Bucks Out Back

“There ain’t no deer” has been a frequent complaint from hunters who don’t get very far from a road. But anyone who has camera traps in woodland quickly comes to see that there are quite a few deer in forest and field.

A friend who lives near the Big Woods knows the deer are there, and there's no shortage of them. He’s said there were deer around his house all summer and fall, although he hadn’t seen bucks around the house and nobody at his hunting camp had seen any bucks.

Not wanting to burst his bubble or break his heart, I hadn’t told him that I’d gotten photos and videos of bucks on the hill behind the house before and during hunting season –

After deer season was over and the woods had been virtually empty of humans for several weeks the camera on the hill above the house caught –

And here’s the question, where were those bucks during hunting season and how did they survive – and how did the older of those bucks escape during previous hunting seasons?

The Deer-Forest Study being conducted by the Pennsylvania State University has shed some light on where deer spend their time during hunting season; and has offered some answers on how the bucks out back may have avoided hunters in this post on the study's blog.

The hill out back becomes steeper and rockier as the elevation increases until the slope rounds off to the top, not terrain that makes for easy deer hunting. But it is terrain that's a good place for deer to lay low.