Take Cover

by Gary Clancy

* Sometimes the best way, or only way, to roust a wise old buck out of his home thicket is with a decoy and the right tunes on a call or rattling antlers.

Many hunters believe that by the second or third day of the season, any deer that managed to survive opening day have made tracks to safer ground. Maybe that safe ground is a state park or a game refuge where no hunting is permitted. Often the safe ground these hunters have in mind is a chunk of private property where hunters are not welcome.

While it’s true that some deer do find themselves sitting out the season in one of these off-limits sanctuaries, their numbers are much smaller than many hunters believe. The truth is, whitetail deer in general, and mature whitetail deer in particular, are real homebodies. It takes more than an intrusion by a few hunters, or even a busload of hunters, to force a mature buck or doe off it’s home turf.

Sure there have been studies done with collared deer which have shown that some deer do move great distances. But, invariably, these long-distance travelers have been young bucks, usually one-and-one-half years old, who are simply out cruising around looking for a place to call their own. Once they find that place and establish what we call a “home area”, they tend to stay put.

The reason a deer usually prefers to hang tight to its home area, is that this is where a deer feels the most secure.

An adult deer, buck or doe, knows every square yard of it’s home turf as well as you and I know our own homes. A mature deer knows that if forced away from it’s familiar haunts it becomes vulnerable.

The size of a deer’s home area varies from place to place. If a buck has food, water, good cover and enough does to keep him busy during the rut on a 500-acre tract, then that 500 acres will constitute his home area. If it takes two or three times that acreage to provide the deer with what it needs to survive, then the home range will be larger.

But regardless of it’s size, you can bet there is a nasty chunk of thick cover within the boundaries of that home area. This is where the deer disappears when hunting pressure dictates. Depending upon where you hunt, that escape cover might be a cattail slough, cedar swamp, pine thicket or a nasty briar patch.

Deer disappear into the very cover we hunters tend to avoid. In fact, the surest way I have found to identify good deer hideouts is to look for places I want to walk around, not through.

How you hunt deer in the thick stuff is fodder for another piece, but believing that deer seek out this heavy cover within their home area -- rather than risk traveling outside of their home areas to somewhere off limits to hunters -- is already a big step toward better deer hunting success.