From 9pm tonight til the time I'm in the stand tomorrow afternoon around 2 or 3 there will be an over 20 degree temp drop. Should I just stay home ?
I totally agree that data can be manipulated. Did you listen to the podcast or look into the scientific studies? They compared the data many different ways trying to find some meaningful correlation. Many of these scientists are deer hunters themselves, so they have an understanding of the specimen they are researching. While I can't prove that they are not manipulating the data, I find it hard to buy into a large scale conspiracy that deer scientists want to manipulate data so that we see less deer. Either way, if people want to dismiss it, no skin off my back. I found the information interesting as it contradicts so much of what is generally believed. I have seen other wide held beliefs (moon phase impacts the rut) be proven false by science and I thought this would be some good information for people to noodle on.
Has nothing to do with science. For instance, studies (in Michigan) prove deer yard up in the winter...therefore, if you're in Alabama and say the deer don't yard up, you're WRONG, science says they do.
Well darn!!! I only have a master, empirical evidence, and over 30 years experience in the field Guess I need to go back to school and get that PhD, so I can have some credibility, lol.
Hard to know what to make of it. The article didn't provide much detail regarding their methods and how they came to their conclusions. I don't care if a deer doesn't move that much but when he does move he gives me a shot. I agree with others that temperature change particularly during the late season will have them on their feet. Thanks for posting.
For me i pretty much only hunt cold fronts with a rising barometer. I have found this to be very reliable in predicting good deer movement. Im not into all the moon stuff.
All joking aside. We (personally) have the tools to prove, disprove and discover everything that is the whitetail deer. I used my camera's to discover "thermal hubs" how they work and how deer use them. "Social hubs" how they work and how deer use them. I used them to discover that cores are a subconscious manifestation and not a conscious choice...which in turn, removed the mystery and replaced it with predictability. I live, eat and breathe deer hunting 24/7/365...so I do things like compare 10's of 1,000's of photos to bedding, movement, feeding...cross referenced with wind speed, wind direction, temperature, barometer...rises and drop, high and low pressure systems, fronts, clear and overcast, moon phases, moon transit....time of day, time of year...terrain, structure and edges. I can literally pull a pic up from 15 years ago, look at my records, go to weather history and have all the information from above. We have at our fingertips everything we need to know about, what, when, where, why and how. But instead, most will say, "Well, some biologists, working for a paycheck, from Mississippi State, did a study in Oklahoma...So, that's how it is, lol.
personally, I've never thought the moon affected the rut much; just every month outside the rut I'm from Michigan, and 100% know for a fact that deer "yard up". I was agreeing with you, in the face of the "scientific" study I love you.
I always thought/read that a buck's core area was based on his feeling of security, is that not a conscious choice/decision?
Not exactly, it's actually a subconscious manifestation...security (of some sort) is key, but it's only one of a few key factors. The buck doesn't choose the location of his core, his environment does. I drove myself crazy with a handful of locations. These locations, for the last 25 year's, were consistently buck cores year after year, buck after buck. And I asked myself why a buck would chose this area as his core....better yet, why does buck after buck make the same choice and chose this same area as his core. I always came back to one conclusion, he chose an area with "access"...access to security (isolation, hard to get to, hard to hunt, off limits, in plain sight, ect), diversity (terrain, cover, structure), variety (multiple primary food sources available all year around), water. What wasn't readily available could be "accessed" with a small shift. Then it hit me that "choice" was where all the "why's" were coming from. It's really hard, sometimes impossible to predict freewill, what something will choose or think. Therefore, "choice" created all kinds of mystery. When I realized that a handful of key environmental factors drew and held a buck to a certain area...and no "choice" was ever made. It eliminated all the mystery and replaced it with predictability. Oh, and I used my camera's to confirm this. I've found multiple mature buck cores over the last couple years in areas I've never been to in my life. Predicted where the cores would be based on access to key environmental factors, and there they are.
Can you expand more on this? Something I’ve always struggled with...I’ll pattern a particular buck for whole season and usually get it down pretty good, then the next year comes around and that same buck does something completely different. Why is that? It’s the same deer...why is he “elsewhere” compared to last year? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
