Have had lots of bucks on camera during daylight (and night) in August and September. Land hasn't been hunted or used until this weekend. (3) guys sitting spread out across property and we each only say one doe after sitting yesterday afternoon and this morning. Checked cameras and no buck pictures since late September. Still plenty of does. Any ideas on why the bucks have suddenly disappeared? The only thing we can think of is they have moved to where there is still standing crops? Any other explanations?
this is pretty typical, for patterned bucks to change things up right about now. a little early tho, depending on what area of the country?
Maybe not for you but my shooters are hiding over on the neighbors place, the one non-hunter for miles.. lol! And where is Mr.Clean, hmmm, hmmmm!?
We are running into the same problem at our place in Huntingdon county. We have way to many does (which we are planning on taking care of) but the bucks have disappeared. I'm wondering if they are hanging out deep in the timber eating acorns and hitting our fields in the middle of the night. I'm sure all the does will make the rut interesting but until then I'm having trouble finding a decent spot to hunt these reclusive bucks.
If your bucks are relocating, that is an entirely different thing than the so-called lull. The lull theory is based on the assumption that deer...bucks in particular, don't move very much in daylight during mid October. A deer shifting his range is entirely different. If he is moving, just not on your property, that doesn't mean he is in a lull...just means the other property is more attractive at that time. I guarantee Mr Clean is moving in daylight. It's just in the standing corn so he isn't making it to my plots until the wee hours of the morning. I'm not a betting man, but if I were I'd take the bet that he starts showing up in daylight as soon as the corn is gone, and my plots become the best available food. Until then, I can't hunt him where he is. He is old and smart and has chosen to reside in a 200 acre standing corn field where he has food, cover, and zero pressure. In your case, sounds like "the lull" is pressure related. If the deer didn't feel pressured, they wouldn't be moving into the one property where they don't get hunted. Hunting unpressured deer all but does away with the lull. Deer still have the same needs they do all year outside of the rut. Food/water/cover/pressure (lack thereof). I once had permission to film (not hunt though unfortunately) a boy scout camp in Indiana. It was 200 acres of timber/brush surrounded by ag and high dollar houses. All the land around it got bow hunted pretty hard. The camp was like a different world. No hunting had ever been allowed. I would drive through on my way home from work to look at the deer and take pictures. Sometimes there were deer in the surrounding fields, and sometimes not, but there were ALWAYS deer in the boy scout camp. In the soccer field, the yards around the cabins, the pond dams, alongside the paths...they were everywhere, no matter if it was July, October, or January. And not just deer, GIANT deer. 160-190+" bucks walking around in daylight because they felt completely unpressured. Human pressure is the biggest contributor to reduction in daylight activity IMO, followed by weather. Think of it another way...If it's 85 degrees on October 15th and deer movement sucks, a lot of folks tend to blame "the lull". But, if it's 85 degrees on November 7th and deer movement sucks, folks will blame the weather. In reality nothing is different. If you get unseasonably cold weather, abnormally high pressure, etc it will put bucks on their feet no matter what time of year it is. The bucks don't say "Gee it's October 15th I can't walk around today" I hunt a lot of farms and a lot of acreage for a reason. It keeps pressure off the deer. I spend months working on access points to and from my stands so a deer hopefully never comes across my track or has a clue I was ever there. If I limited myself to one farm and only a couple stands, even if it was a really good farm...I would not see nearly as many bucks. The deer would figure out what was going on and use my farm less and less during daylight.
My older "shooter" bucks tend to do this every year on this property. As the bachelor group breaks up they go back an little deeper into the property and rarely show themselves to not only me but my neighbor and hunting friend to the south. We go from daily trail cam sightings to very random night time sightings. And then towards the end of October we start seeing them on their feet during daylight hours again. To us, it's the lull. As far as pressure, three guys randomly hunting a half section, 320 acres, with mine only being 70 is not what I would consider pressure. I think the reason they slip back where they do just has a lot to do with the old oak grove and swamp that is located on that property. It's what they have done since I started hunting the place. It's also located in a non agricultural area meaning their is no cropland for miles, horse farms and Bermuda pastures yes, ag land no. I think that lends to the need to consume all the acorns they can when they can and has set a ingrained pattern that is hard to break. So to me that's the lull. I have a core area that I would like to hunt more often but I just tend to stay out of it. I would rather wait than take the chance of spooking a good buck.
My particular properties that I have permission on generally go by the same rule of thumb. I don't believe in the so called "lull". I believe that during the transition from summer patterns into the pre rut and rut the bucks are going to be preparing themselves for the long and gruelling month ahead of them. IMO they do most of this by stocking up on acorns if available, which to me makes the most sense because my properties have maybe 1-5 oaks scattered throughout the entire property, leaving bucks looking for a larger concentration elsewhere. We went from having pictures of 5-8 bucks almost daily every evening in daylight to within a 4 day span us getting the odd night pic here and there. They're gone for a couple weeks and then when the rut kicks in its almost like every buck within a 5 mile radius is filtering through the property over a few weeks.
