How far will a mature buck travel to feed

[keb]

Sometimes they would not get back to the bedding areas till 9 am, but were talking sections where there were 2 or 3 miles where there were no roads, but the terrain allowed them to travel in the wide open, without being seen, from a road or tree stand due to the fact there were no trees.

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[BuckHunter1988]

I have gotten pics of bucks in there beds and have seen a couple of them more then 2 miles from those beds while spotting so unless they have a huge core area I think there traveling but let me say those deer are closer to the city so they travel out away to the better food source now the bucks I've seen in the country they seem to not have a huge travel area more like a square mile hope that helps a lil

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[gogebicbuckslayer]

Tadmdad, great post! To much info on location lol... Anyways I will be heading to cub lake November 15 to see what I can see. I might have deerslayer talked into the trip we will see.

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[Apex]

I check the stomach contents and take pics of content for all deer kills. Like tracks, you can estimate times food is consumed based on different compartments of the stomach and how they digest food. It's also important to know all preferred deer plant species and where they grow within the area.

There's a certain species of oak that grows only at a particular elevation where I hunt. A legume (hairy vetch) also grows amongst these oaks. I know, with 100% certainty, that they don't grow anywhere else in this place but on this particular ridge due to elevation limitations. I hunt a swamp that begins 1/2 mile from these oaks. This swamp continues farther and farther away from this grove up to 1.5 miles away. I hunt deep in it, and every single deer I kill in the morning has a stomach full of these acorns. The farthest from the grove I've killed them is 1 mile. Every time I check their stomach I'm amazed, and the bucks always have them. This grove is a preferred food source for the area, and all deer have a single direction movement from this food source in the morning.

So to answer your question: one mile easily, and that's outside of the rut. I'm sure they'll travel farther, but one mile has been my consistent observation, and these deer were continuing farther away from the food source when I shot them. If I hunted the back of the swamp which gets about 1.5 miles away from this oak species, I'm sure I'd kill them there with some too, but I just don't hunt that far back to know for sure. I like to catch them traveling through in a halfway point.

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