The author took this 7 1/2-year-old buck while hunting the rut with Acorn Outfitters near Del Rio, Texas. The deer was clearly past his prime in terms of antler growth. Photo by Gordon Whittington

Many whitetail hunters operate as though bucks fall into one of only two categories: young (small) or mature (big). While there clearly are differences in the behavior of deer in these two broad classifications, if we want to hunt the biggest bucks more effectively -- during the rut or at any other time -- we must recognize that there are more categories than this. Just as is the case with human males, not all adult bucks are alike, and they tend to change their behavior dramatically as they age. For this reason, a "one size fits all" approach to hunting mature bucks can diminish a hunter's chances of taking a fully mature animal.

I first became interested in age-related changes in individual bucks' behavior back in the late 1970s. At that time, my whitetail research included radio-tracking bucks on Boggy Slough Hunting and Fishing Club in Houston County, Texas. My interest in buck behavior had been stimulated by the inability of hunters to kill older bucks.

In those days, we were developing and testing everything from infrared-triggered trail cameras to food-plot varieties. Although tested management methods for producing monster bucks had not been fully developed at that time, we had learned how to grow better deer. The problem was that owing to a lack of prime year-round forage, it took a lot of time for the bucks to reach true trophy size. They tended to achieve peak antler growth at about 6 1/2 years of age.

Why was this such a problem? For one thing, Boggy Slough's hunters were having great difficulty getting these fully mature bucks shot. The big deer were there, but they weren't getting killed.

Years later, at Fort Perry Plantation management-research area in Georgia, I had a chance to keep tabs on a number of known bucks throughout their lives. These bucks confirmed the Boggy Slough data and my own suspicions: As bucks get older, they tend to become more nocturnal and grow less interested in breeding. Both factors, obviously, make them harder to hunt.

We conducted years of management research at Fort Perry, including groundbreaking studies on how to improve deer nutrition. (Much of the knowledge we gained there has appeared in North American Whitetail magazine over the years.)

Among the many inherent difficulties in conducting research on wild deer is the impact of unknown genetics. Because we wanted to learn as much as possible about the impact of nutrition, we opted to remove all of the native deer from Fort Perry and restock the 2,000-acre area (it was high-fenced) with select genetics from across the U.S.

One of the bucks released was known as "Tuff Stuff." He was from Mississippi, and by the time we got him, he was on his last legs. An accident had produced a serious wound to one rear leg, and it wouldn't heal no matter how much we medicated the old fellow. We decided to breed him and then let him go in Fort Perry to live out his days.

Unfortunately, Tuff Stuff didn't even live long enough to be released. Fortunately, while still in our holding facility he managed to breed a Kansas-born doe, named Dorothy, before he passed on to that great food plot in the sky.

Months later, Dorothy had two fawns: one a buck, the other a doe. They were released along with their mother and the other founder deer, free to roam the lush food plots and woodlands of Fort Perry.

For years afterwards, we could easily find Dorothy at almost any time, as she liked to hang around the main lodge. As the fawns grew, we came to admire the buck fawn for his aggressiveness. By the time he sported his first antlers, we realized he had inherited his father's penchant for fighting. He'd take on all comers, no matter how big. I believe he'd have fought his own shadow! We quickly named this aggressive young buck "Little Tuff Stuff."

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