Where do mature bucks hide this time of year?

Swamp_Donkey

Eight Pointer
Any secret to finding the big ones late in the season? Had some nice ones on camera but they vanished. Should I hunt different spots different days now?

(provided they are still alive and walking)
 

KTMan

Twelve Pointer
Contributor
Get very tight to bedding area.

If can get a really good cold snap I like to get back on food (prefer standing beans)
 

kilerhamilton

Old Mossy Horns
Places hunters wouldn't believe they would be. Like next to houses, near roads and other places hunters don't go or disturb. Places where they can watch from, but hard for a hunter to seek up on.

Please don’t tell people mis leading information [emoji23][emoji1787][emoji1787][emoji106]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Rubline

Twelve Pointer
More than once I've jumped a buck that was laying on the back side of a overgrown pond dam.
I jumped two different deer over a period of time from the back of the same dam.
I think they use the pond to cover their back and keep an eye what's in front of them.
 

Aaron H

Old Mossy Horns
Contributor
A mature buck might well visit our cameras in the early season, sometimes in good daylight. Of course under the influence of a hot doe he could be anywhere and many good bucks are taken as they are distracted by a doe. As our season goes on bucks encounter hints of our presence here and there and they take these clues as a warning of our increased activity in their range. Imagine that your boots were drenched in orange paint- obvious to our eyes where we walk, and that's how obvious our scent is to the nose of a deer. Mature bucks are extremely sensitive to any intrusion that they detect, much more so than young bucks. Now well into the gun season many hunters will see the 18 month old bucks and many will be shot leaving still more clues for a night traveling mature buck. He will avoid the places where he feels endangered and we hunters get no more camera shots of that nice buck we hoped to kill. Since most of us have only a place or two to hunt we climb into our stands with a gun and a hope that a big guy will come to a place where the buck has already figured us out. Moving closer to a bedding spot might help but unless it is a good distance from where we were hunting to begin with it probably won't change anything. If we have a large place to hunt and have left a good bit of it alone and undisturbed there can be a good hunt left there. Mostly, hunting the places that does come to in daylight seems to hold the most promise and that depends on a hot doe being present. I've seen it work and I've seen a hot doe only accompanied by a few young bucks. The December season draws near and lots of us know it as a time of long uneventful sits on stand. That being said, every year in the short days of December someone will take a huge buck somewhere.... it's why we keep at it.
 

sky hawk

Old Mossy Horns
Contributor
i think we may overestimate them.
Are they really "hiding"?
I hear what you're saying, but yes, they are.

By this time of year, they know they are being hunted. They are definitely hiding from pressure. And one thing I've learned over the years is that an older buck would always prefer to go undetected. Even when he busts you, he would rather slip away than make a fuss about it.
 

pcbuckhunter

Old Mossy Horns
Contributor
One of the most unorthodox places I’ve seen one “hide” was on a lease my Dad and I had in Georgia some years back.

There was an old house place on that lease that had fallen down and been pushed up in a pile and burnt. For whatever reason, the outhouse was left standing and it had grown up around it.
Maybe a 8’x8’ area that had briars and a few sweetgum trees mixed in with some broom straw. The rest of the area was kept bush hogged. I was walking by this area on the way to my stand one afternoon and needed to take a leak. I stepped over to that grown up patch and when I was a few feet away, a nice buck bailed out of that little spot and beat it across the opening into a pine thicket about 50-60 yards away. I would have never thought about a buck using such a small place to bed up in.

Long story short, I was too shocked to even get my gun off of my shoulder. I told my Dad about it that night. He went over there and hung a climber. A few days later that buck made the mistake of trying to slip back into that spot in daylight. Daddy was there waiting for him.

Over the next few years that we had that lease, several other bucks were killed in the later parts of the season trying to access that little hiding spot.

That taught me that it only takes a very little bit of cover to make a deer, specifically a buck, feel secure. I no longer overlook those tiny little patches of cover, I give them just as much consideration, if not more, when scouting out new areas.
 

CutNRun

Ten Pointer
Contributor
About 15 years ago I took a canoe down a navigable stretch of the Haw just after deer season ended and jumped a really nice buck off a small island out in the river. Water is not a barrier to deer like it is to us. I don't know who was more surprised, me or him.

Jim
 

bag12day

Six Pointer
Contributor
About 15 years ago I took a canoe down a navigable stretch of the Haw just after deer season ended and jumped a really nice buck off a small island out in the river. Water is not a barrier to deer like it is to us. I don't know who was more surprised, me or him.

Jim
I made a fairly consistent living hunting mature bucks on Bertie County Roanoke wetland "islands" on the club where I grew up. It was about 1200 acres of knee deep flooded cypress swamp that had some small islands of house sized up to several hundred feet across dry patches where those old wise bucks would lay up after the rut. I would kill at least one or two nice mature deer every year by still hunting in quietly pre light and/or wait for them to return. Shotgun and buckshot only was our club rule and more times than not them deer would let you wade within 50 yards of them cause they thought they were invisible or never saw danger wading at them from a swamp. I would have time to spot them and slowly approach with a tree between and peek out drop the hammer and float them out. I Discovered where those deer disappeared to by accident mallard and woodie hunting the swamp during Late Nov, December and January. They might have been there in Oct but so were them Cottonmouths and after dark slogs were not fun knowing that.
 

Blades

Six Pointer
Bucks expand their range and typically go were they have had success in past years. If you can find an area where does are consistently, the bucks won’t be far behind. The trick is getting lucky and finding that big one at the right time. I’ve had good look on low lying funnels next to a creek where the oaks are fairly thick. It just depends on your property typography and thinking were a buck would want to go, not where you want it to go(reason why I don’t bait). I have a small area to hunt so I don’t really have much luxury of finding “target bucks”.
 
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