I have been terrible about posting during the COVID-19 year of 2020 and with all the torrential rain and wind we have been experiencing in Southeast Alaska this year. No excuses really. Today I plan to catch up. One thing I wanted to share are the graphs showing deer movement during the 2019 year. The concept came from previous, similar graphs by Joe Piston, https://joestrailcams.com/. Trail cameras can be frustrating if you think you will catch that buck crossing point “A”. If you use them to teach you about deer movements throughout the year, they can be most instructional. These graphs clearly show that during the period between about October 28th to November 16th, deer movement, especially buck movement was at its highest. The most buck movement was November 5th through November 15th. This latter period also corresponds to the most frequent, mature buck movement during daylight hours.

Trail cameras also clearly show mature bucks coming down from their bedding areas in the upper slopes just after dark and returning to their bedding areas just before daylight. It appears that mature bucks come to doe concentrations and cruse all night looking for receptive doe. I have images of the same mature buck on multiple cameras over 1000 feet of the valley during the night. They spend the day at least 300-500 foot in elevation higher in their beds in the big timber. Knowing this has changed my hunting strategy. Until the first doe goes into estrus, smaller bucks hang with them cruising about and the mature bucks visit at night. Mature bucks only stay into the daylight hours when the first hot doe is detected. If you really want the big mature bucks one needs to get close to their bedding areas and carefully call, remaining for up to an hour. In my experience they bed where they can survey the slopes below. One strategy is getting above them and still hunting down to where you think they might be bedded. Its rewarding when it works. I will be plotting the 2020 trail camera data soon for comparison. Good luck.