Follow the Bedding to Locate Bucks

Hunters get absolute satisfaction when they uncover a giant buck bed. For some, their sole strategy is to locate the bedding when hunting a mature buck. Another sub-section of hunters focuses on catching a buck at a destination food source and puts less thought into where their target buck is bedding. Others fall somewhere between the two. Like everything in hunting, regardless of your strategy for utilizing buck bedding, many variables exist.

Your hunting location is a massive consideration in how you hunt. No matter your style, understanding where bucks bed, why they’re bedding in a specific spot and anticipating how those factors influence the hunt can give us a huge advantage. It pays to know where big bucks hang their hats outside of hunting season, too.

I’m a flatlander who grew up mostly hunting fencerow deer in agricultural areas. As a young kid, I occasionally hunted foothills and areas with steep ridges and bluffs. More recently, however, I’ve found a new appreciation for mountain bucks. I believe the same principles apply whether a buck is bedding in flatland or hill country. The only real difference between the two is that hill country bucks have the advantage of elevation when needed.

Regardless of terrain, a mature buck chooses his bed wisely; but the reasons behind his choices can and do change.

SPRING AND SUMMER BEDDING

It’s mid-May as I write this, and spring has sprung across most of the Midwest down through the South. Fawns will begin taking their first steps soon, and for the first time in many months forest foragers are finding that food is becoming abundantly available. With turkey seasons ending in these same regions, whitetails are settling firmly into their summer patterns, mostly void of human intrusion.

Food is plentiful from April through August, but the preferred food sources will change during this time. Buck bedding will depend on calories available and burned, and dominant bucks routinely seek out the best bedding areas. During spring and summer, when hunting pressure and human encroachment are low or non-existent, bucks are usually in the most comfortable areas closest to their preferred food source. Much of a deer’s water intake this time of year comes from lush browse; however, streams and creeks nestled below a thick canopy of leaves that provide reprieve from the heat can attract a mature buck to bed. In hill country, a point or crest overlooking a ridge can provide just enough airflow to make blazing temperatures tolerable.

If desirable food is close to any of the above-mentioned locations, it’s an excellent bet that a mature buck will bed there. Even old, cagey whitetails spend daylight hours bedded very close to their favorite sustenance. Feeling little pressure, deer find no need to bury themselves in the deepest security cover to stay hidden, because our nation’s more than 8 million deer hunters are pursuing other endeavors this time of year.

As summer progresses, food remains abundant, and even smart old bucks become predictable as they often repeat nearly the same pattern daily. This pattern, commonly called the summer feeding pattern, is crucial to the entire herd as they need to nurse fawns, grow antlers and build their fat reserves to survive the whole cycle all over again. The availability of quality food and reduced pressure creates ease among the herd.

Those same bucks that daylight with regularity through July, August and even September are definitely on the verge of a pattern shift. Some will soon disappear, while others will stick around. But either way, the winds of change are stirring. In some states, including my home state of Kentucky, the archery season opens in time to hunt during this delicate period. The first of the fuzzy-racked whitetail bucks begin the velvet peel right around the Kentucky archery opener, which is during the first weekend of September.

Other bucks linger on their summer feeding pattern for a week or 10 days after opening day, and many shift even sooner, depending on variables such as available food, habitat and hunting pressure. When this shift occurs will depend on exactly where you hunt, and bedding habits usually change. If we want to stay in the game, we must adjust, too.

EARLY FALL BEDDING

During mid- to late September and well into October, the summer feeding pattern bedding habits overlap with increasing hunting pressure and mild to significant food source changes. Many of the bucks I chase in the Midwest begin bedding in locations deeper in the timber and frequently in the best quality bedding habitat. In my experience, that’s not always in the thickest, nastiest cover.

One of my biggest surprises while hunting hill country was how often I’ve found mature bucks bedding up against a rock face or nearly a vertical bluff. They have great visual advantages here, and nothing can reach them from above. I used to think mature bucks preferred and sought out bedding with several escape routes, but I have learned that while that can be true, there are bucks that also bed with minimal escape routes.

They will do this because they often can see threats in time to react before we know they are even there. In cases where bucks are bedding in an area with almost unlimited escape routes, it is my experience that those bucks hang tight to their beds as predators pass by them. As long as the predator is on a trajectory that the deer perceives will allow him to remain unseen, bucks hold tight and don’t flush right away. As a result, we probably unknowingly pass by more bucks than we realize.

Hill country bucks also bed on points at various elevation levels that allow them to see long distances. Midwest deer act similarly, and they frequently bed up against a big fallen tree, root ball, bolder or a similar object. Big, smart whitetails who live near marsh country know where to seek refuge when hunting pressure makes them uneasy. Small, even tiny islands or humps surrounded by thick, wet marsh are surefire bets as food sources change and hunting pressure rises.

