From what I've seen and experienced there is not a lot of reasoning going on with these buck during full rut
By the way 130woodman.. I am more or less agreeing with you. If you are hunting big bucks on land you think they have been rattled to often and busted the person/people rattling to them... there is a good chance imo you better sound darn "real" to them. You also have to remember that bucks are a lot like humans in some ways and think with the wrong brain from time to time. If they didnt big bucks would be darn hard to kill (like they arnt already!)
I don't want to come off as sounding like I think deer aren't smart... I think they are very very intelligent animals! The amount of things they know by instinct and the amount of things they learn by experience blows my mind. I love seeing a old doe or older buck walk into or through a woods looking up at trees. They are darn smart animals! I just don't think they are smart like we are.. we know a lot of things without having to experience them.
I think like any other animal, deer learn what to fear and what not to fear (good and bad, positive and negative)from their elders, and through trial and error. When they encounter something new they investigate it and then decide if it does or doesn't pose a threat. For example, My father in law told me that he has a friend out in Montana who claims that for 4-5 years in a row he had a doe bring bucks by his stand. She would lead them down the trail where he always had a stand and stop allowing him to take a shot at the buck chasing her. Almost as if she would get tired of being chased and new how to get him off her. After reading that does can live upwards of 20 years, that is quite a bit of knowledge gathered on her surroundings. They certainly learn what's good and bad and can figure out whether or not to check out a noise or get the hell out of dodge.
Are you certain that they're looking up at you? Or are they lifting their nose in the air to smell? We make the assumption that they're looking for something (because that's what we would do), but in reality, their eye sight is at best their second best sense, and probably their 3rd. You and I both know they lift their heads to take a whiff of something, what I find incredible is each of their nostrils has the ability to work individually and separate from the other. In reality, if a deer wanted to try and get a good look at you, he or she would more than likely move their head from side to side. That would give them the best possible view of you. In reality, they're not going to see you unless you move. They simply don't have the ability to see the same definition as we do. Do I think they have the ability to reason? No. If you were on one side of a Walmart and a deer was on the other side. It wouldn't take you very long to come to the realization that there was a deer loose in the store. It's the same for them, the minute we walk in the woods they know something is in the woods that isn't supposed to be. Here's a statistic for you taken from a GPS'd deer. In a 75 acre piece of land, a GPS'd deer will begin to change it's behavior when 1 hunter enters the woods. Total time it takes for a deer to know that there is 1 hunter on 75 acres? 3 days. At that point they change their behavior, deeper cover, hide, go nocturnal, etc. It's not that they're necessarily smart, they're just reacting to the stimuli that they're taking in. They have nothing else to do all day except take in their surroundings. I've been doing a lot of reading about their sense of smell lately. I've come to my own personal conclusion. I don't think a human has the ability to comprehend just how good their sense of smell actually is. We don't have anything to compare it to. Are they exceptionally equipped to avoid being killed by a less than average predator, or even a good predator? Yep. Do they reason and think in some form of logic? I don't think so.
I do believe they look in tree's. And when they think they see something they bob their head up and down trying to get a better look at it. I forget exactly but I think I have read it helps them to build a 3d image or something when they head bob (or something to that effect). And yes I too have been reading about their sense of smell.. it is nothing short of amazing! I think I read where they have like 6 different receptors and can break down 6 different smells at once! Amazing!
Sure, it could be them trying to get a better image, but I don't think so, there eye aren't built in a way to where they're going to get a good image no matter what they do. They're designed to detect movement. I believe the head bob is their way of calling your bluff. They know something is amiss, but they can't see you, because you're not moving. They're literally playing "You Flinched" with you. They move their head around in order to get a predator to move. revealing it's presence, then they can react accordingly. The next step would be to call you out with a snort or a stomp.
No they do not reason. React to stimuli yes, use stimuli to reason and chose between different possible reactions...no way.
Then how do you explain them going to calls sometimes and not others? They choose not to go or go for a reason not because of stimuli didn't stimulate them. I'm not saying your wrong or trying to be argumentative but there is no evidence either way and we are both assuming that we are right when we could both be way off. Do I believe that they act like Disney characters, No I don't but there is a lot we don't know about animals. I would rather take the 2 minutes it takes to grab a branch and have piece of mind that I did everything I could to make sure I have the best chance possible.
There is nothing to explain. Some days a call may stimulate a type of response and others it may not. There is no choice involved. Think about your thought process. Your imparting your thoughts and problem solving ability onto the deer. Antlers rattle in the distance. The deer thinks " that's not right, I don't hear leaves and branches breaking" ...I am not going. Give me a break....I mean broken branch.
I find it disturbing that folks don't realize how cognisant deer are. Last evening I had a nice 8 point walk past me at 10 yards. He walked through the thicket behind me and past me to a fence on the west edge of the brush. He stood there looking outward from the safety of the brush, out over the food plot I had out in the field where two others were feeding. He stood there appraising the situation to determine if there was any danger for the deer already there before he decided to move forward himself. That proves their ability to appraise a situation and to make a decision of how they will proceed from that decision to the next. They think as well as a dog...and yes dogs also think and reason, same as horses or dolphins or any of the other animals capable of higher thought functions.
Deer that have had the tendency to charge out in to open areas have been suffering from premature deaths and feeding predators for the last 5 thousand years...hence they do not get to pass that trait onto their off spring ...the deer that exhibit the behavior you using as an example above ....they survive longer and hence pass along genes that carry instinctive behaviors that are more conducive to survival. To use that as and example higher thought...well higher thought is lacking there too...
I think deer are intelligent to a degree. Like my dog knows where the treat can is etc... I think by nature they are extraordinarily cautious too. But I also think its easy to give them to much credit. Deer are prey creatures thus the cautious demeanor, but If they associated every mistake, sound, object and so on hunters make or take into the woods with absolute danger, analyzed it, remembered it, no one would ever kill any deer ever. Simply put. Any form of higher intelligence, or thought process, no.
Mkay smart@$$...what exactly would it take for you to accept that they are capable of reasoning? A spelling contest? Others can get to be jackwagons too if you want to keep pushing the tude.
They don't reason period. To Reason: think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic. Or find an answer to a problem by considering various possible solutions.
You're making an assumption of what the deer was thinking. I don't think you can do that. For instance, if the buck that was watching from the distance actually had the ability to reason, he would've already reasoned that the area was safe because there were already deer there. Maybe he was assessing the situation to see if there was a bigger dominant buck standing out there that was ready to give him the asswhooping of a lifetime if he stepped into that field. For the record, I don't have a dog in this fight. I don't care one way or the other, and am certainly not trying to ruffle feathers.
If deer could reason you would think they would learn how to cross a road without getting hit by a car.... Close to 50k car deer collisions in NY state yearly prove otherwise... Compare that to humans crossing a roads and streets? .....even the stupidest among us aren't getting hit at that rate. Why is that? Humans reason, they use logic which dictates how a road is crossed.... Stop mistaking innate wariness with intelligence and reasoning.
There's nothing to explain? Really because you don't have answer that doesn't conflict with your beliefs or logic that's not answer or an explanation of why. If a deer hears your call you know he hears it because he stops and looks or just does the ear rotation thing then continues to walk, he just made a decision not to go. Maybe I'm imparting my thoughts on what a deer would do or not do but that's what we do is figure what they do and what works and what don't work if your happy with the way you hunt good for you but I am always looking to improve my chances.
With this logic the deer population would be impossible to kill because all the dumb ones would have evolved to super deer over 1000 years ago.
