Deer Move Less by Day on Sunday Than Friday: An Alabama Collar Study

STEP 1 · The study

Hourly locations from thirty-two adult deer across two seasons

Kevyn Wiskirchen and fellow Auburn researchers placed GPS collars on adult deer at four Alabama sites: two private properties and two public wildlife management areas. They evaluated deer behavior by day of the week, including Saturday and Sunday (Wiskirchen et al. 2022). The collar data covered the 2014 to 2015 and 2015 to 2016 hunting seasons, with locations recorded at one-hour intervals. Researchers collared 38 deer; 32 qualified for analysis, split evenly between 16 males and 16 females. Of that group, 20 provided data in both seasons. The paper combines all four sites into one result, so the deer figures below do not show a pattern specific to public land.

The timing of the research deserves attention. Each season's observation period began with the mid-November youth opener. It stopped at the point when the period would include fewer than 5 percent of that year's conceptions. Earlier research had shown that breeding behavior can obscure how deer respond to hunting. Observation periods ran 23 to 58 days at each property, with a mean of 42.75. Hunting these deer occurred before the rut; a week during the rut could produce different behavior.

Researchers used permits issued daily to measure effort on public ground and hunting records for private properties. Public-ground weekend effort averaged 0.56 hunters daily per square kilometer. Weekday effort was 66 percent lower, averaging 0.19. The highest value, 0.72, occurred Saturday. Private-property weekend effort averaged 0.009 hunter-hours daily per hectare, compared with 0.001 during weekdays. Those means are rounded; the paper reports the decrease as 83 percent. Saturday's private-ground value was 0.013. Because records were incomplete, the researchers regard these figures as minimums. They also say hunting pressure was lighter than the pressure reported in the earlier research used for comparison.

STEP 2 · The weekend average

Grouping weekend days hid the daily differences

Combining Friday, Saturday and Sunday and comparing that group with Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday produced no statistically significant difference in daytime behavior (P at least 0.216). That finding does not prove the effect was zero. Looking at individual days produced a different picture. Three daytime measures showed no change between Thursday and Friday, or between Friday and Saturday: movement rate, net displacement and activity probability. Net displacement measures distance from a deer's initial daylight position that day. An hourly period qualified as active when travel reached at least about 49 meters.

Compared with Friday, Sunday's values fell by 17 percent, 31 percent and 24 percent, respectively. Each of the three measures later rose again. The authors report that daytime behavior took until Wednesday to regain its pre-weekend levels. After dark, there was no matching pattern: nighttime movement, displacement and activity showed no differences by day of the week, including Saturday and Sunday (P greater than 0.122).

STEP 3 · The lag

Hunters peaked Saturday; deer movement dropped Sunday

Saturday drew the most hunters on both types of land, but daytime deer movement remained equal to Thursday and Friday. The researchers were surprised to find no immediate response. They think individual deer probably responded to encounters as they occurred, with responses the hourly location data could not detect. By the third day, the combined effect of those encounters may have become visible across the deer population. They also propose that about three days of exposure may have taught deer that daylight carried more risk than darkness. That could explain why daytime movement remained low on Monday and Tuesday after hunting effort had fallen.

Deer did not replace their reduced daylight movement with more movement after dark. They preferred night to day throughout the week. The model term for day of the week provided no useful information about that preference (P = 0.138). Sunday's decline therefore appears to mean they moved less during daylight, rather than shifting that movement to another time.

Sex and age also mattered. Over the full observation period, mature males aged 3.5 years or older traveled 15 percent less during daylight than immature males (interval: 0 to 33). Their likelihood of daytime activity was 50 percent lower than that of mature females. Nighttime reversed the ranking. Compared with immature males, mature males had a 56 percent higher likelihood of activity and traveled 42 percent farther. The researchers describe mature males as the sample's most mobile group after dark.

STEP 4 · Other calendars

Sunday deer hunting was prohibited during Pennsylvania's aerial rifle-season counts

Sunday was part of the Alabama hunting weekend. Researchers from Pennsylvania State University and the Pennsylvania Game Commission counted hunters from aircraft over two areas that included state forests and surrounding ground during 2005 to 2007. Their 2008 report states that Pennsylvania prohibited Sunday deer hunting at the time (Keenan, Rosenberry and Wallingford, 2008). Regulations change. Consult current rules in your state before building a plan around either hunting calendar.

Those flights found the largest crowds early. According to the report, the rifle season's first three days had densities of 0.5 to 1 hunter per square kilometer. Later densities were generally below 0.1, with Saturdays the exception. Sproul public ground in 2006 reached its high of 1.1 on Monday morning when the season opened. Beginning Wednesday afternoon, every day remained below 0.4 through the season's close. On Tuscarora public ground, density rose over the first three flights, recording 0.9, 1.1 and 1.2. During the second week, it fell below 0.3.

Even when hunters are few, they tend to bunch up. Researchers studying a 45,907-hectare public tract in Pennsylvania found that deer hunters were nearly three times less likely to hunt an area for each additional 500 meters from a forest road. Each additional 5 degrees of slope was associated with hunters being 1.5 times less likely to hunt an area. Of those hunters, 87 percent hunted within half a kilometer of a road (Diefenbach et al. 2005). Our effort-not-distance guide explains how those findings apply to maps.

An extension bulletin from Mississippi State discussing research on private-ground bucks identifies the rut, holidays and weekends as periods of greatest hunting effort. It recommends distributing hunting days more evenly across the week to lower the risk deer experience over time (MSU Extension P3927). In a 2023 paper, that same Mississippi State research group suggests moderating hunting effort over time to lessen the response from deer (Henderson et al. 2023).

STEP 5 · Study limits

The limits of evidence from 32 deer

The evidence is limited where it matters most. The findings draw on 32 deer across two seasons in one state. According to the authors, hourly location readings likely missed short bursts of flight early in the weekend. Recorded hunting pressure was low, and gaps in the records meant that figure was a minimum estimate. The period covered by the analysis ended before breeding began. The study measured how deer moved but did not measure hunter sightings or shooting outcomes. A 17 percent decline in movement rate therefore cannot be treated as a 17 percent decline in sightings.

The Pennsylvania observations concern hunter numbers. They do not measure deer behavior. Alabama supplies this guide's test of the deer response; the data sets represent separate states and separate seasons.

STEP 6 · The scheduling rule

Account for the delay and test it with your hunting log

The advice below reflects our interpretation of the research. None of these studies reports it as a finding.

A movement rating for the current day cannot capture this kind of delayed response. Our guide to movement scores identifies that delay among the inputs a single rating omits. Before choosing a hunting day, explore public-ground crowding in How Crowded Is That Public Land?. Of the twelve states we track, only Illinois publishes hunting effort for individual sites. Its most heavily used 10 percent of public properties account for roughly half the year's hunter-trips.

Explore what the mapping tool covers.