KLEMZ wrote:elk yinzer wrote:To the guys asking for more frequent GPS pings to track buck movements - the biologists have answered that on the blog - in short, it's outside the scope of the academic study. They up the frequency in rifle season because they want to see hunter-deer interaction.
I see. Thanks for the information.
Another question....how accurate are the time stamps on each ping? Is 14 hour exactly 2pm? The reason I ask is that I am quite surprised to see that bucks 8103 and 8159 (which appear to be in the biggest timbered section of the studies?) routinely were back in the area they bedded for the day by 2AM!! Way earlier than I ever knew. Also, both of these bucks were up and to the first feeding area (or at least moving towards it) by 4PM on most days in early October. This would be important information if it's accurate!!
Question...How many of the studies had bucks with overlapping home ranges? (tall order I know). I would love to see info on bachelor group dynamics, bedding area competition, choice of bedding areas based on direction or strength of winds simultaneously from 2 neighboring bucks.
The time stamps are indeed accurate. I too was surprised at some of the timing, especially how much daytime movement there actually is in the mid-October pre-rut phase when I never see any deer.
One thing to note, and the potential folly of trying to apply this elsewhere, is that both study areas are very unique deer habitat. The Southern study area in particular. It's mountainous, very rocky, very infertile soil, there are some ridges that hold decent deer numbers, but then there are entire ridges that are so rocky, open, and devoid of anything deer desire, I call these areas "deserts" because they are a waste of time. There are entire hillsides, thousands of acre patches, covered in impenetrable mountain laurel. Deer do not hurt for bedding cover here. And when there are acorns, they do not hurt for food either. As such, they tend to be rather nomadic and rotate between a bunch of different bedding areas within these "core" areas that have decent deer habitat.
Most years, when there are acorns, they can feed and bed in the same area, so there really is no feed/bedding pattern. I've seen this running cameras in the area and studying the videos of collared deer has confirmed that. They just kind of bed and feed at leisure and have these established home ranges but no discernible patterns within these ranges. That is, until the rut heats up. Then these floating home ranges start shifting, and there are areas that traditionally see more activity once the rut begins. Now that is a phenomenon I would like to hear from them about. My personal belief is that the bucks start to push the does around and they seek refuge. The bucks get these does herded up and then start scent checking these areas which is where I always see a lot of secondary scrapes pop up. Sure, these are bedding areas too outside of the breeding season, but it seems to me that disproportionate rutting activity takes place, so it's almost like does are also migrating to these rut areas. Now there are some collared deer on the study areas that interface with the fertile agricultural valleys - I've seen those deer have patterns much more established like you would expect--same route to feed and bedding each day. I've never pegged down a mature buck running this pattern, seems the doe groups do it more often.
There absolutely have been bucks with overlapping ranges, and they've noted on the blog a few times where collared deer have converged. The thing is, to try to come to conclusions on any of the other assumptions you mentioned is again outside the scope of the study. You have to remember these are scientists, and at the end of the day their job is to write papers on how deer populations are interfacing with the forest via browsing pressure and affecting regeneration. They can't study aspects of deer behavior that they can't include in a peer reviewed scientific paper.
We can take the videos and speculate about why bucks choose certain areas, and trust me, I have tried, but at the end of the day that kind of behavior is impossible to prove in a scientific manner, so you won't see any of these scientific studies do so. And I have developed my own formulas here for finding "deery" areas in this vast expanse of big woods, but those are borne through a lot of boot miles and studying the woods over the past 10 years I've been hunting it. Studying the movement of the collared deer, while neat, has only produced a few comparatively minor observations.