It’s a well-known fact among hunters that large, older deer make for tougher hunting because they’re smart enough to have avoided hunters and predators for multiple seasons. Field & Stream‘s Scott Bestul says that there’s likely a “hermit buck” on your hunting property, but that you must use different hunting tactics for hermit bucks than you would for younger deer.
… [A]s a buck ages, his living quarters shrink. In Dr. Mickey Hellickson’s groundbreaking 1995 King Ranch telemetry study (updated in 2010), the average core area for older bucks was a mere 151 acres. Increasingly reclusive, some of these bucks do not run widely even during the rut. Every year, I hear more stories of docile, old bucks that virtually never leave some funky little spot. And I’ve arrowed two of them in the last three years, including a 179-inch 5-year-old that had dug in at an 80-acre farm I hunt.
Tell us what you think in the comments section below.
Photos: Field & Stream (top); George Barnett (center)
