What to do when your target buck vanishes

You have heard it happening to other deer hunters, but you never dreamed it would happen to you.

Not only are you dumbfounded, but you also have no idea what to do. You were getting pictures of your target buck almost every day on your trail cameras. But now, nothing.

You have checked your other trail cameras only to see other lesser bucks, but not the buck.

What to do? Keep feeling sorry for yourself, thinking the coming deer season is going to be a bust? Or do something about it.

What happened to him?

If you are like most serious deer hunters, you’ll want to do something about it. You will want to figure out what happened.

Naturally, the first question that often comes to mind is, did the buck get hit by a passing vehicle? In farming country that could happen. A quick drive around your hunting area along with discreetly asking friends, neighbors and trusted hunting buddies may help. Chances are, it won’t. You will simply have to ferret out why your target buck disappeared by yourself.

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If you are hunting deep woods bucks, chances of your target buck getting hit by a vehicle may not be an issue. Therefore, like the farmland hunter, you will have to search out the reason why your buck vanished.

Some initial questions the hunter might want to find the answer to are, has another hunter moved in and unknowingly spooked the buck from the area? Or, if hunting farmland, has farming operations disturbed the area or removed a food source causing the buck to change his travel route?

Have small game hunters decided to hunt the area and cause your target buck to change his routine? Or, have landowners started harvesting firewood?

What next?

To learn the answers to these questions, the hunter will have to do some serious recon within and around his hunting area.

It might take some leg work trying to discover what caused the buck to leave the area. Or it might call for a drive around your hunting area hoping to learn about any changes in the environment, such a logging, crop harvesting, or discovering the local snowmobile club is out clearing trails.

A season ago, my son suddenly had his target buck disappear. He soon discovered another hunter had moved in on his hunting area, which resulted in his target buck leaving the woodlot and fields he was frequenting.

That other hunter had no idea of the size and quality of the big buck using that particular section of woodland. He simply stumbled into the area not realizing he set up his pop-up blind in the buck’s travel corridor which drove the mature buck from the area.

When my son realized what happened, his first move was to review his trail cam pictures for clues as to where the buck might have moved to. By carefully examining those images, he noted the time the buck had passed through certain areas, in which direction the buck came from and in which direction it left. Armed with this information, he next viewed his entire hunting area via satellite on his computer.

By mentally drawing a one-mile circle around the area where he was initially seeing the buck, he began looking for areas where the buck might have moved to. Areas such as a dense thicket bordering a stream, or a thick, swampy cattail filled lowland, or an overgrown field thick with honeysuckle and other low brushy growth where a mature buck might hide.

However, he did not stop there. He studied those topographical images looking for travel corridors connecting bedding and feeding areas. At the same time, using the same one-mile circle technique, he studied the topography in hopes of finding other features in the landscape such as a thick, bramble-filled ravine, or out of the way island of cover that might attract a mature buck by its location and security cover.

He then removed the trail cameras from the area the buck vacated to those new areas. Then, he waited.

Results

While he waited, he continued to scrutinize trail camera images of the bucks’ movements in his old area while trying to figure out from those images where the buck might have come from to where he might be going, based on the images and the topography of the hunting area, while simultaneously reviewing satellite images in that one mile circle.

He was looking for dense, brushy, impenetrable areas such as a brushy ravine, cattail filled swamp, or an out of the way island of cover where a mature buck would find suitable for a bedding area. He also looked for harvested crop fields along with crop fields that have yet to be harvested.

He also made it a point to study those areas where he did not have permission to hunt, but yet might offer cover and protection to a mature, hunter-wise buck.

Next, he noted pinch points, hedgerows, brushy fence lines, ravines and wooded fingers that the buck might use to get from bedding to feeding areas where he could intercept does and check on their breeding status. He also picked out specific locations that might serve as an ambush point for intercepting his target buck.

Next, he headed out into the area to do some low-key scouting hoping to confirm his hunches derived from interpreting camera and topography images. He also set up some trail cameras along likely looking routes the buck might use while looking for does to breed hoping to rediscover his target buck in one of these new locations.

My son’s efforts paid off. He eventually managed to tie his tag on his target buck after he relocated the buck in a soybean field butting up against a dense, water-filled swamp while the buck was trailing a doe.

Any hunter finding him or herself in a similar situation just might put the odds back in their favor by following these steps for relocating a target buck that suddenly disappeared out of its usual area.