Scott from PA asks,
Bill, I’ve experienced bucks disappear for several months, even up to a year or more then all of the sudden they reappear. Not sure that anyone really knows, but why do you think bucks do this? Why would they leave and what made them come back? The buck you hunted called Daggers is a good example of this. Is it social stress, food, cover, etc.? It seems to be an odd phenomenon but is very interesting. Would like to hear your thoughts on this, perhaps might even be a good segment for your YouTube channel to really go into detail on the matter. Take care, thanks!
Bill responds,
Topic: Why Bucks Leave a Farm:
This is the buck you referred to: Daggers. He left for a year (as a 3 year old) but came back again as a 4 year old. It is possible that he was nearby during the missing year, but was suppressed by a more dominant buck. That is my guess as to why he was missing from my cameras for a year.
Scott,
That’s a really good question. It is possible in the case of Daggers that he moved only a short ways and just never came back to that plot that fall when I had my camera there.
In other words, it is possible that he was there at least some of the time and I just missed him.
But to answer this question on a more general level, I am not 100% sure why they relocate. I remember talking with Mark Drury about this several years ago. Even then Mark was running tons of trail cameras over a wide area and determined that roughly 1/4 to 1/3 of his bucks moved their core areas from year to year for no apparent reason.
Mark is an absolute wealth of information. I bet he knows more about deer than almost anyone alive. However, we didn’t get into whether any of them ever moved back.
I had buck named Loppy that moved his core area roughly 1/4 mile each year. I was just lucky that he stayed on my farm. I ended up killing him about a mile and a half away from where I first started seeing him. He was 7 1/2 the year I killed him.
He never moved back from year to year. He always moved farther away from his original home. Other bucks never moved their core areas at all in that same time.
I really don’t know why a mature buck would move his core area from one year to the next. I am not sure anyone really knows. It may have something to do with dominance – they try to find places where they are the dominant buck. But it may also just be random. Why do some people do strange things? God only knows!
If I had to guess why a buck leaves and then comes back a year later it would probably be related to getting run out by a more dominant buck and then that more dominant buck dies or the younger buck becomes strong and aggressive enough to cope with the bully. That is my guess related to Daggers.
There were many mature bucks in that area where he lived in 2010 and he likely just didn’t fit in and was fringed out.
The next year he did fit in, for whatever reason, and he was back there all the time. Very interesting subject. There is still a lot about whitetails that we don’t know. I am glad for that. Good luck. (10/9/22)
Agree it is a very interesting subject. It feels like I have a great crop of nice 3.5 year olds every year and I’m always saying we are just one to two years away from having some great bucks to hunt. Then the next year comes and those bucks all disappear and a new batch of 3.5 year olds show up. Despite having trail camera pics of those bucks through late winter/early spring. It can get really frustrating…
Interesting topic for sure. I see it on my farm and think it happens a lot because a buck becomes less dominant in an area and then they relocate. I see a lot of these bucks moving in October. Maybe they get into a knock down drag out fight and lose? I also think food source changes could spark some relocation.