5 Year GPS Tracking Study Reveals How Deer Travel During Rut Season
22 Nov 2016
During a rut, numerous hunters have spent many hours in a tree stand simply to only see one or two deer. Have you spent time hunting during rut season only to see a single deer before and are wondering why this scenario happening and? Don’t you want to know where that buck came from or why he’s there in the first place? For the serious hunter, these questions are very perplexing.
It’s common knowledge to the experienced hunter that during a rut, deer movements can go from extreme to suddenly stopping altogether. Hunters call these sudden abrupt stops of deer movements a ‘lockdown’. So what is happening here? Is there really a lockdown taken place or are hunters simply using it as an excuse for not being able to spot any deer?
According to biologists, the only time of year that bucks become territorial is during the rut. This is when the buck defends receptive does from other bucks. During the rut, the mature bucks will alter their behaviors and movements when they are searching for these doe. A hunter’s plans can be hindered by this sudden behavior change. The good news is that Texas researchers might just have found what is really going on.
The Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute’s Dr. Aaron Foley spent five years tagging and tracking South Texas bucks attempting to better explain the change of the movements. A total of 101 bucks were captured and tagged with a GPS tracking collar which allowed the researchers to record and register the location of the deer once every 30 minutes.
Foley’s work did find some interesting findings. One finding is that the bucks usually displayed one of three behavioral patterns while in search for does. Around 60 percent of the bucks that were collared with the tracking device conducted what Foley referred to as a ‘periodic search pattern’ in which the buck has two or three main locations where they search intensively for 4 to 6 hours for does while rotating back and forth between those locations.
Around 30 percent of the bucks carried out what he refers to as a ‘resident search pattern’ which is where the bucks stayed in one fairly small area to conduct their search. And around 10 percent showed a ‘normadic pattern’ which is where their movements are unique and sporadic to the individual.
It’s assumed by the researchers that the bucks are coming back to these main locations during the rut in search of does. This assumption counts on whether the does are reducing their rates of movement in order to be spotted by the bucks. Another way to put it is if they are making their locations predictable for the males. In studies conducted in the past, it was found that does performed journeys outside of their home areas or increased their rates of movements during peak rut. Other studies showed the opposite.
Comments are closed.