rough terrain. I'd call them sanctuary areas.

 

[TN Larry]

That's amazing. I guess much depends on where the camera is located.

One of my BIL hunted a stand near a traditional scrape (that is monitored by camera). He told me he saw a couple of bucks work the scrape while hunting there. I got dozens and dozens of videos of those bucks working the scrape, moving in the background, and generally messing around in the area. The camera even triggered on my BIL when he moved his hand to pull his phone out of his pocket, and he was about 75-80 feet from the camera and 16 feet up in the tree.

That's true. This was watching a field with only one camera. However, it is located in the "normal" travel zone but two different directions that you can see. Out of what all was seen and all within 75 yds, only one came by the camera.

 

[TheLBLman]

So why do I get them all night long and the first hours of daylight and last hours of daylight, but not midday?

I don't know the main reasons why you don't, other than cam placements, and where placed, less deer movement during midday.

My main point is that, contrary to popular thought, deer, particularly mature bucks, do in fact move around quite a bit during mid-day . . . . . . generally speaking. However, outside heavier cover, they are more likely to flat out run from Point A to Point B, which can result in triggering a cam, yet the cam has no deer pic (or maybe just the blurry butt end of a deer).

As to trail cams not picking up mid-day deer, I stand by the earlier statement that our cams are less sensitive during mid-day (no matter how you have them set). Worse, we tend to get more false triggerings during mid-day from wind & sun, which then can cause us to miss a deer while the cam is "down" for a few seconds to a few minutes (typically).

If you set your cam for a 30-second delay between triggering events, that cam may be non-functional for a full minute from a false triggering event. Those false triggering events generally don't happen at night, nor much during early morning or late evening.

I've never - NEVER - seen a deer walk near one of my trail-cams and not get their picture taken. I've never - NEVER - walked near a trail-cam and not gotten my picture taken.

TOUCHÉ . . . . . The BSK

Obviously, you have - NEVER - used a Tactacam - NEVER, EVER.
Stick with those Brownings, and you'll never feel our pain

 

[TheLBLman]

Also, as mentioned in an earlier post, mature bucks will typically walk right up to a scrape at night, early am, late evening. You get those pics. But they are more likely to scent check that same scrape during mid-day, often beyond range of our cam, even if the cam is pointed in their direction (50/50 at best).

 

[Ski]

I guess I need to explain what our "sanctuary cover" looks like. It is 8-foot tall blackberries and saplings and greenbrier that is virtually impossible to force your way into. Forcing your way through is 5 minutes of forcing and much lost skin and blood per 10-feet. It would take a machete and chain mail armor to get into these places. How would you set a camera in that? Visibility is 2-3 feet.

It's a lot of work and time but can be done. I do it. No chainsaw though. I have a big set of pruners that'll cut up to 3" saplings, and a pair of hand pruners that'll cut up to maybe 3/4". I go one step at a time, clear it then step into what I just opened and repeat. Even with good leather gloves I look like I've been fighting with a bobcat and have ripped up cloths.

Not really many other things habitat related to do in winter, so when we get some 50-60* pretty days that's what I do. It's a work in progress but you'd be surprised how far you can get in just a few hours. Looks worse than it really is. I'll take a pic next time of what I'm dealing with and the tools I use.