HOW OLD BUCKS ARE DIFFERENT

By Scott Bestul

Geriatric bucks don’t live and behave like their junior brethren, so it makes sense that you must hunt them differently. Here’s a primer on chasing old-timers.

My best hunt this past fall happened in a Subway sandwich shop. And no, for the record, I do not hunt in restaurants. But for some reason, I couldn’t hunt the afternoon of Oct. 26, and after I checked off whatever business was on my list that day, I stopped to grab dinner. Seconds after sitting down, my phone buzzed with an incoming text from my neighbor, and the six words made my heart leap. 

“I think I just killed him.” Dave Olson is one of my closest neighbors and friends, and I knew he was on a mission to kill a 5-year-old buck. Dave had found one shed from the buck the previous spring, and we each had numerous trail-cam pics of the massive deer during the past two years. And all that contact had seeped into Dave’s psyche. There were several great deer in the neighborhood, but that one had wriggled under his skin. There’s something about prolonged contact with a buck through time. Other deer can just kind of fade in importance. So when I got that text, I knew my buddy had not just killed a giant deer; he’d fulfilled a dream. Not long ago, getting a buck to live three seasons was a big deal in this area. These days, thanks to a combination of factors — some intended, some pure happenstance — setting your sights on an even older deer is a real possibility. It’s added a lot of fun and even more challenge to the annual hunt. And in the process, it’s piqued my curiosity about older whitetails; how they differ from their junior herd-mates and how those differences influence our management and hunting plans.

The Old Buck Mystique

Not long ago, I think I was like a lot of North American deer hunters. I figured if a buck grew a nice set of antlers, he was an old-timer. When I started hunting in the 1970s, some of my mentors at least partially believed that the number of tines on a rack indicated the buck’s age. Obviously, we know that old wives tale is nowhere close to true.

So although many trophy-class bucks are geriatric deer, antlers are sometimes a pretty poor indicator of age. For example, in some areas of the country, a 2-1/2- or 3-1/2-year-old buck can grow a rack worthy of the record books. I once chased a Wisconsin 12-pointer — a buck that made the B&C minimum — for an entire bow season. He was only 3-1/2 years old. I’d have gladly tagged that monster, but he was certainly not an old deer.

On the flip side, there are regions where — thanks to genetics, nutrition or other factors — even an ancient deer might not have a high scoring rack. My friend Kip Adams, outreach director for QDMA, shot an 8-1/2-year-old buck on his Pennsylvania property that scored just more than 120 inches B&C. Although not a big-scoring buck, that Keystone State deer was rightfully one of Kip’s most treasured trophies.

So even if a truly old buck doesn’t grow monstrous headgear, he’s special for a simple reason. He’s a survivor. Life is extremely hard for whitetails but especially so for bucks. They run a gauntlet of predators, fights, vehicles, hunting pressure and just plain bad luck. When one survives several seasons, it becomes — in my opinion — a trophy by default, regardless of antler score. And as more of us manage property by improving habitat, planting food sources and becoming selective in what deer we shoot, old bucks are becoming more common on the landscape.

That has certainly been true in my area, as we’ve seen more bucks reach maturity. Sightings, trail cams and the occasional successful hunt have made hunting in this area simply more exciting, rewarding and fun. And in that process, I’ve read more and pondered much about how old deer are different. Here are some thoughts. 

They Move Less

Modern telemetry research has pretty much proven that as a buck ages, he simply doesn’t travel as much. For a long time, I attributed that to a degree of intelligence, as if a buck had the power to think,

“Gee, when I walk around a lot, I get in trouble, so I’m just going to lie on my belly and stay safe.” I don’t believe that anymore. I think that in most cases, old bucks move less because they’re just lazy. Think about it: As any other animal (dogs, cats or livestock) ages, it just no longer scampers around like a youngster. They spend more time lazing in the shade on hot days, finding a sunny spot-on cold ones and snoozing more than walking.

The other thing that telemetry has proven about old bucks goes hand-in-hand with this. As whitetails mature, their home ranges and core areas tend to shrink. Again, it’s natural for us to believe that a buck hangs out in a certain area because he’s got Mensa-level intelligence. In fact, the buck has selected the spot because experience has proven to him that it provides the things he needs most — food, cover, water, lack of disturbance — to simply make his life easier.

