THIS IS AN ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN A MAGAZINE IN 1982 AND I HAVE SAVED IT SINCE AS ONE OF THE BEST DESCRIPTIONS OF DEER MOVEMENTS. THE AUTHOR WAS DR. JIM BYFORD OF THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA A WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT PROFESSOR. THIS DATA WAS EXTREMELY HELPFUL AND CERTAINLY STATE -OF-THE-ART. MAYBE SOMEONE ELSE CAN BE OF BENEFIT.
I've spent a good many years of my professional life trying to convince folks that deer don't leave their home range, and that their movements - like ours - aren't mystical. Deer movement patterns are keyed to fulfilling the animals' needs and to changing environmental conditions. But, you hear it every deer season, along about first frost, if you hang out where deer hunters gather. "I can't figure out where in tarnation deer go when the shoot in' starts. You see 'em all summer - and trails, too - you see trails wore clear down to bare rock! In summer, you can set your watch. They're down feedin' with Buck's cows at 8:15 every evening. But, I'm tellin' you, when fall gets here, most of 'em vanish, and the trails fill up with leaves. Must be the shoot in' that runs 'em out of the country. You know, it'd be nice if there was just some way to follow them deer around to see where they go .... "
Well, friend, there is a way - and it's called radio telemetry. I'll bet you've heard about it or seen it on TV. It involves putting a collar with a small radio transmitter on the deer's neck and - with the help of a directional antennae and a radio receiver - you can figure out in which direction the deer is located. By gel ting compass line directions for the deer's location from two points and plotting the two direction lines on a map, you know the deer is located where the lines cross. I, along with several other researchers, have studied deer movements this way. One of the researchers, Dr. Larry Marchinton at the University of Georgia, has been at it longer than any of us in the South. I've known Larry for several years and consider him a friend, as well as a very knowledgeable, in-depth researcher. Many of the facts in this article come from his findings.
Well, where do the deer go'? If you hunt in the South, the only place while-tailed deer go when the shooting starts , is "they go to hidin'," as one old-timer once told me. They don't leave their home range: they just change their movements patterns. In the southeastern U.S., the average white tailed deer spends its entire life on a little over 220 acres. In areas of very high deer populations, the ranges may be even smaller. The typical home range is only, about one mile long, and a little over one-half mile wide, and includes a variety of habitat types. For example, deer like crop fields, grass and clover strips, mature hardwoods for mast feeding, cutover woodland for green browse from root sprouts and shrubs, a water supply, etc. The more "mixed up" these habitat components are in an area, the more deer you're likely to find, because ranges of several deer will probably overlap.
It takes awhile for deer to find their way around when stocked into a completely new location. For a few weeks, I they'll wander around a piece of real estate, up to 10 times normal their home-range size, before finally settling down to a typical-sized range. Young deer learn their mother's range in just a few months. When the population gets dense, many of these young animals will wander until they find a new range in which to settle down - one without so much competition. This is called "dispersal," a phenomenon that has allowed reestablishment of white-tailed deer over much of North America.
Normally, when white-tailed deer are re-established, several deer are stocked in good habitat and the area is closed to deer hunting until the population builds. Hunting is begun on a limited basis (usually after about five years) while dispersal surrounding areas is taking place. As the population grows, both the season length and bag limit can become more liberal.
But, wait a minute! Don't get the wrong idea. Deer don't disperse because of hunting pressure - competition for food won't make them leave, either. In fact, they will often eat themselves right out of a food supply and starve to death before they will leave. Some studies have even found them to disperse from agricultural areas with abundant food to heavily wooded areas with less food. Hunting pressure isn't the whole story though. When they're hunted heavy, deer stick close to cover during hunting hours and do most of their moving in secrecy after dark. In areas where cover is scarce, they'll move more. within their range, due to hunting pressure. You may have seen deer under such conditions; if you have, you probably remember them as brown blurs.
So, if it's not food or hunting pressure, what makes deer leave? It has to do with that age-old, complicated, three-letter phenomenon - SEX. You have to understand that even though both does and bucks disperse, bucks do most of the leaving. Young does most often stay with their mothers; they have young, their young have young; etc. Eventually, they form a social group of two or three generations of does that pretty much travel together. But, up to 80 percent of the young bucks disperse from their mother's ranges the same year they are born - just prior to the rutting season. The few young does that do leave usually do so in the summer.
Why do most of the yearling bucks leave just prior to the rutting season? That's easy. They have just as much sex drive as the old boy with antlers growing out of his skull. They're not about to challenge him, though, so the yearling bucks go where sexual competition is not as great. Dispersal distances vary, but two to six miles is common. A great many yearling bucks are killed while wandering around a new range during dispersal. (Five out of six dispersing young bucks were killed in one study area.
A lot of hunters think that the Game and Fish folks allow too much buck-only hunting in old established deer herds, and that's why there aren't many bucks. This is not always true. If you stop to think about it, the older a population gets and the denser it becomes, the more the sex ratio will favor does - with or without hunting. This is because most does stay put and most bucks disperse under these conditions.
But, let's get back to home range.
It's common sense to recognize that deer are not using all their range equally all the time. When living conditions are better in one small part of the range, the deer spend most of their time right there, bedding, eating, watering, and all those other things deer do. These small areas are called "core areas" or "centers of activity." A deer's core area will change, from time to time, as habitat conditions change. One deer I followed around for three months changed core areas three times, and all the changes were food related. I first caught her in a grass clover strip where she spent most of her time. When corn became available, she moved her core area to the corn, spending all her time for several days in an area no larger than 10 to 15 acres. The corn played out about the same time that spring hardwood leaves began popping and she moved to a larger core area where hardwoods were more abundant than pines.
