Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan4570
I personally have never seen a mature whitetail buck moving an open field mid day. (Mule deer? All day any day. They do what they like). If you're set up on an opening early season? 1st light for the first 3 hours and last light. I've seen more bucks move 2 hours into the morning and not at all until last light.
If you're setup near a bedding area in the bush? They can move anytime of day.
During the rut? All bets are off. They're chase trails or follow does with tongues wagging mid day without a care in the world. Even a few shots won't even stop them from chasing does. Just my experiences. Everyone has their own.
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True that you dont see deer moving in the open during mid day, in my neck of the woods I'd say only about 1 in 20 deer goes out in the open during daylight at all. In their own element, the bush, at least if they have sufficient amounts of bush that they can move around, feed, and not eat themselves out of browse... they are pretty much inclined to move around all day. Theres generally about as much browse 30 yards into the bush as there is 30 yards into the cutblock, and the other 19 deer opt to travel and brows within the safety of this margin rather than expose themselves.
I really dont think any animal besides humans naturally ever beds down for a full 6-8 hours at a time, though with minimal bedding cover it can be an acquired behavior in reaction to humans. With more cover, and more natural predation thrown into the mix, bedding down all day is of more minimal value and the deer get up and move around periodically throughout most days.
I'm not a stand hunter, and I dont hunt open areas much... but for what its worth probably 95% of my game is shot between 9:00AM and 1:00pm. The majority around the 9-10 mark, but an unignorably large percentage of my mature bucks have been shot at noon, pretty much right on the button.