The October Lull is frequently blamed for this pattern shift, but science proves that daylight deer movement increases throughout October. The real culprit here is that many bucks have shifted their feeding and bedding habits and settled into more of a fall pattern.

Hard and soft mast, along with plentiful quality browse and, again, increasing hunting pressure, finds mature bucks deeper and more strategically bedded than they were all summer. At this time of year, it is paramount to find oaks or whatever the preferred food source of a buck is, so you can get between the food and your target buck’s bed. Failing to make this shift and continuing to hunt summer pattern intel can be frustrating at best. Bucks are still moving; they just aren’t having to move far from their beds to feed on high-quality native browse.

RUT BEDDING

November brings on the whitetail rut for many hunters across the nation, and with it we have more change in deer behavior based on many variables. Whitetail bucks, now bursting with testosterone fueled by their primal desire to breed, are in the beginning stages of a ritual that will cost some of them a third of their body weight. Those are the lucky bucks, as plenty more are injured in various ways or even killed while vying for their chance to pass along their DNA. The point is that deer will go to great lengths for their chance to breed and survive, causing whitetail bucks to lie in some irregular spots during the rut.

Catching cruising bucks throughout the Midwest along benches, ridges and any travel corridors between food, doe bedding and cover is a good bet this time of year. Also hunting from dark to dark certainly ups your odds even more. Admittedly, I don’t hunt from daylight until dark as much as I used to because of a busy schedule; but it’s still something that I do each season, and something that I have spent nearly my whole hunting life doing from late October through all of November.

I have arrowed several nice whitetails over the years in the middle of the day. Still, more importantly, sitting all day has allowed me to study how deer herds I hunt are reacting to rut conditions or hunting pressure. One such thing I’ve consistently seen is how often mature bucks will bed during the day between their sessions of cruising for does on the ridges overlooking travel corridors. With the wind mostly at their backs and a good view of any passing does, they are essentially resting with their fishing line still in the water.

Another cool thing I’ve witnessed many times is bucks stacking up in their beds by dominance, with the smaller buck closest to the travel route and the big buck further back in cover using the other buck(s) to watch for estrus does and threats. During the rut, I’ve also watched bucks bed in plenty of different cherry-picking type scenarios, such as downwind of doe bedding and afternoon destination food sources.

A significant influx of hunting pressure can push mature bucks back into more secluded daytime bedding, but in areas with less intense pressure, bucks often take on increased risk in both their daylight bedding areas and movement. Once a mature buck or even a smart buck locates a hot doe, he will often push her to overlooked patches of concealment away from any potential rival. This adds yet another variable to determining where a deer is bedding.

I harvested my Kentucky buck last year while he was pushing a hot doe past me into an overgrown point at the end of a long finger of timber surrounded by thick CRP fields and crops. Like many bucks in prior years, he corralled does in this area because they were secure and away from most other daytime deer movement. I bumped this buck twice during turkey season that spring, and both times he was in this same overgrown point. Why? Because his preferred April food sources of wheat fields and lush, native browse were close by, and the overgrown point offered a cool breeze and seclusion from the bulk of the deer herd during daylight. As in life and hunting, sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same.

LATE SEASON BEDDING

As the rut dwindles in many areas across the Midwest, every deer in the herd is looking for security and food as we enter winter conditions. December through March is not an easy stretch for whitetails; even does are worn down from being chased and harassed by every buck in town for the past month, along with recent spikes in hunting pressure from folks hunting the rut and gun seasons. During this time, mature bucks can become very sedentary during daylight hours and will tuck back into thick security cover and sanctuary until nightfall conceals their movements.

Cold fronts create tough conditions and force deer to feed more. Mature bucks, many of which are nestled into the very best security cover with thermal protection and solar heat, will also feel the need to feed. Finding these isolated mature buck bedding areas is huge because it allows us to work our way between his bed and food just as we did before the rut. Even with extreme cold, mature whitetails don’t always make regular daylight visits to destination food sources. Working closer to his bed when his pattern dictates is a tactic that many successful hunters use.

Anticipating buck bedding areas is not an exact science. The endless variables affecting bedding constantly change; some we are aware of, and others we aren’t. Individual whitetail buck personalities vary wildly, which can muddy the waters even more. Despite all the unknowns, a commonsense approach can help forecast where bucks will bed seasonally.

Heavily pressured bucks adapt quickly and will bury themselves behind many layers of defensive measures. This commonly happens deep in the timber and off the beaten path, but not always. Unpressured bucks often spend their days tucked right under our noses near their preferred food. The key is weighing all the factors to gauge the likely bedding areas based on ever-changing variables.

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