Our Time Window Closed More — New Important Buck Activity.
This time of year in the deer woods I am constantly on the watch for important changes that bucks make in their upcoming transition from velvet antlers to hard antlers.
Some activities only occur in this time period. A few are subtle and easy to miss. For example, bucks want the other deer to be aware of them; and that includes does, of course; but also other bucks. You might see a buck walk over to another buck that is browsing on the leaves of a particular pant. And he maneuvers himself closer to that buck and then crowds him until he takes over the other buck’s browsing job. This happens a lot. Occasionally the crowding buck meets resistance and gets himself kicked or bit at.
A lot of people are not aware of what a food plot can do … for the deer, and it’s much more than nutrition. I’ve used big, sprawling multi-acre food plots as well as small ones and I’ll take a small food plot that’s tucked back in the woods any day.
We’ll come back to that next, let me show you something that happened recently in August that I’ve been waiting for. Here is a doe I saw before I saw the buck that was going to make my day. Notice the brown place on the does hocks, they are brown from her urinating on her hocks. She is ahead of most does on this important activity. Chances are she will come into rut before most other does.
Below is a buck I call B10. He was in the area but not actually in the food plot. And today, he was on a mission.
This is Cut Ear. He is the Kicker King for this year.
This is a picture I got of Cut Ear before it was good morning light. He looks dark and mysterious.
I noticed B10 walking around on the edge of the north east woods. When he raised his head like this I zoomed on him and took a picture … and kept the camera on him.
Bingo! An instant later he was on his hind feet and grabbed a mouthful of leaves from the nearby live oak trees’ overhanging branches. This is not about eating.
He continued to stand up and lick, pull, shake and mouth the limbs 6 different times. I got other pictures but they all look basically the same so I used this one.
B10 is marking places so other bucks as well as does can smell him and also feel his presence in the food plot area.
To Re-Cap, things are changing in the deer woods. The changes are subtle but they are big deals to the deer. Very soon new bucks will showing up. They’re in velvet at the moment but not for long now. It is impoortant for the bucks tp be noticd, they want to be seen, smelt and felt by all the bucks as well as the does in the area.
More August photos and comments coming.
CONTINUED…
GO TO Deer Scouting 2016.
