If this is true, one must then ask if it is the exception or the rule. I believe it depends largely on the habitat. If the habitat consists of several small blocks of cover and endless miles of open crop ground, chances are good that our bruiser buck will stick fairly close to his core bedding area outside the rut. After all, he doesn’t have many other bedding options.
Of course, the quality, supply and diversity of food source options also must be factored in. For the past few years I’ve been lucky enough to hunt on lands controlled by Northern Wilderness Outfitters in north-central Alberta. I love hunting there because I can show up, spend a day scouting and promptly look like a genius of a whitetail hunter. Why? As much as I’d like to claim it’s all due to skill, it’s really due to the habitat -- endless miles of woods and few fields.
After several good frosts kill much of the natural greenery, the deer can either eat woody browse or hammer those few fields. Sure, their bedding options are endless, but they have relatively few feeding options. Because of that, their patterns tend to remain relatively stable.
What about habitat that consists of a closer split between food and protective cover? In my opinion, these types of settings are the ones where buck patterns tend to be the most fluid. Furthermore, they make up most of the whitetail’s range. But there are exceptions even in this situation. Take for example the diverse habitats of Buffalo County, Wisconsin; west-central Illinois; eastern Iowa; northern Missouri; and countless other locations.
The food-to-cover ratio in many of these areas is closely balanced. However, throw some harsh winter weather and a standing corn or bean field into the mix, and Mr. Big can become as predictable as the morning sunrise. In this case, the snow cover and weather limit prime feeding options. And whenever food or cover is severely limited, patterns can remain relatively constant. The same can even be applied to a lone water source during very dry periods.
TRY TO STRIKE A BALANCE WHEN THE IRON IS HOT
For those of us who hunt these diverse habitats, I believe we are best served to follow the old adage of striking when the iron is hot. With so many factors pulling bucks in different directions and changing their patterns, it now makes sense to me to hunt where the bucks currently are as much as one is able to do safely.
“Safely” is the key word in that sentence. Another key involves the quality of other options available. Today, the amount of time I spend hunting a particular stand depends largely on how good my other options are and how risky the stand site is to hunt. When I have two stands that are hot with buck action, I’ll try to split my time evenly between the two if possible. I will continue doing this until a stand goes cold or action begins heating up somewhere else. If the first two remain hot and a third stand looks promising, I’ll divide my time between all three. In that same situation, if one stand has a significantly lower impact access route, I’ll hunt that stand twice for every time I hunt the others.
In case I haven’t already made this point extremely clear, when a stand is hot it should be hunted as swiftly and as often as is reasonable to do so. If you wait or space your hunts too far apart, the number of high quality encounters the stand can produce is often lowered dramatically.
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