You've probably noticed, as I have, that hardwood ridges, littered with acorns, are covered with deer sign in the early bow season. But, come gun season, the fresh sign is down on the lower slopes. The ridge acorns have played out by then. find the lower slope oaks are just coming in. And, what about the heavy concentration of deer sign in a small spot'? Well, such a "hot spot" is where the core areas of several deer overlap. Be careful not to confuse core area actively with dispersal. Deer will shift core areas within their home range to gel to better food conditions, but they won't leave their home range for food.
Even though food is the drawing card that most often determines where core areas are located, other things do come into play. For example. does will set up core areas around their young fawns. One doe I followed had two core areas at the same time. One was centered around a spot where loggers were clearing timber; the leaves from felled treetops were the best source of food around the heavily browsed area. The other core area centered around a small stream where she would leave her very young fawn. returning several times each day to allow it to nurse. Evidently, she felt that the fawn was safer away from the loggers.
Another key factor for core area establishment is (here's that word again) sex. Dominant bucks - the ones that end up being the daddies of the fawn crop - establish small core areas of intense rubbing and scraping. At anyone time, one buck
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may have several of these small areas within his home range; these are "dominance areas." Rubbing begins about one month before the rutting season actually starts, and these rubs serve to establish or delineate the dominance areas. Rubbing tapers off about the same time breeding starts. Scraping takes over to serve as communication between the dominant buck and does found in the area. The buck leaves his scent in and around the scrape, communicating, "sweetheart, if you're interested, stick around and I'll be back." Does in heat leave their scent in and around the scrape and "stick around." They hang around the scrape until the buck returns and then mating takes place. Sometimes, the old gal is coy and the buck has to follow her out of his dominance area, sometimes even out of his home range. When this happens, he of then invades the dominance area of another buck - that's when the fireworks begin. The area around the doe in heat is called the "intolerance zone." It moves with the doe. Dr. Marchinton tells of one buck that followed a doe in heat for three days and ended up about one mile from the scrape where the courtship started. When he returned to his own dominance area, he was cut, gouged, and bleeding, but as Larry put it, "He had a satisfied look on his face."
A dominant buck may move from one dominance area to another fairly regularly, until he finds a willing doe. On the other hand, he may spend several days in one dominance area, if several does in heat are hanging around. Sometimes, dominance areas of two or more bucks can be found close together. When this happens, the scraping and rubbing becomes more intense. A dominant buck will allow subordinate bucks to pass through his dominance area, as long as they stay in their place and maintain a subordinate posture.
Let's take a look at daily movements - all important from your point of view as a hunter. Deer researchers measure movements during 24-hour periods. These movements are called "diel movements". Diel movements of deer in the southeastern U.S. average about 1 1/2 to 2 miles total distance. This means that if you add up the total distance a deer travels from noon on one day until noon the next day, the typical deer travels 1 1/2 to 2 miles. Most of this distance is covered while meandering throughout the core area. On the average, the distance between the two extreme points during a diel period is about two-thirds mile. If food conditions are especially good in a small area, the diel movements will be much smaller.
Let's get one other thing out of the way: many folks think that deer always have feeding areas separate from bedding areas; this is true only in some cases. A good example where this would be true is where the best food supply - let's say a soybean field - is not located close to good bedding cover. In this case, deer would use the open field at night, and the bedding cover and feeding areas is a good way to ambush deer late in the afternoon or early in the morning. However, as the hunting season progresses, deer will move more and more under the cover of darkness.
In most cases, deer will bed in the vicinity of their food supply. Deer are primarily browsers. They feed for short periods, bed and ruminate (chew their cud) feed for a while, bed and ruminate, etc., throughout the diel period. At night, in the cover of darkness, I have often seen feeding deer just suddenly flop down in the open with no cover in sight. It is true, though, that deer sometimes have favorite bedding spots. If you find a buck in a spot more than once just prior to the season, this may be a good place to be at sunrise on opening day.
Some deer are moving at all hours during the day and night. When deer aren't disturbed often, much of their feeding in the summer occurs between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. In the fall, undisturbed deer are most active at dawn, with movement continuing until noon. It may surprise most hunters to know that undisturbed deer move about twice as much during daylight as at night, throughout the year. But, as fall progresses, deer in agricultural areas move proportionately more at night. Why? Food is plentiful in the woods in the summer, so deer don't have to move far to feed, often bedding close to their food supply. In the fall, especially before acorn drop, less food is available in the woods, and more is found in open agricultural fields. Deer move out to these agricultural areas, but they have to wait for the cover of darkness. The ratio of night and day movement is about the same for does and bucks. Bucks tend to rub and scrape most in late afternoon, but buck movement between dominance areas is done rapidly, and primarily at night.
Now, when hunting season gets underway, the plot thickens. Man's activities, whether hunting, logging, or other cause deer to bed more during the times of human activity, and move more when the activity stops. One deer, which I followed around in an area being logged, usually bedded most of the day within about 200 yards of chainsaws whining, skidders spinning, and loggers yelling. At 4 p.m., when the loggers went home, this doe would begin moving going from one downed treetop to another, browsing on leaves. She would usually cover enough ground during the peace and quiet to make up for her inactivity during the daylight. Occasionally, she would be jumped from her daytime bed by workmen, but after running a short distance, she would bed down again. Other researchers have found that during heavy hunting pressure, deer in areas with plenty of cover will stick tight until the hunters leave, then move freely after dark. On the other hand, deer in areas where cover is scarce will dart from place to place during heavy hunting pressure - giving hunters a lot of practice at moving targets.
There's still a lot to be discovered about deer movements. But on the other hand, a lot has already been discovered. By putting some of this knowledge to work, getting to know your hunting place well. scouting just before the season opens, and using a little common sense - your chance of success will be far greater than that of the average hunter. Oh, one other thing - good luck: September 1982
