Sunday, November 01, 2009
Several factors affect deer moves
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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Brian Porterfield was focused.
Sitting in the press box high above Northside's Jim Hickham Field Friday evening, Porterfield carefully recorded every play as he and partner Steve Sandy kept statistics for the Vikings' football game against Lord Botetourt.
Porterfield was doing well to pay attention, because his mind was racing ahead.
In a short few hours he would be in the woods for the opening day of Virginia's early muzzleloader season.
"I'm hunting bone tomorrow," he said, using hunter jargon referring to large antlers.
Porterfield's philosophy isn't unusual.
As Virginia deer biologist Matt Knox once put so eloquently, "No deer hunter can't sleep the night before opening day because he's hoping to kill a big doe."
They envision big bucks, and it's getting to be the time when sometimes those fantasies come true.
During the past four weeks of archery season, hunters have gone afield with hope that they'll encounter a big buck.
But the odds against that are steep. And, even if they see a nice deer, having that deer get to within the 35-yard or so range of a bow or crossbow is another story.
But now is when hunters get a couple of key advantages.
One is the weapon.
The muzzleloaders most hunters use can reach beyond 150 yards, a range few deer hunters in Western Virginia ever need to worry about.
The main key, though, is deer movement.
Whitetail bucks don't get old and big by being dumb and careless.
Up till a month ago some were willing to walk around during daylight. But they quickly figured out that humans were out there chasing them so most mature buck activity shifted to the hours of darkness.
It is now shifting back.
Breeding season, or the rut, is looming. And basic biology dictates that bucks have to move around more since there simply aren't enough hours of darkness to get their job done.
As November dawns hunters spend lots of time -- something they have plenty of while sitting in their treestands -- speculating about when buck activity will peak.
But the peak of the rut isn't necessarily the best time to encounter a trophy buck on its feet during the day.
During the breeding peak, many bucks are already connected with receptive females. Where the female goes, so goes the buck. But those females sometimes don't move much.
Think of them as a happy couple holed up in their cozy thatched hut in the Bahamas for a romantic weekend.
It's when the bucks are out looking for companionship that they tend to be most reckless.
Biologists who have studied embryonic data in Virginia have pinpointed the peak of breeding as the middle of November. So it stands to reason that the second week of the month will bring a flurry of chasing activity.
That activity isn't always obvious, though, leading some hunters to assume that the rut is delayed, or maybe already over.
That's not the case.
It's just that much of the action is taking place after dark.
There's been a lot of effort to try to connect breeding with moon phases. For the most part, no connection has been found.
However, moon phase can affect deer movement.
During a full moon period -- and Monday brings a full moon -- nighttime activity might be especially intense and daytime activity might be limited, though there is some evidence that there can be an uptick in midday deer movement.
Weather is another key.
Cold weather can prompt increased daytime deer movement, for the simple reason that deer need to eat more.
One way to track these things is by looking at data, for example examining record book entries.
The information is interesting but has plenty of caveats. In Virginia, for example, hunter pressure varies throughout November.
The second week of the month, typically the second week of the early muzzleloader season, tends to be busy. But the third week, when the general firearms season is in, is even busier.
A quick look at data from the Virginia Big Game Contest from a couple of recent years shows that those weeks have been the best for contest-worthy bucks.
The two biggest days during the 2004 season were Nov. 6 and Nov. 11. The first day was a Saturday, and the opener of the then one-week early muzzleloader season in the west. The second day was actually a Thursday, when hunting pressure was lighter than on the Saturday opener.
In fact, the rifle opener on Nov. 13 that year, probably the busiest deer hunting day of the entire fall, had only 10 record book entries.
Last year, the biggest day for trophies was Nov. 17, the first Monday of the firearms season, with 16 contest entries. With 11 entries, Nov. 19, 22, and 27 were the second-busiest days.
With 10 entries, the Nov. 1 early muzzeloader opener was the only muzzleloader day with double-digit entries.
Did the peak of the rut move? No.
Hunters who were out there remember that the region got hit by a wave of frigid weather the first week of the rifle season. That's what prompted more daylight movement.
Some trophy bucks fell Saturday.
By scoring on a warm day when chasing is just getting rolling, those hunters defied the odds.
Of course the best way to defy odds is to be out there in the woods.
Hunters who put in the most time over the next three weeks simply stand the best chance of being out there when the right conditions occur.
