November Buck Ranges in Pennsylvania Average Almost 1,920 Acres; Public Hunting Units Across Four States Mostly Fall Below 640

Among bucks collared by Penn State in broad stretches of forest, average range size rises from nearly 400 acres during September to nearly 1,920 acres during November. Across Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and Ohio, median public units open to hunting measure 83 to 168 acres. Units smaller than 640 acres, the equivalent of one square mile, account for 69% to 88% of the total. Published estimates elsewhere include both smaller buck ranges and much larger ones. An acreage figure needs the method used to estimate it, along with the deer's sex and the month it represents.

The Deer-Forest project at Penn State fits deer with collars throughout Pennsylvania. A December 2014 report focused on deer occupying large, unbroken forests. It listed estimated ranges for bucks at nearly 400 acres during September, slightly below 640 during October and nearly 1,920 during November. One male ranged over four square miles. A follow-up report on 180 deer stated that the average buck covers four times as much area in November, with males' mean range slightly above half a square mile until mid-October. The amount of forest also matters. In the project's fragmentation comparison, bucks in more heavily forested habitat had average ranges of about 2 square miles, while those in Gettysburg averaged under one.

Identical location fixes can produce sharply different acreages when the estimator changes. Resop's research team divided its 30 Mississippi bucks into a sedentary group of 20, each occupying a single range, and a mobile group of 10, each occupying two. With a 95% kernel estimator, the respective means were 892 acres and 16,136 acres after conversion from hectares. Two mobile males were outliers; excluding those bucks lowered that group's mean to 2,708. Brownian-bridge outlines in that paper trace travel routes rather than fill gaps between location clusters. Those outlines produced acreages of 823 for sedentary bucks and 2,177 for mobile bucks. An extension publication from Mississippi State also says daily range size did not extend much beyond 200 acres, even at the rut's peak.

From the public access layers published by Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and Ohio, we selected units open to hunting within the categories shown in the table. We grouped units under their names, giving a wildlife area a single count even when it consisted of separate parcels.

Wisconsin's median unit covers 83.1 acres; Missouri's covers 87.5; Iowa's covers 122; Ohio's covers 167.5. Units below 640 acres represent 69.3% to 88.4% of the total, while units reaching 2,000 acres represent 3.3% to 19.5%. Using individual records as the counting basis puts the medians at 79.8 to 216 acres. Either approach supports the same conclusion. Neither approach evaluates how the boundaries of those units were drawn.

We made two checks when preparing the table. Wisconsin's two managed-land layers contain duplicate properties. Both include Theresa Wildlife Area at about 5,400 acres. We therefore retained the property layer along with walk-in parcels and excluded the other managed-land layer. On September 29, 2026, we checked our June snapshot of Missouri conservation areas against the agency's live layer. In that live layer, median acreage was 86.8, with 76.0% of units below 640 acres. The snapshot's corresponding figures were 84.2 acres and 76.4%. For every unit, our data contain a single point and agency-reported acreage rather than a boundary. These results make no claim that a unit is unable to hold a buck.

Differences in how studies outline ranges explain part of the disagreement among published estimates. We therefore applied a single method within a single property. Publicly available collar data for the Brosnan Forest study contain sampled fixes from 27 hunted males over five autumns, with about 400 locations for each buck during each phase. We calculated 95% minimum convex polygon outlines separately for every male during the study-defined pre-rut, rut and post-rut periods.

Median acreage was 252 before the rut, 409 during it and 321 afterward. Among 80 buck-phases, 66 covered less than 640 acres; the maximum covered 1,505. Post-rut locations for one male covered just 0.36 acres, suggesting a collar that had stopped moving. We excluded that phase. The median shift in centers of use was 460 meters between pre-rut and rut. Between pre-rut and post-rut, it was 726 meters, equivalent to 0.45 mile. A South Carolina DNR release from 2014 described earlier research at the same forest and reported roughly 350 acres as the average range. Each phase lasts 26 to 40 days. Because polygons expand as the observation window lengthens, these acreages do not represent yearly ranges.

All three movements appear alike on camera cards, but their durations and travel distances are different. The research team led by Karns classified an excursion away from the usual range as a trip lasting at least 6 hours that extended at least 0.5 kilometer beyond the edge calculated with a 95% kernel estimator. Before or during breeding, 20 among their 32 adult Maryland bucks made such a trip. In the Mississippi data collected by Resop's team, a mobile male's two range cores were separated by 7.1 kilometers on average. Average time spent in a segment before a move was 77.5 days. For comparison, each side of a square unit covering 640 acres measures about 1.6 kilometers. The separation therefore exceeds four such widths. Dispersal among adults is rare. Penn State's work from the early-2000s recorded dispersal among 70% of its 549 juvenile males; among 107 adults, none dispersed. Since 2000, its sample of 355 collared adult males has included none that left home.

Whether males return to a previously used range in subsequent years cannot be determined from our file. All 27 bucks occur in the data during just one season apiece.

The range table preserves the estimator, season and observation window associated with every source row. We do not average those rows together. A public unit's acreage provides no information about neighboring ground also used by a buck. Our Kansas walk-in rows combine spring and fall layers, producing duplicate counts. Illinois hunting-allowed records lack acreage. We excluded both states for those reasons. Access records identify ground available to hunters, while collar fixes locate the sampled bucks. Neither reveals how many deer occupy a tract.

Comparisons between quoted acreages require the estimator, the deer's sex and the month represented. Hunters and prospective land buyers should request those details, then draw the parcel alongside the range. A unit close to its state's median could cover just a portion of the monthly area a buck uses. Learn the ownership of surrounding ground; our permission guide explains how to make that request. If a male disappears from camera photos, record his last sighting and the next time he appears. In the Mississippi research by Resop's team, average excursion duration was 12.7 hours among single-range bucks and 25.5 hours among mobile bucks. For mobile males, average residence within a range segment was 77.5 days. An absence lasting about a day is consistent with an excursion; an absence lasting weeks is consistent with a move between ranges. Camera silence by itself cannot establish the buck's destination or age. Within Penn State's early-2000s sample, the dispersing deer were juveniles. Our public-land pressure paper addresses the number of fellow hunters using the same ground.