How often does it happen?

[Huntseverything22]

How many of you all watch a certain deer for a couple year or more for it to just vanish? This has happened to me a couple times since I started using trail cams a lot. The first time it happen we had watched a main frame 8 for 2 years first pictures of him we guessed him to be 3 1/2. We got several pictures of him before season and then didn't get anymore of him until season had closed. The next year when he was 4 1/2 we got summer pictures and then he vanished that was 2 years ago now. He probably found a good warm home to spend the rest of his days.

The next buck disappeared this past season during the spring. I had pictures of him up until the last day in February of 2015 and he was last seen alive about mid March 2015. I even posted pictures of him on here.
In the bottom picture you can see that he had been shot but it was just a glancing hit and had healed up quite a bit by the last picture I got of him in February 2015. This year during the summer and during the season I never got a picture or seen him and to my knowledge none of the neighbors got him either this year. I guess he could have moved home ranges, got hit by a car, died from illness or just got a year smarter.

Have any of you all had this happen and the deer show back up in a couple years or are the usually gone when the disappear? Hopefully he will be back this year and be a nice 4 1/2 year old buck.

 

[tree_ghost]

It has happened to me several times. Usually with a deer we have never seen before he will show up and summer on the farm and around mid September range shifts on us to never be seen again...


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[Headhunter]

I know of fenced in areas (never hunted them other one large one to cull does) and if they have deer killed that never show up on a camera (some of these places are spending more money on cameras and maintaining them, batteries, etc than I make in a year) and deer they get many pictures of but are never seen alive, then there is no way anyone can expect to see every deer they get a picture of or get pictures of all the deer using free range property.

 

[Mike Belt]

I think what you've mentioned happens to everyone running cameras and probably the biggest percentage of the time.

 

[Deer Assassin]

I think what you've mentioned happens to everyone running cameras and probably the biggest percentage of the time.

ditto

 

[DaveB]

in 2013 I had so many nice bucks in September and then POOF they disappeared and never returned. I am surrounded by around 800 acres of corporate and no-hunting land.

 

[ZachMarkus]

Happens to me every single year.

 

[Union Co. Boy]

Happened to us this year on our lease. Several (mature 8's or better) really nice shooters through mid/late October and then they just disappeared. We only spotted two of them during season and then it was only once each on the same sit, same day. We have 800 acres in Benton County.

 

[Devin2009]

Happened to me once. Found out later on a guy almost five miles away killed him opening moring of bow season. If it wasn't for a guy I work with who knows the dude I'd never known what happened to him.

 

[Winchester]

I think its the norm a good % of the time. A fully mature 5.5+ yr old buck is a creature all its own, so much different than the average deer, even bucks 3.5 and 4.5 are not the same deer they become once living to reach full maturity, especially in areas that get hunted a fair amount!

 

[TN Whitetail Freak]

personally i feel like this phenomenon is as inevitable as the coming of the rut.....now how far the range shift is depends on factors unknown to me but theorize it comes down to food and cover......the past 3 ive noticed a bunch of deer bedded 15 yds off the edge of wide open standing beans, jumped the biggest buck of 2015 10 yds off a bean field and never seen that deer again....i walked the edge of the field because i thought i knew where he was going to be deep in the woods. He won that matchup but this coming season ill be coming from the deep woods staying off the edges of fields.

as pressure increases and cover decreases these deer move into more secure cover....if the property doesn't have that cover demand then hunters experience the "VANISHED" deer....thats my theory

 

[Crosshairy]

There's a good bit of research around about summer and winter ranges (search "deer range shift" to see what I mean). If it's happening in the early spring and fall, that's almost certainly what's going on. If you had deer suddenly leave in the middle of summer, that would be more uncommon and probably due to some sort of misadventure that caused them to get killed.

 

[BSK]

Have any of you all had this happen and the deer show back up in a couple years or are the usually gone when the disappear? Hopefully he will be back this year and be a nice 4 1/2 year old buck.

Huntseverything22,

Every property is a unique situation. I've probably seen as many different "patterns" in buck ranges as the number of properties on which I've run long-term camera censuses. But to answer your question directly, yes what you are seeing is fairly common. Now not all properties see a lot of seasonal and annual shifting of individual buck ranges, but MOST properties do. Sometimes bucks that "vanish" are dead, and sometimes they have just shifted their annual range to "somewhere else." From all that I have seen in long-term, multi-year trail-camera censuses, and from long-term GPS collar studies, I think we are learning that many bucks have little fidelity to particular locations. Many bucks shift their range over their lifespan, and sometimes dramatically (shift miles away).

 

[PillsburyDoughboy]

How many of you all watch a certain deer for a couple year or more for it to just vanish? .

Ask yourself this.

How many Big Deer have you seen suddenly appear on your place???

That works both ways.

Deer (bucks) change their homerange. Some deer change it in small increments others not so much.

 

[DMD]

Happens to me every single year.

x2

 

[BSK]

How many of you all watch a certain deer for a couple year or more for it to just vanish? .

Ask yourself this.

How many Big Deer have you seen suddenly appear on your place???

That works both ways.

Excellent post PillsburyDoughboy. That's exactly correct. Normally, properties occasionally lose bucks. But they also regularly gain older bucks that seem to come out of nowhere. I can't think of a year that I didn't have a never-before-seen mature buck show up on my place during the hunting season. Happens every year. You lose some you gain some.

 

[smalljawbasser]

The thing I have to remind myself of, is that 2 or 3 miles is nothing to an adult deer. But that 3 or 4 miles is 10 farms away for us.

 

[Huntseverything22]

Yes it does seem to work both ways.

I watched the one with the white spots for 2 years both during the summer and fall I feel like his core area was the farm I hunt. I let him walk hoping he would make it a couple more years.

Do you all think that killing the Bucks that was in his core bachelor group would drive him to search for more buddies during the summer months?. The 2 main bucks he ran with during the 2014 summer I harvested and I had pictures of him running with them up until November that year.

 

[PillsburyDoughboy]

The thing I have to remind myself of, is that 2 or 3 miles is nothing to an adult deer. But that 3 or 4 miles is 10 farms away for us.

Yep. The 130 class buck one might pass on to let it grow just got shot because of that.


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[BSK]

Yes it does seem to work both ways.

I watched the one with the white spots for 2 years both during the summer and fall I feel like his core area was the farm I hunt. I let him walk hoping he would make it a couple more years.

Do you all think that killing the Bucks that was in his core bachelor group would drive him to search for more buddies during the summer months?. The 2 main bucks he ran with during the 2014 summer I harvested and I had pictures of him running with them up until November that year.

Never say never when it comes to deer, but from what I have seen in studies, buck fidelity to the same summer social group (bachelor group) is pretty loosey goosey. I seriously doubt having some of the bucks removed from that group would be a trigger for a buck to go wandering. They go wandering anyways. In fact, how far some bucks go to join a summer bachelor group never ceases to amaze me. Some are certainly spending the summer months 4 or 5 miles from their fall range.