156p&y said:
I've seen older bucks trotting almost franticly in a dead straight line to areas they bed, right at and right after daylight. It was like they where vampires that had to get in their coffin before the sun was completely up. And when I say straight line I'm talking, not on a trail and just lowering their heads to go through thick brush.
I have experienced this many times, and one of my best bucks (and oldest) bucks ever was taken back in 1984 during the 1st 5 minutes of legal shooting time, as he was running to his bedding area. He was making so much noise, I'm sure he was over a half mile away when I first heard him coming, allowing me plenty of time to be ready, if only there would enough light when he passed.
BSK said:
Most of these beeline travels are at night.
Most of these "beeline" travels I have heard, not seen. These older bucks almost seem to try to make extra noise --- sometimes sounding more like a horse galloping thru the woods than a deer. Most of these I've experienced when I got on stand about an hour before first light, and most of the time, I would hear these beeline travels begin and end well before first light.
I should add that I've experience much less of this over the past several years in the same hunting areas where it was once almost an every morning (pre-light) experience. When the area was several square miles of unbroken hardwoods, I experienced this often. As the habitat has changed into mixed hardwoods, dense young pine, and thick young clear-cuts, I believe these bucks are doing less of this. While I couldn't hear one as well going thru pine, they might make more noise in some of the thick cover. My theory is it became harder to travel in a beeline once the habitat when from many square miles of fairly open hardwoods to mixed habitat.
BigGameGuy said:
Never under estimate the power of the nose.
I don't think they are going to an "area", they are more than likely going to a "girl friend".
I'm sure that is sometimes the case, but that did not appear to be the case in my experiences described above. I often hunted saddles on high ridges where I could actually hear a running deer over a mile below as it came up the ridge, crossed, and then might go another half-mile when everything just suddenly stopped ---- like he had reached his bedding place for the day, barely before daylight ---- sometimes right after.
It's the timing of these jaunts that makes me believe they were not smelling a doe, as well as the great distances they typically traveled, galloping more like a horse than a deer. And it was nearly always just one deer --- the relatively few times I've been able to see --- nearly always an older buck.
The hunting implications were that I was tipped off to many older buck bedding areas by hearing where they stopped, then hunting closer, and closer to those areas in subsequent hunts, sometimes eventually killing another mature buck as a result.
