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Mature deer behavior?
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<blockquote data-quote="BSK" data-source="post: 5718664" data-attributes="member: 17"><p>No "bedding areas" at all. Deer bedded wherever they happened to be at the time, and they would bed a dozen or more times per 24-hour cycle. We saw no indication of "bedding areas." Whatever patch of cover existed in the area was utilized, and often deer just bedded in open hardwoods. We saw no indication deer we using any one area for bedding. They had a "circuit" they moved through on a daily basis, and the circuit slowly moved day by day through their seasonal home range, taking about two weeks to work from one end of their range to the other. In essence, their daily range was a small subset of their seasonal range, and that daily range slowly moved from one end of their seasonal range to the other, taking about two weeks to cover the full distance. Then they would start back. A great deal of overlap existed in the daily ranges from one day to the next, perhaps 85%. That is why hunters/trail-cameras will catch an individual deer in the same food plot for 2-4 days in row, and then not again for a couple of weeks, only to have the pattern repeat itself. Deer spent more time feeding in whatever the best habitat was within their daily range, then shifted to the next favorable piece of habitat as their daily range moved beyond the first patch. We tracked does without fawns, does with fawns, young bucks, and old bucks. They all showed the same pattern. And by the way, this was on the Cumberland Plateau. Although the area's habitat had been managed to produce lots of patches of cover. Perhaps this is why deer did not display "bedding area" behavior. If bedding cover had been far more limited, behavior might have been different. But again, often deer just plopped down in the open hardwoods, even if thick cover was close by.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="BSK, post: 5718664, member: 17"] No "bedding areas" at all. Deer bedded wherever they happened to be at the time, and they would bed a dozen or more times per 24-hour cycle. We saw no indication of "bedding areas." Whatever patch of cover existed in the area was utilized, and often deer just bedded in open hardwoods. We saw no indication deer we using any one area for bedding. They had a "circuit" they moved through on a daily basis, and the circuit slowly moved day by day through their seasonal home range, taking about two weeks to work from one end of their range to the other. In essence, their daily range was a small subset of their seasonal range, and that daily range slowly moved from one end of their seasonal range to the other, taking about two weeks to cover the full distance. Then they would start back. A great deal of overlap existed in the daily ranges from one day to the next, perhaps 85%. That is why hunters/trail-cameras will catch an individual deer in the same food plot for 2-4 days in row, and then not again for a couple of weeks, only to have the pattern repeat itself. Deer spent more time feeding in whatever the best habitat was within their daily range, then shifted to the next favorable piece of habitat as their daily range moved beyond the first patch. We tracked does without fawns, does with fawns, young bucks, and old bucks. They all showed the same pattern. And by the way, this was on the Cumberland Plateau. Although the area's habitat had been managed to produce lots of patches of cover. Perhaps this is why deer did not display "bedding area" behavior. If bedding cover had been far more limited, behavior might have been different. But again, often deer just plopped down in the open hardwoods, even if thick cover was close by. [/QUOTE]
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