Core areas

[mrw]

That is interesting! I think those open country deer cover a lot more ground than deer in more heavily wooded areas. I would love to see them do some collared studies in Tn.

 

[Hollar Hunter]

That is interesting! I think those open country deer cover a lot more ground than deer in more heavily wooded areas. I would love to see them do some collared studies in Tn.

X2

 

[monsterbuck07]

Yelp, I watched that episode on the outdoor channel the other night pretty cool seeing every that buck went.

 

[BHC]

Based on my pics I think many deer on our prop can be more like 200 in the summer and 4-500 during the fall others are a few are closer to 1000

 

[TJS209]

That is interesting! I think those open country deer cover a lot more ground than deer in more heavily wooded areas. I would love to see them do some collared studies in Tn.

X2

x3

 

[Football Hunter]

That is interesting! I think those open country deer cover a lot more ground than deer in more heavily wooded areas. I would love to see them do some collared studies in Tn.

I think TN bucks cover more area than you think

 

[8 POINTS OR BETTER]

From what I've seen the older they get to smaller their core area gets. I had a couple of mature bucks that I thought had core areas of less than 300 acres, and I think I had one that was less than 100 acres.Cameras have helped a lot in finding a bucks core areas.

 

[MUP]

I don't have enough property, or access to property to ever even hope to find out the core area range of any particular buck.

 

[W.Seay]

Michael Waddell killed that buck in Kansas on his personal property that borders the national forest. He called the dnr and they gave him the bucks age as well as his living/ movements from the past 6 years of the bucks life, it was very cool!

 

[Winchester]

Very cool and results vary greatly with different habitats and different deer!

 

[LanceS4803]

I saw that show. Fascinating!
He bought property bordering a wildlife refuge. At the time of purchase his land had minimal food crops for deer so he put in several small plots. He noticed he started to draw in deer from the refuge and other areas.
After shooting the collared deer, they sent him gps tracking info showing the buck ranged over 9 miles. But, it primarily spent it's time in a small area on the refuge but would go to the food plots every day to eat. So, you had a huge cluster of dots in his home range and a smaller cluster on the food plots.

Makes you wonder what some really nice food plots could do in TN to draw deer.

 

[BSK]

At the Land and Wildlife Expo, Mark Conner presented some amazing GPS-collar data from his research on Chesepeake Farms in the DelMarVa penninsula. The property is about a 60-40 mix of timber and agriculture. They were only tracking bucks from mid-summer to just after deer season (half the year), but the ranges he found were much lower than reported in some other studies. Ranges averaged from around 600 acres in summer to around 1,000 acres during the rut. But most interesting were the small core areas (defined as the smallest area that will encompass more than 50% of GPS positions). Core areas averaged only 60 acres in summer, and increased to 110 acres during the rut. Daily buck movements within their range changed from about a mile in summer to three miles a day during the rut (not three miles in a straight line, but round and round within their range). And all of the collared bucks were older bucks, from 2 1/2 to 6 1/2.

On the downsides were the amazing variability in movements and range between bucks. Every buck is indeed an individual, and many had found unique and different ways of covering ground (but making it very difficult to predict how bucks react to the same situation). In addition, the data showed that bucks would take short-duration excursions outside their normal range during the rut. They would leave their range, travel a mile or two straight away, stay for 24 to 48 hours, and go directly back to their normal range. I asked Mark in a private conversation what percent of older bucks made these "excursions" outside their range during the rut and he said that ALL of them did at least once per year, and some did it two or three times.

 

[RUGER]

Very interesting, thanks for chiming in bsk.
I was wondering what information you would have.

 

[lpo1981]

Good read! My parents own a small chunk of land (36 acres) and i killed a 9pt back in 2008 that im pretty sure had a very small core area less than 50acres. I'm merely judging that based on trail camera photos over a 4yr period and sightings of this buck year round. He could have had a bigger core area though. I also would like to see a few collared studies done in TN........

 

[7mminatree]

That is interesting! I think those open country deer cover a lot more ground than deer in more heavily wooded areas. I would love to see them do some collared studies in Tn.

I think TN bucks cover more area than you think

+1 on that, I saw a 10pt. last year that had moved 5 miles from where his normal hang out was. This took place during late November in to early December. I know it was the same deer because of a broken left front leg. Have seen him this year he hasn't gained any more points but has taken on some more mass.

 

[Tomahawk]

I would think that buck to doe ratio would play a major role in the size of their core area during the rut. Less does would equal larger core area and potentially more excursions outside their core.