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Question about deer activity

Clay Showalter

Southern member northern landowner
6,401
145
Guilford County
A week ago I was getting 100-150 pics a night at the feeder, as many as 9 different bucks in one night. From a few shooters to a few spikes. About the same number of does. Now I am getting 20-30 pics and only a few young bucks and does. What has changed?

I have seen some of the other bucks on different cams that are on trails,I am fairly new to all this so I am trying to educate myself.
 
Not sure how far away from the feeder your cams are, but in cold weather I have seen some cams range lessen when the temperature drops. Also I think sometimes the sensor gets ice over it that will prevent it from tripping.

Could also be a doe in heat over a couple hollows that has pulled the buck out of your area.
 

bowhunter1023

Owner/Operator
Staff member
48,879
274
Appalachia
Deer are wild animals who are influenced by a host of factors. Could be one thing, could be ten that's causing this. One certantity is there's always an up and down trend to cams throughout the year. I have one cam I run on the same tree year round. It's smoking hot from late October through Thanksgiving, the goes dead. Meanwhile on the other side of the farm, I have a cam that's always there that gets pics in late season like the other does in November. Deer shift their patterns throughout the year and it causes cams to be hot, the cold, then hot again and so on. It's part of the fun.
 

Lundy

Member
1,307
127
Very common occurrence especially if your cameras are set up in a core areas with high doe concentrations that pretty much stay there.

We used to end up with a very high number of bucks staying on one area of the property from around the first week of November until around mid December and then they would disperse back to where ever them came from in early November. After they all move on it would be the same deer everyday multiple times through the rest of the winter months. The only thing that ever brought an influx of new bucks or a return of some of the previous bucks was if during the 1st 2nd week of Jan and some yearling does would come into estrus. Certainly wasn't an annual occurance but when it happened it was tremendous for a few days.

Every year there are a very high number of bucks that we get on camera, hundreds of pictures over multiple weeks, or get to see for 3-4 weeks during a year to that we either never see again or don't see until the following year. They came to the ladies house, hung out, had fun, until they knew the had no more shot and went back home. This was on a very large piece of property with cams covering a whole lot of it. They didn't just move to another area on the property, they left town.

The 3 bucks that I had pictures of together for a few years had a core area in one isolated section of the property, they lived there. I killed each one of them for 3 straight years in their home. However the first and second buck both disappeared every year for 4-5 weeks during and slightly after the rut. Hundreds of pictures daylight and dark daily of them both in Sept and Oct and then not one picture for 5-6 weeks. The did finally return to their home late in the year, good for me bad for them.