GPS bucks on rut excursions were back in 6 to 40 hours

STEP 1 · Maryland clock

Mean trip length was 10.5 hours for 20 of 32 adult bucks

Karns and colleagues collared 32 adult male white-tailed deer at Chesapeake Farms in Kent County, Maryland from 2003 to 2007. Every buck was 2.5 years or older. Collars usually stored one point an hour. A trip counted only when it ran 6 hours or longer and reached 0.5 km or farther past the 95% kernel home-range boundary. Thirty-seven trips met that test. Twenty bucks among 32 made at least one trip. The paper gives that share as 63%. Fourteen of those 37 fell inside 5 November through 25 November. Prebreed plus breeding together held 22 of the 37. The prebreed window ran 15 October through 4 November.

The average ran 10.5 hours. Standard error on that average was 6.2 hours. Trips stretched from 6 hours up to 40 hours. A silent day and a half still fits that spread. A silent week falls outside it. Dates are why the paper points to breeding as the likely reason. No breeding event is marked on the collar track itself.

Mean minimum distance traveled was about 850 yards (778 m). Standard error on that distance was 293 m. The median was about 730 yards (665 m). The low and high were about 550 yards and 1,640 yards (506 m to 1,500 m). The longest minimum distance traveled in this sample stayed under a mile.

Daylight fell inside 22 of the 37 trips. A pause of 3 hours or more with little or no movement outside the range showed up on 22 trips. Fifteen trips kept moving the whole way.

The authors say those daylight trips exposed bucks to hunters. In 2006 an archer superficially wounded a collared 3.5-year-old buck on an excursion.

STEP 2 · Local calendar

Breeding dates on that farm were defined as 5 to 25 November

Karns and colleagues set 5 November through 25 November as the breeding period for Chesapeake Farms. Postbreed covered 26 November through 16 December. Maryland firearms season lasts two weeks and fell inside that postbreed block. Five excursions landed inside those firearms seasons. Finer fixes from 2006 and 2007 showed flight distances no greater than about 650 yards (600 m). No deer left its home range after a hunter or a vehicle disturbed it. Their reading treats hunter disturbance as an unlikely driver of those excursions.

Karns and colleagues frame Chesapeake Farms as a place with low hunting pressure and lots of cover. Our read is that deer on a crowded public tract may respond in a different way. Collar studies of deer movement after hunters enter the timber sit in what pressure does to movement.

Mississippi's Big Black River runs on another calendar. The buck-movement bulletin from Mississippi State University Extension sets that area's peak rut at 25 December through 7 January. Those two weeks held the breeding of 50% of the does. A camera that goes quiet in early November on that ground is ahead of the peak. Timing of seasons and of local breeding differs by state. Read your state wildlife agency's current page before you call one date the rut.

STEP 3 · Inside the line

One day's ground stayed near 200 acres at the peak

That same bulletin followed adult bucks and stored a point every 15 minutes between 1 September and 28 February. Daily travel rose from 4,800 yards (2.7 miles) during pre-rut. It went over 7,000 yards early in the rut and over 7,500 yards at the peak. The bulletin also labels the peak distance 4 miles. Net distance is how far the 24-hour point sits from the start. At the peak that ending point sits about 1,600 yards from the start or 0.9 mile.

Among adult bucks in that sample, 74% rotated to a new focal area on a cycle of 6 to 10 hours. Even in the peak the ground covered in one day remained near 200 acres. Annual median range in the bulletin is about 860 acres. Among those bucks, 27% kept annual ranges under 500 acres. Missing him from midmorning until late afternoon can be a bed swap inside that modest daily area. Maryland's excursion cutoff was a separate and longer bar of 6 hours beyond the edge of the seasonal range.

Foley and colleagues covered 102 males during five breeding seasons across South Texas and the paper ran in the Journal of Mammalogy. Movement rates climbed in the rut. Most males stayed inside 26% to 34% of each home range. Most kept two or more focal areas sized about 44 to 82 acres (18 to 33 ha). They came back on a 20-to-28-hour cycle. Estrus of about 24 hours is the abstract's reason for a roughly daily recheck of those spots. At peak rut the 1-year-old males moved the least. Rates for 2-year-olds were similar to rates for males age 3 and older. Do not hold a yearling to that Maryland rate. The sample started at 2.5 years.

A camera on a circuit stop should show a near-daily beat. Off the circuit the card can go quiet with him still on the property.

STEP 4 · Second range

Range shifts showed up in every month

Resop and colleagues followed 30 adult bucks across central Mississippi between 2017 and 2021. That dataset contains 44 buck-years. They kept fixes on a 4-hour spacing. They scored an excursion as any move reaching 0.5 km outside the 95% kernel boundary. Twenty bucks (67%) held one range. They averaged 5.9 excursions a year. Mean length on those trips was 12.7 hours and that sits near the Maryland average of 10.5 hours. Ten bucks (33%) used more than one range and averaged 0.8 excursions a year with a mean length of 25.5 hours.

Separation between ranges averaged about 4.4 miles (7.1 km) with a wide buck-to-buck spread. A stay in one range segment averaged 78 days. The authors found the shifts in every month of the year with no pileup on the breeding season. A November gap lasting weeks may mean he has moved onto the other range.

On both sites the breeding peak arrived in late December and early January. One site spanned 25 December through 7 January. The other spanned 20 December through 2 January.

Because points are 4 hours apart, a trip that starts and ends in the gap can vanish from the file. Count those excursions as a minimum on brief trips. A single missing day matches Maryland trips that lasted 6 to 40 hours. A missing run of weeks belongs nearer the 78-day stay. Several days missing sits past Maryland's 40-hour maximum and is briefer than the Mississippi mean stay of 78 days. Keep a multi-day hole in its own class while you log photos and hunt his current edge and the next cover in reach.

Our home-range paper separates a returning excursion, a shift between two homes, and permanent dispersal by a younger buck. It also shows how large a public tract must be before those homes fit.

Our rule is to sit through midday in cover no farther than about a mile from his usual edge when the same cameras show him again inside 40 hours. Of those 37 Maryland trips 22 took in some daylight and 22 included a lull lasting 3 hours or longer. If the blank runs for weeks, stop hunting that gap as one loop on a single range.

Repeats to one outside spot accounted for only 3 Maryland trips out of 37. Karns and colleagues compared buck paths with does collared on the same farm. No path among the 37 shared a clock time and a place with a collared doe. Each of five does carrying a complete record stepped beyond her 95% contour at least once. Only one among those doe moves fell outside peak breeding activity. He may be following a doe or searching or tending her away from the cameras. Nothing on the collar tracks separated those possibilities.