Remember this: People see deer everywhere even in their dreams.
Since whitetail season has opened on Sept 1, I have thought alot about the mystique of the animal. The deer can suit itself to the circumstances. Depending on the terrain, the whitetail seems to be able to blend in, being a russet, tawny, pied color markings for the brush areas. When the deer comes out of the hardwood forest, the coat can be beech tree gray. There are deer now showing the albino trait. It can look like a log when it is lying down, or be standing in broomstraw eyeballing you down. Most bucks learn to stay in the tree line while a doe or two makes themselves a very easy target. If you have one buck to eight doe, I guess this would make for a wonderful strategy. Make no mistake, deer especially in herds if they are truly wild have a strategy for giving the hunter a wide berth. Unless they are not paying attention.They have the inate ability to move through brush without making a sound. A hunter can't miss the twig with its snap that sounds like dynamite to your ears.Their legs can look like thin trees or saplings. Everything about the deer is visually deceptive.
Deer in different parts of the country vary in size and weight depending on the availability of nutrients. These nutrients can be wild grown but agriculture and food plot management by the discriminating hunter can supplement any shortage. They eat whatever is seasonal. If you go by weight a buck could be 135-165 lbs down South but up North the weight could be 300 lbs. Does are between 125-160 lbs. When you are hunting them, they don't make for very big targets especially running. If you hog dress one out, you find that you lose a percentage (25%) of what that weight would be in meat because so much goes to bone, entrails, skin, and antlers. Don't be surprised when you go to the wildgame processor and get back much less than what you thought you had: you are not eating the complete deer.
There are about thirty subspecies distributed from Canada to Central America. All of these can overlap and interbreed causing a mixture of varying physcial traits
Because of their adaptability, they can outsmart you unless you're using some high tech gadgetry but its not under heard of for someone to jump a buck. In this day and age, technology has taken all of the challenge out of the hunt.
At one point in their evolution, they were solely diurnal but when the concept of hunting was introduced they become more and more nocturnal in their browsing habits to avoid being killed. In the poor light of nightfall, you may see the ghostly shadow of movement as they weave in and out of the tree line. The deer will walk down the inside of canal ditches to avoid being seen on flat land, hide in briar balls, or sleep beside a barn where farm animals are kept. They will even fall in with a herd of farm animals just to seem like one of the crowd. The browse that they eat can consist of 600 or more different kinds of plant material.
Whitetail are masters of skulking only second to turkey. Bears and cougars are just silent and deadly.
Whitetail do not migrate, which benefits the hunter because the home range can be a square mile. Even if during the breeding season, a buck is looking for does but will add a couple of miles to his roaming area. A buck could have a base camp, if you will, where he will move out but then come back fairly quick. This is a survival mechanism. Go but don't stay gone to long. I have often wondered at this particular rigid philosophy. If the habitat changes then so when the creature.
With this said, looking for game trails is a good habit, especially heavily used game trails. Usually where they feed and where they bed is a short distance. They will take the same path you might cut through the woods but be weary. It can be abandoned just as fast as it is made.Usually you'll see lots of tracks, scat, or the smell of breeding season as homones and urine are cast about. Sometimes in the case of trampling, the current path you have found might change by a couple of hundred yards so walking about to assess the situation or rethink your strategy is a must.Sometimes they just find something a little better to enjoy.
When the breeding season comes you might get a chance because hormones are raging and stupidity or carelessness reigns supreme. While breeding the buck will show himself more out in the open. He'll seek out and clash with other bucks for mating rites. Bucks will walk themselves to death while in the rut. The mating season will see them eat and drink less which puts them in a poor state of health. This could also contribute to their 'slip of the mind' when trying to avoid being shot.
With this being said, a buck can hide right underneath you for the remainder of his days on a square mile of land. He will see you before you see him. He lives there and he knows where you are. I argue again, if you use cameras this will upend your hunting experience to some degree. Everywhere I look there is a stand, a camera, and a photo. All you have to do is come back, sit and wait.
Whitetails are color-blind but they see motion really well. This probably contributed to the high sales of camo cover to help the hunter be undetectable. As a rule, a buck sometimes ignores a stationary object unless there is a sound or smell that tips him off. A deer can see you blink your eye from 60 yards away. I argue this point now because if you went by television the deer must be acclimated to a person in a tree with little forethought of danger. Being really still then waiting for them to turn their head is something you would really have to remember unconsicously when you are excited about one walking into your sights. Fast or sudden movements will not win you the day.
Their hearing is acute. They can hear your stomach growling, a twig snap, or a click of some metal bumping. Muffling stand parts is essential. You can fool them with rattling or grunt calls which mimic the different sexes or offspring. You would really need to know what that sounds like because you just can't blow your horn an expect them to accept you for another deer.
With these few tidbits being said it is not always an animal that is easy to hunt. I do experience internal conflict on this subject due to the relative ease to kill one now. Agriculture and human population growths have made the whitetail homeland smaller. Sightings are more frequent especially at night when they hang around highways eating the grass off the side of the road.
Deer that have become less inclined to avoid humans are not much sport because they start to look and act like a tame goat or cow. This makes them lose their mystique. Even though mystique is an illusion it is one worth chasing blindly after.
Written by: W Harley Bloodworth
~Courtesy of the AOFH~