The buck my neighbor, Dave, tagged this past fall (mentioned at the start of this article) illustrated that tendency perfectly. When we started getting photos of the deer, he was 2-1/2 and, like many bucks of that age class, was quite active and moved broadly across two farms we hunt. The next year, the buck showed up only on a couple of cameras consistently, and those cams were within 3/4 of a mile of each other. And except for a brief period during the rut, his territory seemed to get even more specific as fall progressed. The next spring, Dave found one shed from the buck on his farm, and my other neighbor,

Alan, found the other side on his property. The antlers were about a half-mile apart.

By this past summer, the buck had an extremely tight core area — three food plots and a bedding area — right behind my house, but as soon as he shed velvet, the buck shifted his core area slightly to include a habitat-rich area right behind Dave’s barn. Dave started to see the buck occasionally as he did chores, and his cameras were full of pics of the buck. After several sits, Dave was finally able to arrow the buck the final week of October, right in the small area the buck had adopted as his own.

They Develop Personality

One of the most fascinating aspects of watching bucks mature in our hunting area the past several years has been seeing how different they are. Mature bucks share tendencies, such as shrinking core areas and laid-back movement, but they have personalities as distinct as a fingerprint. Some are fighters, some are babies, some are just shy. The list goes on.

Knowing a buck’s personality can be critical in developing a hunting plan. Trail cams and personal observation can prove that a buck is aggressive toward other bucks, as we found with a buck we nicknamed “Mr. Mellow” this past year. At first, our many observations of this deer during summer suggested he was just a calm deer that didn’t seem to get bothered by much. I photographed him several times from my truck at closer than 50 yards.

But after he shed velvet, Mr. Mellow turned into Mr. T. He was simply unafraid of anything, including any of the other nice bucks in the neighborhood. That trait proved to be his undoing, as one of our neighbors found out when he staked a buck decoy out during an afternoon bowhunt. Mr. Mellow, already missing several tines from fighting, trotted in to clean the clock of the intruder and took an arrow for his trouble.

They Rut Differently

Another thing that took me a while to figure out about mature bucks was how differently they behaved during the rut. Most of us have seen the classic chasing scenario, where multiple bucks are harassing a doe that’s obviously come into estrus. Interestingly, as the mature buck population grew in my area, I rarely saw one of the old studs participating in such a chase. So I started asking biologists and experienced hunters about that and learned something I’ve seen play out many times in the years since.

Like everything else old bucks do, they breed efficiently, too. So rather than chase a doe across the landscape hoping to get lucky, they watch for the scent and body language clues that indicate she’s ready, and then they simply walk in and do their job. As biologist, Karl Miller, once told me, “Old bucks are just more gentlemanly about breeding. They’re also far more sensitive and aware of the rut than younger bucks. By the time you see little bucks chasing all over the place, an old buck is already holed up in a patch of brush with his first estrous doe.”

The takeaway is simple: If you wait for classic signs of the rutting frenzy to start pursuing a big buck, you’re probably too late. Use your knowledge of him to jump on any signs of increased activity or sign making in the days before peak rut. And then there’s the silver lining: Mature bucks will continue searching hard for does long after younger bucks have run out of gas. Consequently, it pays to save some of your hunting effort for late in the rut.

They’re Affected by Herd Dynamics

To make things even more fascinating, a buck’s personality can change, especially if decent numbers of other mature bucks inhabit the area. Remember, whitetails are social animals, and their interaction with other members of the herd has a big influence on how they behave. Not many years ago, mature bucks were pretty rare in my hunting areas. Uninfluenced by competition, those older deer did whatever they felt like; traveling where they pleased, eating when and where they wanted, breeding does at will.

But now that there’s a better age structure in our herd, mature bucks are more sensitive to where they live and how they behave. The presence of an aggressive bully buck can make another great deer decide to move to another part of the farm or simply relocate to another. Also, as a buck ages, he might lose his status in the pecking order. Several of my friends in Iowa have watched bucks reign supreme for a couple of years as they hit their prime at age 4-1/2, only to lose status when their bodies could no longer back up the fight they wanted to bring.

Conclusion: They Require More Thought

In my opinion, all these factors combine to make old bucks tougher to kill. The first challenge, of course, is simply finding one. But assuming you clear that hurdle, the more quickly you can realize that you’re not going to be able to hunt him like other deer, the more successful you’ll be. It will take some careful study of bits and pieces of information amassed during a long period; sign, sightings, encounters, shed antlers and trail-cam pics. Adding up these puzzle pieces is critical to arranging an encounter with an old-timer. But when you finally make that happen, the experience can be one of your most satisfying as a hunter.