Germ

Are your beans turning brown? If so they have moved to a differnet food source. They are still in there "Home range" The questions is How big is it? I don't know

GMMAT

Nope. Beans are greener than ever. But I know the acorns are already falling.....and that's what they've moved on to (for the most part).

Imagine if you had access to the beans.....but not the mast crops. That would suck. I've been in the position that's the opposite of that. My early seasons have sucked, because of it. This year....the way things worked out....the timing is perfect. They're already on the acorns. I have acorns!

shed33

In the mountains I hunt, there are no acorns or crop fields. The big bucks dont really go anywhere because this time of the year feed is EVERYWHERE.. they simply hole up and move much less during daylight hours. They have all the feed they need right in their corebedding areas. They will travel at night to get to a water source if need be this time of the year since its so hot.

If you want to kill a big buck here in the mountains during Sept you have to be set up within 100-200 yards of where hes bedded up during the day, have everything work in your favor as far as wind goes then hope he decided to come out before dark close enough to your set up. Pretty simple sounding, very difficult to pull off with how randomly a big buck can move through a general area.

OKbowhunter20

Bingo. They hide all day and play all night.

Schultzy

That too!!

Germ

When hunters learn mature deer doe or buck are moving around them, well lets just say the light will come on

jackflap

To use a phrase I read somewhere "Its not rocket science."

As has already been said several times in this thread, and several others - they become more nocturnal as hunting season approaches/begins.

Why? Because as hard as we try, we cannot enter the woods checking trail cams, hanging stands, scouting, hunting, etc. and go undetected and not leave traces of our intrusions (scent trail).

Could they have changed food sources? Heck, I don't know what deer do in your woods, but I know that our primary food sources have not changed, yet daytime deer sightings have gone way down and will continue to do so as we approach November (gun season).

We don't have many bowhunters but the gun hunters will start carousing their spots in October getting ready and the deer activity changes dramatically almost overnight.

I don't know if the average core area for our typical deer is 40 acres or 1000 acres, but I do know that one farm I hunt is 320 acres and the other is 640 acres and I continue to see the same deer on trail cams during the entire season, just maybe not at the same times (instead of 7:00 a.m. maybe it is now 5:00 a.m.)or as frequent.

GMMAT

If you guys get D&DH magazine....or are REALLY interested in this topic.....go and buy the most recent issue. It addresses this topic to a T.

I just go tmine, last night, and skimmed through it.....but it's likely the best issue I've seen come from ANY such rag in quite some time.

txjourneyman

So does Buckmasters. I hate the rag but do thumb through it. My wife got me a subscription that won't be renewed. Anyway, one of the articles is called something like," Where do the big bucks go?"